Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Training and Sport) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendments to the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008. There will be times during your period in government when you will have to admit that you got it wrong and you will have to come into this chamber and eat humble pie. Unfortunately we have a minister for whom such an admission runs right across her DNA. What we are considering is the whole area of occupational health and safety, and at the centre of occupational health and safety and the governance arrangements is that they are tripartite arrangements. Everyone understands that. It is government, employers and employees.

The only argument we have heard in favour of this is that, essentially, this has been made as part of the intergovernmental agreement. What we can say to the minister is: you had an existing governance structure that was already there when you came into government, and it provided three representatives for the ACTU and three representatives for the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. We do not know what your proposal was to COAG. We do not know if your proposal was initially to reduce the numbers of workers’ representatives and employers’ representatives to COAG or if that is something that you traded at COAG. But what we are saying is that this is wrong. In an area like occupational health and safety it takes a real genius to find a way—an area in which we are broadly supportive of a harmonised occupational health and safety system. Yet what we see from this minister is that she has managed to provide a structure which is not going to be able to get the outcomes. As much as the minister would like to be in every workplace in Australia, in actuality any government relies on employers and employees.

You need to have a look at how isolated the Labor Party leadership is on this issue. When it went to the Senate, these amendments were supported by the Greens and by Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding. They are supported by the ACTU and they are supported by ACCI. What we are saying as an opposition is that you need to say that you got it wrong, because you are completely isolated on this, Minister. We believe that in the area of occupational health and safety, having a truly tripartite governance arrangement makes a lot of sense.

A number of the other amendments are good amendments, but I think that the most important one is making sure that there is a fair representation from all stakeholders. What is required is for the minister to go back to COAG. We have a COAG meeting in November and a COAG meeting in December. The minister can go back to the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council. The whole idea that this rests on an intergovernmental agreement shows an enormous degree of arrogance and hubris from a government which has only run 11 months of its course. What we are saying is that the ACTU should have greater representation on this body. What is your objection to that, Minister? What is your objection to maintaining the same representation for the ACTU as was already there on the Australian Safety and Compensation Council when you came to government? These amendments are about improving the structure. There is a role here for the parliament. The parliament is not a silent partner. We are not a rubber stamp to this minister or this government. The parliament has a role. Workers should have greater representation on Safe Work Australia and so should employers. You need to address why you object to having a greater representation from the ACTU on Safe Work Australia and why, when you came to government, you cut the representation from what existed for the preceding body. (Time expired)

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