Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014, if enacted, will directly and indirectly risk the workplace health and safety of Australian workers. Some of the speakers on this bill have highlighted why this bill is so important. I want to draw out one of the comments made by the previous speaker, the member for Hinkler, to show just how out of touch some members of this parliament are. I seriously doubt the majority of workers in Australia go hang gliding in their lunchbreak. I am yet to meet a worker who in their 40- or 50-minute lunchbreak can go hang gliding and that is the reason they should not qualify for workers compensation if an injury occurs. That simply does not happen in Australian workplaces. I have never met a cleaner, I have never met a child-care worker and I have never met a nurse or an ambo who, in their lunchbreak, rather than eating their lunch, rather than doing whatever personal jobs they may have, like going to the bank or paying their bills or sitting down and just resting, has gone hang gliding. That is the quality of the contributions from, and the understanding of, some of the members of the government. It is simply outrageous to attack workers in that way.

This bill seeks to do one thing. This bill seeks to weaken the protection and support for workers who have been injured in their workplace—but we should not be surprised by that, coming from this government, because attacking workers seems to be the No. 1 job of this government. They will tell you that this bill is about reducing red tape and about reducing the cost and the impost on business. That is just simply not true. This bill is about removing the rights of Australian workers to fair and reasonable cover when they suffer the misfortune of a workplace related injury.

The coalition government, in drafting this bill, did not consult or flag these changes prior to the election, prior to their gaining government. So this is another example of where they have not been honest with Australian workers and the Australian people about what they intended to do in government. We on this side of the House are concerned—I am concerned—that the proposed changes will create huge costs in the future by effectively creating high-risk gaps in the health and safety monitoring within this country. What we are saying is that, if people move into a system that does not have the correct care, if workers rights are put at risk, if their safety is put at risk, the long-term costs could be enormous, not just for workplaces, not just for premiums and not just for what businesses will pay but also for our health system. The government must immediately guarantee that no worker will be worse off under this system. That is something they have not done. The government have not come in here and guaranteed that no worker will be worse off—but I am sure they did prior to the election! They seem to be doing that a lot at the moment: there is what they said before the election and what they say after the election.

This government is again attacking the fair wages and conditions and the workplace health and safety of thousands and thousands, if not millions, of workers in this country. An example of the way in which the government is attacking workplace health and safety is through this bill. The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 proposes seriously negative changes to the Comcare scheme. This bill will directly and indirectly risk the workplace health and safety of Australian workers. As I said, the government must stop this from happening. They must fix the problems in this bill before they put workers at risk.

It is clear that the government has little understanding of this issue; they have failed to meet injured workers. Not every professional job is a desk job. Not in every professional job do people have the luxury that we have of donning a suit and being able to walk around. The majority of low-paid workers jobs—whether they be in construction, cleaning, nursing or age care—are manual jobs, they are physical jobs and injuries do occur

In the cleaning industry repetitive work—the lifting, the cleaning and all the rest of the manual work—quite commonly leads to long-term injuries to the back and shoulders. People have to retire early because of serious injury and then are not able to work. To offer those workers decent schemes for occupational health and safety and compensation is not red tape. It is not red tape to ensure that those workers get the support that they need. A survey by United Voice of Spotless Cleaning members found that they do not have enough time to do the job properly and that increases the risk of injury. In fact, almost 60 per cent of Spotless cleaners said that they suffered from stress as a result of unreasonable workloads, and we are not just talking about the emotional stress; we are talking about the physical stress on the body. Stress takes its toll on cleaners, with many reporting physical injuries, personal breakdowns and even sometimes pressure at home because they are simply crippled by their workloads. If these cleaners do sustain an injury, it means that they can no longer work, but what is this government's solution? It is not to support them, but to move to a scheme with weaker support for them.

In construction, forestry and mining industries a worker is seriously injured or dies every six minutes. These are high-risk physical jobs, and rather than offering those who are seriously injured a decent insurance system and the best support, this government, in this legislation, is weakening their rights and their access to decent support. Construction workers frequently rank safety as the No. 1 priority. To give you one example of CFMEU member: Kym was only 17 at the time and he said it was a scary day down there at the Barcoo Outlet. He said:

One of our fellow workers did not come home from work that day. He got pinned up against a panel and got squashed. It was very scary. He was only 24.

Kym's experience unfortunately is not unique in the Australian construction industry. Too many people have attended funerals of friends and family who have died from workplace related injuries; too many have had serious injuries that prevent them from working for the rest of their lives.

Just look at the statistics: the agricultural, forestry, fishing, manufacturing, transport and storage industries have had the highest incident rates of serious injuries for many years. In fact, in 2011-12 the rates were up 80 per cent on other industries. Given these results, there is more need than ever for stronger support for workers compensation—not weaker, but stronger support. Labourers and those in similar occupations—production workers, transport workers, tradespersons—have the highest incident rates of serious injury. The physical and manual jobs have the highest rate of serious injury, and we need to ensure that they get the best support. Yet, as many speakers from this side of the House have noted, this bill seeks to weaken that support. These occupations have consistently had double the rate of injuries of all other occupations. Within the current make-up of the workforce there are some jobs that are incredibly physical and they do take a toll on the body. We need to make sure that there is a workers compensation scheme that can support them to the rest of their lives.

I will never forget the day that the county court in Victoria handed down a record fine resulting from the death of a worker at the Fosters Abbotsford Brewery. The Fosters Group was fined more than $1.25 million after pleading guilty to two workplace safety charges. Following the upgrade of the Victorian Occupational Health & Safety Act, the fine was the highest ever imposed for an individual. I will never forget the sadness of the workplace delegates on that day. The death of their co-worker could have been avoided, had the company worked with their OH&S committee and complied with various directives and key notices from Worksafe. Worse still, a worker had been seriously injured in a similar accident only 12 months earlier. To this day that worker is still not able to work and requires support.

Finally I will tell the story of Rosa, who was a Crown Casino shop delegate and who worked as a security officer. She turned up to work one day and out of nowhere was king hit. It was an awful incident. As a result of that king hit, Rosa suffered a brain injury, has terrible short-term memory loss and can never work again. Where is the support for Rosa? It is up to us and to states and the Commonwealth to ensure that she gets the best possible compensation and support. But this bill weakens her position and makes it harder for Rosa and people like her to receive the support that they need and deserve.

The government in this bill seeks to weaken the support for any worker and their family who find themselves in tragic situations like Rosa's. Let us put to one side that these workplace injuries could have been avoided with stronger occupational health and safety practices. I am sure it is another area of red tape that this government would like to dismantle. This bill seeks to weaken the support for workers who have been injured. To make a small saving for businesses, injured workers and their families will have to bear the financial and emotional hardship of being excluded from certain aspects of workers compensation. This bill proposes the reintroduction of the exclusion from eligibility for workers compensation during recess breaks. The government's justification for this is that, on their recess breaks, they are not having lunch in the tearoom, but are out there hang-gliding. That is why they have put forward this legislation—because they believe that people are not sitting in the tearoom; what they are doing is hang-gliding or playing rugby. Who on earth does that on their lunch break?

The current act provides for an employee to be covered for temporary absences from work during ordinary recesses. That provision should stay. This bill also seeks to weaken common-law damages claims and common-law rights that should exist. The bill is a series of exclusions from compensation that will make Comcare an outlier for Australia for the harsh and unjust way it would treat injured or deceased workers.

Further issues include that Comcare is not equipped or designed to cope with this level of expansion. Only 44 health and safety inspectors currently work for Comcare. If the government are serious about this bill, are they going to increase the number of inspectors employed by Comcare? Are they going to start talking about a new employment plan? It is really important. If there are currently 44, one of those 44 will probably never make their way to Bendigo for an inspection to look at what possible breaches there could be. So is the government planning to increase the number of inspectors that we have? In my state of Victoria we have already seen a weakening and a reduction in the number of safety inspectors, which is already down to 212. This is why some unions in our state have increased the number of health and safety representatives—because they know that they are not getting the support from their governments that they need.

As I have said, this bill is a bad bill. It will create confusion, anomalies and unfairness. It is sadly true of the government's entire approach to working people. They seek to demonise workers, not support them. They seek to say that laws and acts that exist to ensure that workers get the best possible support in a moment of tragedy, when they incur a workplace injury, are red tape. This bill is a bad bill and it should be opposed.

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