Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Although the opposition will on this occasion support the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, it would be remiss of me not to make a couple of comments, given events that occurred in the other house in respect of these matters. The House may not be aware that, when this issue was considered last Tuesday night, the circumstances were such that the government actually lost the vote 30 to 31—it was negatived. That meant that there had to be a recommittal of the matter in order for the government to use its numbers to ram a result through.

The circumstances are interesting. I am not in any way belittling the seriousness of these issues—compensation and rehabilitation matters are very important for those they affect. However, I could not help but think that, given some of the debates we have in this place, we saw an approach in the Senate that was more akin to what we are attacked for than what the government maintains for themselves. Just a few minutes ago the Assistant Treasurer was talking about the evil links of the Labor Party to the trade union movement. Yet on Tuesday night I am not sure whether two or three senators were working to rule, on strike, otherwise involved with work bans or in some way acting in some form of guerrilla activity. But most certainly the act goes to the question of incapacity by injury or disease and an inability to get to work. In those circumstances, clearly, Senators Macdonald and Santoro—and I think maybe others—were in that situation. I will not dwell on Senator Santoro’s circumstances—we know that, as of today, he is no longer a senator—and I know that Senator Macdonald is retiring at the next election . But maybe they just got a bit ahead of themselves last Tuesday night and decided to see what it was like. It was very embarrassing, I guess. The government worked very hard to deceive the Australian people in order to ensure that they were able to get a whole raft of legislation through this term on the basis of getting a majority in the Senate, but to have that majority and then to forget to turn up in order to exercise it is very unfortunate.

A section of the bill refers to amendments to schedule 1, item 12, page 8, and talks about inserting a clause about an employee travelling between the employee’s place of work and another place for the purpose of obtaining a medical certificate for the purposes of this act, receiving medical treatment for an injury, undergoing a rehabilitation program provided under this act or undergoing a medical examination. We do not know what was happening with those senators just the other night. Was it a situation of rehabilitation? Did they require medical treatment? Certainly in some respects there is an argument in the case of some of those senators that medical treatment would almost always be required. Why they were not able to get there on time, I do not know. I note that another section of the act also talks about unlicensed operation of a major hazard facility. And on the subject of hazards, it could well describe the Prime Minister and this government, because in recent times ‘hazard facility’ has been one way to describe the operation of this government.

When it comes to the question of safety, rehabilitation and compensation, I urge the government, in order to ensure that matters are dealt with expeditiously and effectively in the other place, to do their very best to take their hard-won Senate majority and make sure that everyone tries to get to church on time to do their job and to do so in a situation such that we are not worried about whether their incapacity requires compensation or litigation. In the circumstances, I mention that this is an unusual event. I think it is a sign of the way that this government are operating in a general sense and is certainly a view of things to come.

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