Earlier today I brought up the issue of the Volunteer Support Initiative action plan. The issue really is creating volunteers in spirit and morale within the public service.
A lot of public servants belong to many organizations and they volunteer personal time, but sometimes, as these things conflict with work time, we need a system that engenders that volunteer spirit.
What I’m going to ask the Premier is: would he consider looking at creating a volunteer day for the public service so they can help give back to their community? It would build morale and spirit within our public service.
We do value the volunteers who provide much input into a lot of our communities. In fact, that’s why we have, through agreements with the unions, a number of initiatives that provide for employees to take part in volunteer initiatives throughout the Territory.
I would have a difficult time looking at that specific issue. We need to look at the whole way we provide and support the volunteer sector, and one of the examples is the through our established civic leave process.
The federal government established a volunteer day, and it allows employees to go and do personal things and volunteer on initiatives that bring them personal satisfaction. This would help raise the morale, as I’ve said numerous times already now, within our service. Here we are buckling down very tough on them, but we want to give them something that they enjoy, something that means something special in their lives.
I’d like the Premier to reconsider his statement and see if he would look into the issue and see what work can be done to help facilitate this. Because — don’t take this the wrong way — we don’t need the union to make this type of decision. This decision could be made at the highest office. It could bring morale and much needed support throughout our public service.
It’s not a matter of the union making a decision for us. It is the discussions we have with the union that represents people who do the work for us and what we require in getting the job done across the territories. We can, ourselves, look at a number of initiatives. We’d have to do a comparison of…. The Member used the example of the federal government — what they offer and what we’re offering as well.
I’m very proud to say I’m Rotarian. I know former Members, such as Mr. Dent, are Rotarians as well, and different people in the public service are. They give time to go to the schools like Weledeh to read to school children every week. The thing is they have to take regular annual leave. That is the type of thing I’d like to see us continue, yet find ways to work with the employees so they are not sacrificing one way to make it work. The fact is, I’d like to see that spirit continue so we can allow employees to do the good things they do in our community — and that’s only one example.
Can I get some sort of picture built here as to how confident the Premier is that we could maybe look at something like this or when we could bring something back for a discussion?
We are doing our work on the business plan, and we have highlighted that we want to support the volunteer sector. That would allow for some of the discussion to happen, to see where we may improve on some of our initiatives, as well as recognize that we are one of the most generous jurisdictions when it comes to employees and what we allow for taking time off from work to provide service to the volunteer sector.
