Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, and I apologise to the House for that. The reality is, of course, that the Liberal Party have no concern for workers in the workplace. The Labor Party do. We have a very proud history of putting in place legislative protection for workers in the workplace to ensure that those workers can earn an income and go home from work free from injury—whether it be injuries such as back injuries, injuries that come from dealing with complicated and dangerous machinery or indeed stress related injuries from things such as excessive workloads or workplace bullying.

The Labor Party continue to deliver on this very proud tradition of putting in place occupational health and safety laws throughout this nation to protect the interests of working families. If the Liberal Party can bring themselves to actually support some legislation that supports workers for once, I look forward to this legislation passing this place and hopefully the Senate. Indeed, I look forward to the states and territories undertaking the necessary legislative reform in their jurisdictions to ensure that harmonisation does truly take place.

As I indicated earlier, Access Economics has indicated that there will be a very substantial saving to the nation in terms of productivity, a very substantial saving to the nation in terms of occupational health and safety costs and, I believe, a very substantial saving to the nation in terms of the costs of dealing with and treating injuries in the workplace. This is good reform. It is reform that is necessary to recognise the complexity of business and the complexity of some 40,000 enterprises now undertaking work in multiple jurisdictions across the Commonwealth.

As I said earlier, the Labor Party have a proud history of putting in place protections for workers and we do treat people like Bernie Banton with the respect that they deserve and ensure that they do have the opportunity to seek compensation, unlike the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, who treated them appallingly.

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