Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I thank all members for their contributions to the debate on the Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2022. I particularly thank the member for Higgins for her comments that go to silicosis. I want to assure the member and assure the House that there are various actions that will be taken by the government this year with respect to making sure that we provide protections that should have been provided some time ago. I've called a meeting of my state counterparts to start planning the various actions that we'll take this year.

The bill in front of us implements some important recommendations from the review of the model work health and safety laws conducted by Marie Boland in 2018. I welcome the opposition's support for this bill. When the shadow minister spoke, he made reference to this all being the coalition's idea and the work started under them. It is true that in 2018 they made sure that the Boland review took place. The recommendations then sat there. I'm pleased that they want to take credit for the idea—that's fine. We'll all take credit for finally acting on it because we are some years later than we needed to be on implementing the Boland review. Safe Work Australia undertook extensive consultation seeking feedback on implementing key recommendations of the Boland review. In June 2022 the model work health and safety law was revised in line with this process.

This bill will bring the Commonwealth Work Health and Safety Act 2011 into line with those updates. There are two changes in particular I draw the chamber's attention to. The first area is the bill amends the fault element for the most serious work health and safety offences to include gross negligence, or negligence to the criminal standard, in addition to recklessness. The Boland review found there had been very few successful prosecutions, in part due to the difficulties associated with proving recklessness. The government is acting on genuine community concerns that employers who put their workers at risk of danger through grossly negligent conduct can escape punishment because the bar for conviction is set too high. Now, both recklessness and grossly negligent employers who expose workers to serious risk can face the most serious consequences and penalties.

The second area I would highlight is prohibiting insurance for work health and safety penalties. The bill prohibits a person from taking insurance to cover repayments made on penalties imposed under work health and safety laws. Having insurance means that you effectively end up with a situation where the penalty is no longer necessarily a disincentive for the employer. The penalty is removed because it's something that's been insured against anyway. We need to make sure that the penalties that are there have an impact on behaviour. Work health and safety offences must remain serious deterrents and can't become the cost of doing business. Those who owe a work health and safety duty should not be able to insulate themselves from the consequences of breaching their duty by putting the safety of their workers and the public at risk.

The government's committed to working closely with the states and territories to deliver safe workplaces for all Australians. This starts with implementing the recommendations in the Boland report. The bill takes the first step towards achieving safer and healthier workplaces in the Commonwealth jurisdiction. There's still a lot left to do. Australian workers deserve to be able to go to work and come home safely to their loved ones, and I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.

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