Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 [No. 2] is important legislation. In the Australian workplace today the harmonisation of the rules under which it operates are always to be commended. The problem is that so often, to achieve that, central government is forced to accept what one might term the lowest common denominator, and in the case of occupational health and safety we are talking about the most draconian type of proposal. I am encouraged by the advice I have received from our shadow minister that in this case the disastrous legislation that exists in New South Wales will not be the format considered by Safe Work Australia. Safe Work Australia will not be the administrator. Safe Work Australia will just be the oversighting agency, obviously with an expectation that there will be cooperation between the state agencies in the harmonisation process.

New South Wales is, of course, the economic basket case of Australia. It enjoys the largest population and some of the largest agricultural areas and has many other attributes, including considerable mineral reserves in the case of coal, and yet it is broke. The case arose of a New Zealand based company being charged with a crime and found guilty because they had to prove their own innocence. A board of directors sitting in New Zealand I presume was no longer able to visit Australia for fear of arrest because one of their employees in Australia had been injured at work. That must be identified as the highest degree of farce, but it is a very clear message: if you want to start a business, do not start it in New South Wales because you might go to jail for something of which you did not even have any knowledge. Quite clearly in the decentralised and national type businesses of today the thought that a director or a managing director who might occupy an office in one state could be found to be criminally negligent in another state, without the opportunity of defence, is ridiculous. It just goes too far, and one can only anticipate that those appointed to this board will take the view that the Australian legal principle of innocent until proved guilty must be a substantial component of any such legislation.

It will also be a challenge for this new body to ensure that occupational health and safety is policed by officers of the Crown and not by trade unions. Again in New South Wales it was virtually a sport: if you could get somebody convicted you got half the fine. There was a profit in occupational health and safety and the protection of workers. The major profit for the trade union movement around Australia has been canvassing for members. I have no belief whatsoever in the likes of Joe McDonald of the CFMEU in Western Australia, who wants to walk onto worksites and abuse people and threaten them with physical violence and all sorts of other things because he is there for their personal safety. I guess if you get a bunch of fives in the mouth from McDonald or one of the heavies who follow him around that is an occupational health and safety issue you are supposed to cop. But the reality is that trade unions are there primarily to look after the wages and conditions of workers, and if government is to legislate for the occupational health and safety of people as it should, it must provide the inspectorate services and they must be exclusive. A union, of course, as with any individual, has the responsibility, as they have with other events where there is a breach of the law, to report that to the appropriate authority. But it will be a very sad day if this legislation is used for the purpose of giving trade unionists access for the purpose of canvassing membership on the device that they are of the view that there is some form of breach of safety standards. That is why these matters have got to be put on the record.

The member for Corangamite, who has gone, listed in the area of work related injury the forestry industry—or what is left of it, as it has been demolished by green activists. Funnily enough, an issue of considerable improved safety for workers, be it in a plantation or in a native forest, is the process of clear-felling. Clear-felling leaves the worker on clear ground. Historically, when one had selective felling, you went through and you put a ribbon of some nature on tree X and then walked through the scrub to another tree and put another thing on that. Workers then went in there on foot, surrounded by scrub, and had to use a chainsaw to cut down a single tree. The fact of life was that it was extremely dangerous. When, as I said, they work from clear ground it is not nearly as dangerous. It was one of the most basic reasons for the clear-felling so criticised by green activists. In fact, there are excellent reasons to do so from an environmental perspective because when you clear-fell an area the regrowth is representative of the entire forestry infrastructure as compared to going through and cutting down the best trees and letting lesser quality material take over because it is left standing. I thought it was worth making that point.

The reality is that some quite sensible amendments to this legislation were proposed previously by the coalition. They were rejected notwithstanding the fact that most other senators also saw their merit, as I understand did the trade union movement and the employer organisations. They have been rejected, and in the interest of achieving the fundamental outcome, which is the harmonisation of an occupational health and safety standard around Australia, the coalition is not this time making such amendments. We will concede that the bill is going to be necessary. It appears that the only people to lose from the failure of these amendments are the very people that matter most, the people that will be controlled by this matter, and that is workers as employees. But that will be dealt with presumably over time.

There is not much else to say about this legislation other than that I hope that putting together the policies of the future Safe Work Australia will create a circumstance where the responsibility to protect yourself resides as much with you as it does with your employer. I was an employer for many years and as such was astounded on occasions at how little respect the average worker had for their own safety. It is now the case that if an injury occurs on a worksite the employer somehow or other is always considered responsible. These are issues that I hope will be taken into account when this body has formed.

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