Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We oppose the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 because it is a vicious attack on workers' safety and on their protection at work. It is a throwback to the Howard years, to those years of Work Choices and attacks on workers. It disregards workers' interests and their safety at work.

I would observe that this bill is completely inconsistent with the Abbott government's supposed attitude to federation. What this bill represents is a centralisation of workers compensation by stealth, by loophole, by the back door, by raiding other governments' responsibilities—in this case, raiding the state government responsibilities on workers compensation and workers' safety. There have been no discussions, no conversation with interested parties, no dialogue and no warning that the government will take this approach. There is nothing about it in Real Solutions, that infamous document. This is simply reaching back into the old jumbled toolbox of the Howard years to come up with a bill that viciously disregards people's safety at work. It is completely intellectually inconsistent with every other piece of legislation and act of direction that they might be putting forward.

We have had the Commission of Audit, which the government has relied upon to justify their very unfair budget—$80 billion worth of cuts to health and education and a GP tax on everybody who walks through a waiting room, everybody who gets a blood test or a scan. Yet recommendation No. 7 of the Commission of Audit, 'Reforming the Federation—clarifying roles and responsibilities', talks about the roles of Commonwealth and state governments and then being informed by:

(a) the principle of 'subsidiarity' so that policy and service delivery is as far as is practicable delivered by the level of government closest to the people receiving those services;

(b) ensuring that each level of government is sovereign in its own sphere; and

(c) ensuring minimal duplication between the Commonwealth and the States and, where overlap cannot be avoided, ensuring appropriate cooperation occurs at all times.

That is what the government's Commission of Audit said. What do we find in this bill? We find a completely incoherent raiding of state government responsibilities. Is it supported by state governments? Has there been a dialogue with state governments? No. The shadow minister, the member for O'Connor, pointed out that this is opposed by the Queensland government, opposed by the Territory government—and for very good reasons: this bill has not been thought out, it undermines workers safety and it runs completely against good order between state and Commonwealth governments.

We have been very impressed by some of the speeches and contributions of those opposite. People have been talking about hang-gliding—maybe we should call it the 'hang-gliding bill'; I do not know. There is that sort of fanciful disregard for workers. As if anybody is going hang-gliding on their rest break. It is just a bizarre assertion. I took note of the speech by the member for Lyons yesterday. He was complaining that roofers, people in the building industry, had to wear steel-capped boots. Where is this guy? He is back in the pre-1930s; he is back in the 1890s. It is bizarre. In talking about health and safety, he states in Hansard:

It is, quite frankly, insidious.

That is the word he used in relation to safety at work—'insidious'. The Collins English Dictionary, which has been going since 1819, describes 'insidious' as 'stealthy, subtle, cunning, or treacherous' and 'working in a subtle or apparently innocuous way, but nevertheless deadly'. I would submit that he should not be saying that about health and safety in this country, about people having to wear safety boots—steel-capped boots. He should be saying that about this bill and about the government's approach, because it is insidious. It is insidious and it is treacherous, for all the reasons I said before.

The details of this bill—and we saw this during the Howard years—basically act to undermine state government workers compensation schemes, because it plucks very large employers, national employers, out of the state-based schemes and puts them in a scheme that was basically designed for Commonwealth public servants. So it does not matter whether you are a retail worker in South Australia, or you drive trucks, or you work in warehouses, or you are an electrician. Suddenly, you are plucked out of a system that you might have been employed under for years—and not just a compensation system, but also the regulation of your workplace in relation to health and safety. Suddenly, you are plucked out of the system that you know well, that your employer knows well, that your union might know well or your representative might know well. You are plucked out of that system and placed in a system that is designed for Commonwealth public servants, and nobody else. I have seen cases of workers who have been in that situation—Australia Post is a pretty clear example of where this has happened—and if those workers had a choice of which system they were given, or which system they were to be employed under, they would choose the state-based schemes every single time. And they would be wise to do so, because there is a lot of red tape in the system. It might not be red tape for employers, but it is red tape for workers. They have to jump through many, many hoops as compared to the state-based compensation systems.

We know that there are just 44 inspectors. I think we have about 70 in South Australia, from memory. That might be a bit old now, but it would be at least a third higher than the current Commonwealth number is for the entire country. Yet we expect these 44 people not only to inspect the workplaces of Commonwealth public servants but also to now get on planes to go and inspect workplaces in Adelaide or Port Hedland—

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