Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

With the bill that's before the House right now, the Work Health and Safety Amendment (Norfolk Island) Bill 2021, there are three different words that come to mind—'important', 'mundane' and 'hopeless': 'important', because the changes that need to be made are important; 'mundane', because the changes that needed to be made are so simple; and 'hopeless', because this has taken six years!

Let me explain first why it's important. When self-government was taken from Norfolk Island, we had to make sure that, with the Commonwealth now delivering the services, the workers there were covered by workplace health and safety laws. Workplace health and safety in any location is significant, and when you're on an island without some of the services that are available in other parts of Australia workplace health and safety is particularly significant. To make this change—that is, to guarantee that when the Commonwealth is delivering those services on Norfolk Island the workers are covered by a workplace health and safety regime—was a really important thing to do.

The bit that was mundane? To do it, they had to delete the words 'Norfolk Island' in four different places and move the word 'or' from after 'Northern Territory' to before 'Northern Territory'. When you look at the bill, the bill is three pages, but even that's being generous. The first page just tells you what it's called; the second page gives you the table of contents; and the third page, the schedule, gives you the four amendments, all of which are identical: delete 'Norfolk Island'; move the word 'or'. That's all that had to be done. And yet it has taken since 2015 to find those four places where 'Norfolk Island' needs to be deleted and to find those four places where you need to move the word 'or'. It has taken since 2015 for this to occur. If it was one of those things like the old bills that the now Treasurer used to bring in when he was a parliamentary secretary—they were brought in as though they were getting rid of red tape, but it was actually removing commas; it was a war on punctuation, and ultimately it didn't change anything. This legislation does change something. It does determine whether or not workers are protected. And it was not complex legislation to be drafted. We've waited six years. I'm not going to delay this a moment longer. It's a terrible reflection on the government—both for their lack of respect for the people of Norfolk Island and for the lack of respect for any worker who had to go there—that they've been willing to neglect this for so long.

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