The head of the country's peak small business body believes a push for domestic violence leave ignores the employer, who can also be a victim.
Appearing before a Senate hearing into several proposed workplace laws, the Council of Small Business Australia's CEO Peter Strong said offering paid leave is complex, and would see a social issue brought into the workplace.
"What if the victim is the employer?" he said during the Canberra hearing on Wednesday.
"What society is saying is we don't care."
He questioned what would happen if there were two victims of domestic violence in a workplace - one being a staff member and the other an employer.
"What society is saying (is) the employer sorry, you can't be a victim - or if you are, we're not going to care about you one little bit," he said.
"There's five people in the workplace, we look at the mental health of four of them."
Unions have been pursuing 10 days paid domestic violence leave for nearly two years, but suffered a setback in February when a senior member of the Fair Work Commission rejected the claim.
In his own ruling, now-retired vice-president Graeme Watson said he was not satisfied the family and domestic violence leave claim by the ACTU was necessary to provide a fair and relevant minimum safety net of terms and conditions.
The ACTU says already one million Australian workers have access to paid family and domestic violence leave negotiated in their workplace agreements.
But its claim would see a further two million workers covered by modern awards which provide such leave.
National domestic violence helpline: 1800 737 732 or 1800RESPECT. In an emergency call triple-zero.
