Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is also to the Prime Minister and it follows on from his answer to the Leader of the Opposition in which he said that mine safety training should be allowable as a matter of course. I refer the Prime Minister to a statement by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations on 20 March this year:

Matters that do not pertain to the employment relationship should not be part of agreements ...

And:

[Training] is something which people are entitled to do in their own time. It is not part of the job they are doing.

Given that, post Beaconsfield, the Prime Minister now disagrees with his minister, will the Prime Minister change the government’s extreme industrial relations legislation to allow leave for trade union occupational health and safety training to be part of workplace agreements?

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In answer to the question from the member for Perth, it is quite clear in the Work Choices legislation. If he would like to go to section 16(3) of the Work Choices legislation, he will find out—if he has not already looked—that that quite clearly and explicitly preserves state and territory occupational health and safety laws and, as part of that, it quite explicitly preserves the right of union officials to have entry for occupational health and safety reasons.

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My Speaker, on a point of order: the question was explicitly about leave for training under a trade union base training arrangement.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister is answering that question.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In addition to that, as the Prime Minister indicated in his answer to an earlier question, there have been agreements lodged with the Office of the Employment Advocate over the last seven or eight weeks since the introduction of Work Choices on 27 March which contain provisions relating to training for occupational health and safety. If you take the Tasmanian situation, nothing has changed in relation to the provision of occupational health and safety. Under the Tasmanian legislation, which provides obligations on the part of mine owners and others in Tasmania to provide training and instruction in health and safety, one of the authorised trainers is Unions Tasmania, and there are therefore provisions whereby workers in Tasmania can continue to receive that training.

It is not as if the opposition does not know this because, in the email from a constituent of the member for Lilley, which had been previously referred to for advice from their workplace relations spokesman, Mr Smith, this was said: ‘An employer can send employees to union training. Yes, that is correct.’ This was in writing from the member for Lilley, having obtained advice from the member for Perth.