Read the text below and answer Questions 1–9.
Sunset Tours
BOOKINGS
A deposit of $150 each is payable on booking and the balance is payable 30 days prior to tour departure. Feel free to contact us for further information:
Office Hours: 8 am–4 pm Monday–Friday
Phone 5500 0881 Fax 5501 0881 Email: info@sunsettours.co
CONDITIONS
The cost is subject to a minimum of 25 passengers travelling and we reserve the right to cancel if this number is not reached. Should the tour be cancelled, you are entitled to a full refund.
NB: The itinerary is given as a guide only and is subject to alteration if weather conditions are unfavourable or in any other unforeseen circumstances.
LUGGAGE
Each passenger is entitled to bring a cabin bag and one item of checked luggage no heavier than 20 kg as per industry requirements. Couples travelling together are requested to use individual suitcases. Your suitcase should be of a size and weight you yourself can manage as tour leaders may not be readily available to handle your luggage.
CANCELLATION & REFUNDS
It is obligatory that you have a travel insurance policy to cover sudden illness or accident. Even so an administration fee is retained for notice of more than 30 days prior to departure but, should cancellation occur through unforeseen circumstances not covered by travel insurance, 10% of the fare is retained for 15–30 days' notice, 20% for 4–14 days and 50% is held for less than 4 days' notice. There will be no refund for notice of one day or on the day of departure.
RESPONSIBILITY
Although every endeavour is made by Sunset Tours to ensure your holiday goes according to plan, we act purely as an agent for the various accommodation and other services provided.
Sunset Tours shall not be liable for any accident, injury, delay, irregularity, loss or damage caused by or arising out of the provision of or failure to provide any such service.
______________
Read the passage below and answer Questions 10–13.
Easy Listening Broadcasting Association
Dear Listener
We wish to express our sincere thanks for your support during our last successful fund-raising endeavour. Your annual donation makes it possible for us to improve the station in every way for your interest and pleasure.
We would like to extend to you an invitation to join us at the station on Wednesday, 16th August at 3.00 pm for afternoon tea and to discuss station programming. Your input will be a great help to us. It will enable us to continue programming to suit your requirements. Together we will be discussing future ideas for 5ZBG and whether frequent news broadcasts should be included in our agenda. There has also been a proposal to make the mainstay of our programming a talkback format. Any changes to programming would have to be finalised by September 1st.
We hope you can join us and we look forward to sharing time with you. If you are able to join us, please be kind enough to phone, and let us know. If you are unable to attend on this day, please phone and we will arrange a suitable date for you.
Yours sincerely
Tobias Rank
Programming Coordinator
Read the text below and answer Questions 14–22.
Employees and Contractors
An employee is someone who performs work under a contract of employment. Identifying who is, or is not, an employee has become an increasingly disputed area, with a number of different factors to be considered. Non-employees may be 'independent contractors' or 'sub-contractors' and are employed under a contract for services or even as agents representing a client business. The legal consequences of being an independent contractor are significantly different to those for employees. Only an 'employee' can be covered by an award¹ or make a workplace agreement. However, some cleaners, outworkers and some drivers of public passenger vehicles who might ordinarily be considered independent contractors are deemed to be employees under the Fair Work Act.
The rights and obligations of employees are very different to those who are self-employed. To distinguish between employees and independent contractors, the courts take into account a number of factors to determine what the real nature of a particular work relationship is. These factors may include:
Control over work—generally an employee works as directed by the employer whereas a contractor has a greater say in how the work is to be done.
Payment—employees are usually paid on the basis of an hourly rate or a salary. Contractors are more often paid for a required outcome, with less regard for time.
Work injury—contractors are responsible to insure themselves against injury but employees are not.
Risk—employees generally do not bear in a direct way the risk of financial loss incurred by the business for which they work. Contractors have a chance of profit, and also the risk of loss.
Sub-contracting—an employee cannot assign or delegate the work to others whereas a contractor is typically permitted to do so.
Tools and equipment—contractors may supply special equipment or tools to do the job.
Income tax and superannuation—employers usually pay these for their employees whereas contractors make their own arrangements.
______________
Read the passage below and answer Questions 23–28.
Paid Parental Leave
If you are a working parent expecting a child after July 31st, the information below about Paid Parental Leave concerns you.
From 1st August, the first national Paid Parental Leave scheme will start. It's a new entitlement for working parents, funded by the government.
Taking time away from work for a new baby is a common part of working life. Paid Parental Leave is designed to help parents spend time with a new baby and also to help employers retain skilled staff.
Eligible working parents of children born or adopted on or after 1st August may get 18 weeks government-funded pay at the National Minimum Wage to help them care for a new baby.
Full-time, part-time, casual, seasonal, contract and self-employed workers may be eligible. You must have worked at least 330 hours (just over one day a week) for 10 of the 13 months before your new baby arrives. You can have up to an 8 week unpaid break between two working days and still be eligible. You can earn up to $100,000 a year (individual salary) and still be eligible.
Usually the mother must apply for Paid Parental Leave. If you are eligible, you can transfer some or all of the pay to your partner (he needs to be eligible too). The scheme gives families more options to balance work and family.
You can claim up to three months in advance, and your pay can start any time you choose from when your child is born or adopted. It will be paid in one continuous period from the start date and must all be taken with the first year after the birth or adoption. You are encouraged to apply early.
Eligible parents can receive Parental Leave pay at the same time, before or after other employer-provided paid leave or entitlements. The existing minimum entitlement to 12 months unpaid parental leave for long-term employees is unchanged.
From 1st August, employers must provide Government-funded Parental Leave pay through their usual pay cycle to eligible employees who have been with their business for at least 12 months. Other eligible parents will be paid through the Family Assistance Office.
For further information visit the website or call the appropriate number below:
www.ppl.govt.com
Parents 01800 4321
Employers 01800 1211
Read the text below and answer Questions 29–40.
WHY DO CLOCKS GO CLOCKWISE?
The simple answer is that clocks always go clockwise! If the clock's hands moved in the opposite direction (to what we are used to), it would still be called 'clockwise', of course! But, seriously, why do the hands move from left to right at the top? Generally, the answer given is that clocks were invented in the northern hemisphere where the sun rises in the east, travels round to the south, and sets to the west. The shadow on a typical domestic sundial in olden times would move from left to right. So, the answer is completely logical. Or is it?
If we go back to early clocks, because of their sheer size and cost, there was generally only one turret clock in a town, usually placed high on a tower for all to see and frequently accompanied by a bell that could be heard when the clock face was not visible. If we go back in time to before mechanical clocks, even if people had a sundial at home, they needed a large public sundial that could be read from a distance when they were out. Sundials were therefore placed high on a wall in the town. This is where the explanation above about clockwise movement no longer rings true: for sundials on vertical walls have to have their hours arranged in an anti-clockwise progression. As vertical sundials would have been the predecessors of clock towers, one wonders why a right to left movement didn't become the standard. An old vertical sundial can still be seen in Queen's College, Cambridge, England. Not only does it go 'anticlockwise' but strangely (for us) the number 'I' is at the bottom rather than the top.
Surely the hands on clocks have always moved in the same direction, though? Surprisingly, the answer is no. There is a clock painted in fresco in a Cathedral in Florence that is peculiar in several ways. We are used to clocks with twelve hours on the dial but this one has twenty-four and the twenty-fourth hour does not signify midnight but the hour of sunset (a system that survived until the eighteenth century apparently); furthermore, the layout of the numbers has 'I' at the bottom, although of course XII is at the top, and it goes anticlockwise! This clock is not unique, however.
There were other clocks around in the 15th and 16th centuries with Roman numerals going anti-clockwise. Some of them had a hand that went around once in 24 hours, others went around once every twelve hours, and still others went around four times in 24 hours with the digits I to VI painted on the clock face. Then again, some went around once in 12 hours but the digits were marked I to VI and then I to VI again. Some of the 'once every 24 hours' ones were marked I to XII and I to XII again. There were probably even more variations than this. To find out why all clocks go clockwise and are numbered I to XII (or 1 to 12) today, we have to consider the phenomenon described in 1890 in Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall.
Early clocks were massive and extremely heavy (not to mention very expensive) devices and technology over the centuries has reduced these to small timepieces that can sit on a little shelf, be carried (often in a waistcoat pocket), or worn on the wrist. When it comes to new technologies, there are often many designs in competition with one another. Occasionally, one design is obviously pre-eminent and the others soon become obsolete. In the case of the clocks, there would not seem to be one design that is outstandingly more advantageous than the others. That is where Marshall's theory comes in: 'whatever firm [design or technology] gets a good start' eventually wins. We can assume, therefore, that one type of clock face—although it may not have had any technological advantage over the others—was somewhat more common; and, once one technology secures a larger share of the market, there are economies of scale. It becomes more cost-efficient to produce thereby giving it even greater advantage over its rivals. In this way, one technology can completely eclipse the others.
Why do clocks go clockwise? Pure chance is probably the answer. Clockwise may have been more widespread and got off to a good start. After the invention of the first mechanical clock, for a century and a half, there was no consistency in the direction, the position of the numbers on the dial, or even the number of hours shown. All this changed with the mass production of clocks and watches as domestic items. For nearly five hundred years now, they have been consistent—a clockwise dial with twelve hours and two rotations in a 24-hour period.