ClubsACT has welcomed the ACT government’s decision to delay the expansion of the portable long service leave scheme until 1 July 2026 to ease pressure on the hospitality sector.
“We appreciate the Ministers response to our concerns on this issue and will look forward to working with him to address our broader concerns on the scheme over the next few months,” ClubsACT CEO Craig Shannon said.
“With food and beverage sales declining across the ACT, this was really the last thing our members needed to contend with at this time or really any time. It’s a relief to see the Minister has listened and acted on this.”
ACT Minister for Business Michael Pettersson said businesses in the food, accommodation, hairdressing, and beauty industry will be given another 15 months to register for the scheme.
“We know that the hospitality sector is under pressure. A new report has showed that nationally, 9.3 per cent of hospitality businesses closed in the 12 months to February 2025. Sadly, we have recently seen much-loved Canberra hospitality businesses close their doors,” he said.
“An extended transition period will support the thousands of businesses in the ACT’s hospitality industry with the continuation of the current processes in this challenging time.”
Under the scheme, employees can accumulate long service leave entitlements based on their length of service in a covered industry, rather than a single employer. Currently, the building and construction, contract cleaning, community sector, and security industries are currently covered under the scheme.
“The scheme ensures that workers aren’t unfairly impacted by the casual and insecure nature of their employment by guaranteeing access to the benefits of long service leave across the industry,” Pettersson said.
“Long service leave should be an entitlement for every worker.”
The move to delay the expansion of the scheme will offer relief to the clubs sector, Shannon said.
“The original intent to expand the scheme to the food service industry accidently scooped up the club Industry as well, when we had been originally advised it would not impact on our sector,” he said.
“There are significant difficulties in application of the scheme to licensed clubs given the high casualisation rates and mixed functions of employees. Many employees would have only partial coverage for some hours for some of their wok activity, creating a mess as to application.
“We were facing the imposition of the scheme creating an administrative nightmare to clubs, a direct hit to the bottom line in terms of the premiums into the scheme and, for what we are convinced would be of little benefit to employees. Most of those employees covered were never likely to reach the thresholds for the payment given their short-term engagement as casuals in the sector.”
According to Shannon, up to 60 per cent of many clubs’ workforce are made up of casuals, and only work in the sector for short periods while studying or in between commencing their careers in other industries.
“Our members’ main objection was that we believed we would have been subsidising the scheme for other sectors, with very few of our employees ever attaining the benefit,” he said.
New employers entering the services industry scheme will now have until 30 June 2026 to register and to be ready for full commencement of the new services scheme by 1 July 2026.