Jodie Campbell (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this most important legislation, the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 and Safe Work Australia (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2008, and add my voice to those in support of safe workplaces for all Australians. Is it not one of the most basic of rights to assume that when hardworking Australians go to work they will return safely to their families at the end of their shift? Is that not the absolute minimum that as a government and a community we should be demanding?

Over the last 10 years, 110 Tasmanian workers have not been returned to their families. Last year, nine workers in my home state lost their lives in traumatic workplace incidents. Just this week, WorkCover Tasmania released alarming figures which showed that each day 27 Tasmanians are injured at work. In 2007, that equated to 9,873. That is an increase of one per cent on the previous year. The majority of those injuries were soft tissue injuries due to trauma. More than 2,300 were caused by wounds, lacerations, amputations and internal organ damage. Other injuries were from falls, trips, slips and being hit by moving objects.

I understand, as do those on this side of the House, that workplace health and safety is currently a complex matter, with overlapping and unnecessary duplications and differences from state to state. As part of our commitment to a seamless national economy, this bill begins the process of reform to this overly complex system. As the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations informed the House, each year there are more than 300 Australians killed at work, and over 140,000 are seriously injured. Those are deeply distressing figures, but, more than that, they are people—hardworking men and women whose death or injury has a profound effect on their families, their friends, their colleagues and their workplaces. There is a financial cost also: some $34 billion a year. This is a cost borne by the entire community, not least the tens of thousands of businesses which operate across the country.

Since the 1970s, there has been a growing emphasis placed on health and safety in our workplaces—as well there should have been. At the same time, however, the nature of the labour market has changed and evolved, and I believe it is fair to say that the OH&S structures across states and territories have failed to keep up. Moreover, they have evolved independently of each other—for example, how the courts recognise and deal with workers other than employees may differ vastly depending on the jurisdiction. I would argue that a person’s right to safety in the workplace should not be determined by where that workplace is. And it is workers who bear the brunt of failures in this area. That is why, with the election of the Rudd government, an extraordinary opportunity was afforded us to change for the better many aspects of work life in Australia. Our agenda extends beyond the abolition of the abhorrence that was Work Choices.

Safe Work Australia replaces the Howard government’s Australian Safety and Compensation Council, which was largely an advisory council whose functions were limited. In contrast, the Rudd government’s Safe Work Australia will lead to a far more comprehensive and coherent approach to health and safety in the workplace. It will enable the development of a national policy relating to OH&S and workers compensation. It will prepare, monitor and revise OH&S legislation as well as develop a compliance and enforcement policy to ensure nationally consistent regulatory approaches across all jurisdictions. At the same time, Safe Work Australia will see developed a compliance and enforcement policy to ensure a nationally consistent approach to these two critical areas. Proposals relating to the harmonisation of workers compensation arrangements across all jurisdictions and proposals for national workers compensation arrangements for employers with workers in more than one jurisdiction will be developed also. The legislation will build expertise across OH&S laws and workers compensation schemes that will be readily accessible across jurisdictions and industries and will reduce the complexity and costs for businesses, including businesses that operate across state boundaries.

In my home state of Tasmania, there are many potentially dangerous industries, as there are right across the country, from forestry, mining and construction to the health sector, where every day nurses face injury through lifting. It is not just death and serious injury we are addressing here today but what one might consider to be comparatively ‘minor’ injuries, which still have a profound and often debilitating effect on those individuals and businesses involved.

I have discussed Safe Work Australia at some length with a range of stakeholders across my electorate, and I can inform the House that the reactions are very positive. Even those organisations with reservations are positive about the prospect of a uniform approach to workplace health and safety and workers compensation.

Unions Tasmania describes Safe Work Australia as a welcome move which it believes will restore an independent body for the centralised research and development of workplace health and safety policy. Unions Tasmania believes, and indeed I also believe, that this body will play an important role in the ongoing improvement of safety at work and will support the work of state bodies by removing the duplication of effort and harmonising safety law. Among the concerns expressed by Unions Tasmania and also, I am aware, by the ACTU, is that the traditional tripartism has not been established—that the number of government officials will outweigh the number of employee and employer representatives, when perhaps these should be equal.

I am hopeful that this legislation, that Safe Work Australia, will enable the development of a national framework for OH&S which recognises basic minimum standards. By that I mean one which includes the highest health and safety standards to protect working Australians from death, injury and illness—one which places the burden of proof on employers when they breach the law. I want to see the highest standards of rights, powers and protections for health and safety representatives.

I am firmly of the view, and I know it is very much the view of Unions Tasmania, that workers have the right to be represented by their union regarding health and safety. It is impossible to overstate the importance of the role of authorised representatives in occupational health and safety. The effectiveness of the legislation in eliminating and mitigating risks depends critically on authorised representatives who operate independently and at arm’s length from the regulator. I am aware that, in New South Wales, unions have the ability to prosecute an employer for breaches of the act. I believe that this is worth considering in a national model. Most of all, vital to the success of any rule of law are meaningful penalties for those employers who are found to have breached the law. I would urge, and I will be advocating for, the lifting of standards across the board. We have a unique opportunity to look closely at laws across all states and territories and, rather than set up for a race to the bottom, we have an opportunity to strive to learn from their successes and failures and to establish strong, coherent and effective legislation which ensures, as much as legislation can, safe workplaces.

I would like, if I may, to highlight a particularly tragic case where a young man’s life was lost in the most avoidable of circumstances. In July 2004, a 16-year-old was doing something he should never have been allowed to do, at a workplace where he was deemed not to be employed, under the lax supervision of a self-employed boilermaker, who had been retained as an independent contractor. It was, as I am sure you can tell, Madam Deputy Speaker Bird, a recipe for disaster—and that is exactly what transpired. This young man did not have a forklift licence. For that matter he did not even have a drivers licence, and yet he was operating a forklift—which, in the end, rolled, and crushed him.

To read the coroner’s report into this tragic occurrence—I will not say ‘accident’ because that implies it was unavoidable, and it most certainly was not—is to understand a little of what it is like to walk in the shoes of an employee at an unsafe workplace. The coroner observed the condition of the forklift which killed this young man. His report states that, while the condition of the machine did not impact directly on the teenager’s death, it is nonetheless worth noting. An inspection found that there was no tread evident on the left hand steer tyre and that the right hand tyre was worn. The steering link pins were worn; so too the mast pivot bushes. The handbrake was not holding properly; the cable appeared to be seized. Neither the flashing light nor tail brake lights were working. The left hand lift and both tilt cylinders were leaking oil—and I will go on, Madam Deputy Speaker: there was no tine stop bolt, the left hand tine tip was bent, the seat base was torn and there was no seat belt. The recommended tyre pressure for each of the forklift’s tyres is 100 psi; at the time of the accident all tyres were underinflated, ranging from as low as 50 psi to 64 psi. The coroner heard expert evidence that the forklift simply was not safe at the time this young man was left to drive it whilst unlicensed and unsupervised.

What this tragedy highlights, if nothing else, is the need for rigorous and enforceable workplace health and safety standards. Had this young man—ruled to have been onsite completing work experience—not lost his life, had there not been an accident of which to speak, how long would that forklift have continued to have been used in such a deplorable condition? Instead, a young man had his life cut short and a family had its life forever changed.

By way of background, the company involved in this death was the Australian Food Group—a company involved in Tasmania’s longest-running industrial dispute; a company which refused unions entry for the 18 months preceding the death and which, in the aftermath, attempted to wash its hands of any accountability, claiming that this young man was simply not their responsibility. It should also be pointed out that the family of this young man is still waiting for his funeral to be paid for, given that he was not classified as an employee.

I would argue that any legislation, be it workplace safety or industrial relations, is only as strong as the resources and competency of the inspectorate which supports and enforces it. I commend this bill to the House, confident that it paves the way for safer workplaces and hopeful that it will be employed to achieve the highest standards for workers, businesses and the wider community.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am extremely pleased to rise to support the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008. This bill creates Safe Work Australia, an independent Commonwealth statutory body designed to improve occupational health and safety outcomes for Australian workers. The bill also seeks to improve workers compensation arrangements.

Occupational health and safety is an extremely important issue that cannot be ignored. Essentially, health and safety is ensuring that when a person goes to work they come home healthy and uninjured. Unlike road deaths, workplace deaths often do not get reported in the media and therefore the extent of deaths at work are not well recognised by the public. Perhaps the most tragic element of workplace deaths is that in most cases these deaths are preventable. In 2005-06, there were 230 compensated fatalities at work. The highest number of deaths occurred in the transport, construction, manufacturing and agricultural industries, but workplace deaths also occurred in many, varied industries, including the health services sector, property and business services sectors, retail trade and education.

Workplace deaths occur in a wide range of industries and therefore it is important that comprehensive occupational health and safety legislation is continually updated and protects the entire Australian workforce. However, occupational health and safety legislation is not just about preventing deaths in the workplace. It is also about preventing injury and disease caused by one’s workplace. In addition to fatalities there are many workers seriously injured at work. In 2005-06, 98,000 workers registered serious claims for a workplace injury and 41,000 registered a claim for a disease caused by the workplace, this causing serious distress and heartache not only to those injured but also to those families associated with it.

The cost to our economy of workplace injury and disease is enormous. It is estimated that $34 billion a year is spent directly on supporting injury and disease in our workplace. This figure is based on those workers that have made claims and this figure is likely to be much larger if the many workers who do not claim through workers compensation were included. Death, injury and disease caused by workplaces have a significant impact on our economy. We must have robust laws designed to prevent these incidents happening in the workplace. There is a myth often propagated by some employers that it is only a careless worker who gets injured at work. However, this ignores the many extraneous variables that can lead to human error such as time pressures, lack of equipment or fear of recrimination. It is therefore up to governments, employers, employees and unions to work together to ensure that Australian workers return home safely from work. The new Safe Work Australia will replace the Australian Safety and Compensation Council and will be an essential part of the government’s strategy to improve safety outcomes and workers compensation across Australia.

The Australian Safety and Compensation Council was set up only as an advisory body and was, essentially, a toothless tiger. The new safe work authority will be funded by the Commonwealth and the states and will play a central role in reforming health and safety and workers compensation legislation around the country. The key reform which Safe Work Australia will be in charge of is harmonisation of health and safety legislation nationally. This is something that the opposition talked a lot about but failed to do when they were in government. This will require cooperation between the Commonwealth and the states to develop a national policy relating to occupational health and safety to prepare, monitor and review model occupational health and safety legislation as well as develop compliance and enforcement policy to ensure nationally consistent regulatory approaches across all jurisdictions and also to develop proposals relating to the harmonisation of workers compensation.

As I have gone around speaking with both employers and employees in my electorate, they have told me they feel it is very logical that occupational health and safety is harmonised around the country. More and more of the workforce is becoming mobile and working across state borders, and many companies have interests in a number of states. It is particularly difficult for a national business that has one set of occupational health and safety policies but must comply with seven different sets of health and safety legislation. Safe Work Australia will work to enable employers and employees in Australia to be clear about what their rights and obligations about safety at work are. By harmonising health and safety and workers compensation legislation, it will eliminate unnecessary state duplication overlaps and difference. This is another example of this federal government working with the states to achieve real reform in Australia.

The process of harmonisation of occupational health and safety legislation across the nation also provides us with an opportunity to recognise and address less visible injuries that are sustained at work. One of these areas that need careful consideration is bullying in the workplace. Bullying in the workplace is a serious issue in many of our workplaces around Australia. Working as a psychologist, I saw the debilitating mental health issues that arise when a worker is bullied at work, with effects such as depression, anxiety and lower self-esteem all leading to a reduction in that worker’s productivity and a significant loss to their quality of life. A modern occupational health and safety system must always be proactive about emerging health and safety issues and aim to prevent these injuries from occurring in the workplace in the first place. Safe Work Australia will be a new body that will do this. The new Safe Work Australia will drive a national communication strategy to raise awareness of health and safety at work. Increasing awareness about health and safety in our community is key to ensuring that the focus is on prevention. Prevention is incredibly essential and should be what occupational health and safety is all about.

One of the key groups that help promote health and safety in our workplace is health and safety reps. My time at the SDA enabled me to work with many great health and safety reps doing fabulous work in their workplace. I would like to take this opportunity to place on the public record my congratulations to all the health and safety reps out there in the workplace working with their employers and fellow employees to improve safety on the ground. Being a health and safety rep is often a thankless job. Health and safety is not always the priority of employees and employers alike at a workplace. However, it is the health and safety rep’s job and passion to put occupational health and safety front and centre at the workplace and they step up to this and do a great job. Assistance by the new Safe Work Australia will help health and safety reps raise and communicate health and safety messages in the workplaces, and this will be critical for them to do their job.

Commonwealth and state governments as well as employee and employer associations, including unions, will all contribute to Safe Work Australia. Unions, in conjunction with employers, have played an essential role in promoting health and safety in the workplace and have achieved a great many improvements in health and safety over many decades. I think a great example of that is bringing the issue of asbestos to front and centre of the debate on health and safety in this country. No-one wants to see anyone injured or hurt or a death at work; however, we must work harder to ensure that this is the reality. The establishment of Safe Work Australia will be critical to improving health and safety at work, and I commend this bill to the House.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to rise in support of the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008. The purpose of this bill is to establish an independent umpire to improve health and safety outcomes in workplaces. The body, Safe Work Australia, will also work to improve workers compensation arrangements across Australia. This bill is important for all working Australians and their families. Making sure a worker gets home safely at the end of the day is good for the worker and good for our productivity. More than 300 Australians are killed each year at work. Many more die as a result of work related disease. Each year, over 140,000 Australians are seriously injured at work. We all know there is a significant cost to business and the economy as a consequence of industrial accidents, but the greatest costs are the lives lost and the lives blighted through injury. This includes the grief and burden on families and loved ones.

Our health, safety and compensation systems are in an unacceptable state, unnecessarily complex and costly. Inconsistencies between jurisdictions mean that some workers are at risk of poorer safety standards than their counterparts in other states. At the same time, these inconsistencies increase the complexity, paperwork and costs for the 39,000 Australian businesses that operate across state boundaries. Australian workers are renowned for working hard and giving their all for their jobs. International studies consistently highlight the Australian work ethic as among the most committed in the world. It is these workers who need an independent body like Safe Work Australia which can work to ensure occupational health and safety issues are dealt with in an effective and reasonable manner.

I am well aware of the effects of workplace injury, illness and death. In my youth, I worked in various jobs, including for a boatshed operator, as a storeman and packer at the Pulpit Point oil refinery, as a labourer on the Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Board, as a trades assistant to a fitter and turner, as a night shift cleaner at a veterans Hospital, in the Schwarzkopf warehouses, as a labourer on a farm and for an electrician. My first job after receiving my university degree was with Turner Freeman Solicitors in Sydney, beginning in mid-1984. From the beginning, this involved working for the victims of industrial accidents and exposure to toxic substances. We worked on behalf of the members of the Waterside Workers Federation, the Australian Metal Workers Union and the Australian Nurses Federation, among others, wading through a complex matrix of state and Commonwealth occupational health and safety provisions, litigation and compensation. It was a privilege to work for these proud tradespeople and their families. This work taught me two important lessons: (1) the importance of ensuring the protection of working people by law and having robust independent safety bodies; and (2) the importance of the right of working people to organise, as these industrial victims would have had a hard time achieving justice without the support of their colleagues.

One of the great causes of that period of my life, and something that has shaped me as a person, was the fight to get justice for workers working with asbestos and the incidental victims of exposure to asbestos. The tale of this struggle was one of entirely avoidable tragedy. The hazards of asbestos had first been observed by the Romans 2,000 years ago. Pliny the Elder referred to it as ‘the disease of the slaves’. Its extensive use in modern times began during the industrial revolution of the 1800s, and it went into large-scale production during the early years of the last century. In the early 1900s, doctors in Europe knew that asbestos workers were dying from respiratory ailments. In about 1900, Dr Montague Murray reported on pulmonary fibrosis, or asbestosis, in workers employed in the asbestos industry. By 1918, insurance companies had already begun to refuse life insurance policies for workers occupationally exposed to asbestos, noting their unusually short life spans. By the 1930s, there was a substantial amount of scientific knowledge accumulated concerning asbestos related diseases. However, this did not deter industry from mining and manufacturing numerous products containing various types of asbestos for domestic and industrial uses. At first, the heavy levels of exposure in the miners and manufacturers of asbestos products would see them die of asbestosis. Effectively, the massive amount of fibre they inhaled scarred their lungs so badly they would suffocate to death. Later product users and those exposed incidentally, such as wives shaking out their husband’s clothes, contracted the longer developing lung cancers and, worst of all, mesothelioma.

Over the first seven decades of the 20th century, the major miners and manufacturers, such as Turner Brothers in England; Johns Manville, Raybestos and UNARCO in the US; and James Hardie and CSR in Australia, conspired in one of the most shameful corporate cover-ups since the industrial age. Lawyers and doctors who began to get near the truth were bought off, research was suborned and monopolised, and a public relations disinformation campaign sustained. The first attempt to storm this edifice was made by Nellie Kershaw in the UK in 1925. Eventually, the US companies could see that they would need help from Congress and the law to shield them from potential liability. They were successful at first by getting the laws changed to prevent litigation against employers, moving to a limited workers compensation scheme. Then, when people began attacking them through product liability, they filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. One benefit of this chapter 11 process was that, for the first time, the company files were obtained and the full horror of the callous ledger of death and profit they employed was revealed. One exchange sums up the mentality. At a meeting between UNARCO and Johns Manville executives, the infamous general counsel for Johns Manville, Vandiver Brown, stated, ‘UNARCO managers are fools for notifying employees who have asbestosis.’ An executive of UNARCO asked, ‘Mr Brown, do you mean to tell me that you would let them work until they dropped dead?’ Brown’s reply was, ‘We save a lot of money that way.’

I became aware of this material as a result of reports in the New Yorker magazine. This led my colleagues and I at Turner Freeman to start exploring avenues of inquiry that revealed an equally cavalier and despicable attitude in Australia. I travelled to the US and we built up a network of plaintiffs’ information and cooperation that was eventually to include Peter Gordon of the firm of Slater Gordon, with whom I was to visit the Wittenoom mine. This was also the former workplace of the Deputy Prime Minister and no doubt goes some way to explaining her total commitment to safer workplaces. The lies and collusion of the companies and their friends in workplace safety bodies staggered me, but I was also shocked by the litigation tactics by the companies that sought to draw out cases as long as possible in the hope of the death of the victims before settlement or judgement, as this substantially reduced the amount of potential damages in a case. These companies would flat-out lie about their knowledge and their corporate dealings, carefully working to cover their tracks behind corporate veils as their insurers started getting nervous. We spent endless hours in the Mitchell Library and the Stock Exchange, poring over discovered documents, finding and interviewing witnesses and climbing amongst ducting at Wittenoom to retrieve bagging as exhibits before the picture clarified.

My final case was for a former Royal Australian Navy veteran who had established a boutique winery in the Hunter Valley that was using asbestos filters. This was the second sources of asbestos exposure in his working life; large amounts of asbestos were used in the lagging of Navy vessels. In the course of this trial process, I acquired a devastating letter from the Commonwealth that conceded they had known all about the hazards of asbestos since 1943. Asbestos was still being used at the Garden Island Naval Dockyard in 1982.

It is sobering to note that the epidemic of asbestos diseases is yet to peak in Australia, as this is estimated to occur in around 2023. It is believed that as many as 45,000 persons may die in Australia over the next two decades if effective medical treatments are not found. About 2,500 persons are annually diagnosed with asbestos caused diseases, and the numbers are rising. In the US these figures are in the hundreds of thousands.

Great vigilance is required now as asbestos materials out there in the community begin to deteriorate more rapidly. As roofing and sheeting becomes more friable, fibres start to increase in the ambience. We need to ensure that removal and remediation is effective and that those tradesmen who could find themselves cutting and sawing in-place asbestos are properly aware of and can identify asbestos. It is a sobering fact that we have not been able to determine a safe level of exposure to asbestos. It may take only a single fibre to do fatal damage, although certainly the level of exposure is highly significant.

The human cost in numbers is one dimension of the tragedy, but the excruciating agony of an asbestos death is a more profoundly shocking thing altogether. Justice O’Meally, of the Dust Diseases Tribunal of New South Wales, has said:

I have seen many people present in court, at their homes, at hospitals and at hospices dying of mesothelioma. It is a dreadful and devastating disease, accompanied by pain which is uncontrollable. Those who suffer it reach a stage where it is necessary to fight for every breath, and with every breath accompanied by pain so dreadful that the only way to avoid it is not to breathe. The choice between breathing and not breathing is no choice at all. Constant and exquisite pain is all that one may expect in the struggle to exist.

Too many times I have been witness to this struggle and to the suffering of families who could do nothing but look on. The asbestos story is without question the greatest industrial disaster in the history of this country. I was proud to have served the brave victims and their families and to have played a part in establishing the liability of CSR and James Hardie before the world. As disturbed as I was by the behaviour of these companies, I became equally disillusioned by the laxity of the state organisations that were responsible for occupational health and safety issues. Clearly, it was not enough to say that the state would look after workers or that our compensation systems were providing efficient and timely outcomes. The bill before us today helps to ensure that all the key stakeholders will have a role to play in a safer regime. The federal, state and territory governments, the employers’ representatives and the workers’ representatives, operating together, will ensure there are no weak links in the system.

The asbestos experience also illustrates how important it is that information be shared not only nationally but internationally. Work Safe Australia will become a better mechanism for achieving this. It will establish liaison with other countries and international organisations on OH&S issues, ensuring we stay on top of best practice and get early warning of emerging risks and hazards. Through the promotion and publication of research, it will never again be possible for large companies to buy out and cover up medical and epidemiological data.

I want to pay particular tribute here to the tireless efforts of Bernie Banton, who passed away just after the federal election last year. We all know Bernie’s story. Bernie stood up against an employer that was trying to do everything it could to evade responsibility through various corporate manoeuvres over the years. We owe it to Bernie’s legacy to ensure that workplaces are safer across this country. I would like to remind the House of what Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said of Bernie on the night of 24 November last year when accepting victory at the federal election:

Mate, you are not going to be forgotten in this place ...

When so many were prepared to cast you to one side, Bernie Banton, you have been a beacon and clarion call for what is decent and necessary in life and I salute you.

Unions fought hard to get compensation for their members affected by asbestos exposure over many decades. If younger generations of workers question the relevance of unions, I would point to this battle. No-one worked harder at nailing down the deal with James Hardie than my colleague the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement, in his former guise at the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and it has been a special experience to have ended up working together with him on our national security challenges. The torch is still being carried out there, however, and I would also like to salute the continuing efforts of hardworking people like Sarah Schoonwater and Dean Hall, of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, who battle every day to make the highly hazardous construction industry a safer place. There are also a number of hazardous workplaces in my electorate of Eden-Monaro, where representatives of the CFMEU, the Australian Workers Union and the meatworkers union, among others, help to improve safety in our timber mills, forests and factories.

The National Timber Workers Memorial, in the beautiful town of Eden, in my electorate, is a constant reminder of the costs of not getting this right. I had the privilege of opening this memorial, at Wellings Park, on 7 June this year. It is dedicated to the more than 200 timber workers who have lost their lives in the industry. It also records the social history of the early pioneers of the timber industry, their communities and their relationship with Indigenous peoples and their environment. Families and friends of the victims came from far and wide that day, and it is a wonderful, reflective place of which Eden is justly proud. The memorial can be entered and exited through colonnades leading to a central statue, by sculptor Rix Wright, of an injured timber worker being assisted by his mate. The memorial statue, which depicts the mateship and compassion of timber workers for each other, is encircled by a memorial wall set with historical and remembrance plaques.

An innovative aspect of the project has been the development of a database containing an oral history of each plaque. The database can be accessed by phoning a common number advertised at the memorial and keying in the number of the plaque. The database was developed and will be maintained by the Eden Access Centre through a grant from the IMB Community fund. I thank all those who worked so hard to get this project off the ground, particularly those families who fought for a place to remember the loved ones they had lost at work. I am sure all members will be happy to hear that the federal government contributed nearly $50,000 to the establishment of this memorial. I was pleased to see that, in the design of the memorial, wood from my own family’s 19th-century sawmills may have been included in the arch leading into the colonnade, as beams from the old Tarraganda bridge over the Bega River were used. My father also worked as a timber cutter and I have memories of him returning home with many dings and bruises.

Additional funding for the project was contributed by the Eden Access Centre, South East Fibre Exports and Forests NSW. In addition, the Timber Workers Memorial Eden committee provided a significant cash contribution as a result of their sustained fundraising efforts. This memorial, however, would not have occurred without the hard work of the many volunteers who gave so generously of their time and expertise, and thanks go to each and every one of them. Throughout history, timber workers have contributed to the exploration, success and wellbeing of our country, and they deserve to be honoured with this special memorial. In reflecting on the meaning of this memorial it is important to note the progress we have made on occupational health and safety in the timber industry. This progress has come through the excellent collaboration of the CFMEU and AWU with management.

I was also recently out at the opening of the Mila gas compressor near Bombala in the southern high country of my electorate and I want to congratulate the Jemena company for the great work they have done to make that site safe for its workers and the area. Despite these good examples, the fact is that the previous government’s Work Choices laws were making Australian workplaces less safe. Work Choices allowed unscrupulous bosses to cut corners because they knew they could get away with more under the previous government’s ideological plans to destroy the right of workers to organise. However, as a downside that was completely contrary to their own longer term interests, they also undermined their own ability to achieve safety and productivity through collective bargaining.

I want to make clear that I know the majority of employers do the right thing, but there are those who cut corners when it comes to workplace safety and who continue to try to use Work Choices to strip workplace conditions and employees’ rights. At the same time, Australian workers must continue to move beyond the cultural bravado that has contributed to a number of accidents in the workplace. We also need to take special care to ensure that immigrant workers are equipped with sufficient English and awareness to observe safety signs, instructions and practices. A number of times during the election campaign last year I was approached by people involved with construction sites who were concerned by the exploitation of immigrant workers and a consequent decline in commitment to safety standards.

We know that those opposite have a burning desire to bring back Work Choices and continue their job of eroding workers’ living standards, safety and productivity. We need no more motivation than that to do all in our power to keep them where they are. Safe Work Australia will replace the Australian Safety and Compensation Council, established by the Howard government as an advisory council whose functions were confined to coordinating, monitoring and promoting national efforts on health and safety and workers compensation.

In contrast, Safe Work Australia will develop national policy relating to OHS and workers compensation; prepare, monitor and revise model occupational health and safety legislation and model codes of practice; develop a compliance and enforcement policy to ensure nationally consistent regulatory approaches across all jurisdictions; develop proposals relating to the harmonisation of workers compensation arrangements; collect, analyse and publish occupational health and safety and workers compensation data and undertake and publish research; drive national communications strategies to raise awareness of health and safety at work; further develop the National OHS Strategy 2002-2012; and advise WRMC on occupational health and safety and workers compensation matters.

Safe Work Australia will play a vital role in realising the government’s commitment and the commitment of all state and territory governments to working together to achieve harmonisation of OHS laws. It will have the important task of developing the model Occupational Health and Safety Act, model regulations and model codes of practice for approval by workplace relations ministers. This bill is another step in the efforts of the Rudd Labor government to rebuild fairness, equality, safety and productivity in Australia’s workplaces. The health and safety of our workers is important and needs to be taken seriously in all workplaces by management and workers alike.

I am proud that this government is again taking the lead in ensuring that workers in Australia are treated with respect. Let us here in this place rededicate ourselves, in memory of the victims of industrial accidents and their families, to ensuring future generations of our fellow Australians will never again, through callousness and negligence, face an avoidable industrial tragedy. I commend this bill to the House.

Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like for the previous speaker, my colleague Dr Kelly, the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support, occupational health and safety has also been a constant feature of my working life. I started in underground coalmining just west of Lithgow and learnt very quickly the importance of having a strong regulatory environment and effective workplace organisation, particularly in workplaces such as underground coalmines. I continued through my mining engineering work and ultimately ended up working for an organisation in the western suburbs of Sydney which was known as the Workers Health Centre and which did a lot of work on occupational health and safety on behalf of unions in New South Wales in many different industries and workplaces. It was there in the early 1980s that I first became involved with asbestos victims groups, the diagnosis and compensation challenges for people who had been exposed to asbestos and, of course, trying to prevent further exposure in many different industries such as the building industry.

That started a long association with people exposed to asbestos, working on their behalf, but I also worked as a national official with the Waterside Workers Federation of Australia, many of whose members had been exposed to asbestos, as well as many other toxic substances, over the years and where compensation was a constant and difficult issue to resolve. I became involved with the ACTU in more recent years in the effort to bring about justice for victims of the James Hardie company, which had exposed people to asbestos over many years. I also, as Dr Kelly indicated a moment ago, knew Bernie Banton very well and worked closely with him.

At a regulatory level, in the 1980s I did a lot of work lobbying the Hawke government concerning the establishment of the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission. In some respects, the subject of the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 and the Safe Work Australia (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2008 is a potential successor organisation to the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission. What followed then were Worksafe Australia and the Australian Safety and Compensation Council. This bill considers the establishment of Safe Work Australia.

Every year in this country over 140,000 Australians are seriously injured at work and at least four times as many suffer less-serious injuries. Tragically, each year more than 300 Australians are killed at work and many more die as a result of work related disease. This equates approximately to a fatality rate of 3.5 per 100,000 people. That is a tragic enough figure as it is, but it is also important to note that the figure is in fact higher, and getting worse, in some sectors. For example, 7.4 per cent of workers in the construction sector suffered a workplace related injury in 2000, and by 2005-06 this figure had unfortunately increased to 8.6 per cent of that workforce. That is nearly one in 10 workers who are injured in the construction industry, an unacceptably high rate of injury. Workplace safety obviously has a big impact on workers, their families, their colleagues and their friends. Apart from the obvious human cost there is also the economic cost to the community, which has been estimated to be approximately $34 billion per year. Given the importance of this area to the individuals involved, their families, the broader community and economy, it is important that we get the occupational health and safety system in this country right.

Occupational health and safety systems are aimed at preventing workplace accidents, while the workers compensation system is concerned with delivering the support needed to workers and their families when such accidents do occur. Historically, both occupational health and safety and workers compensation arrangements have been fragmented across nine jurisdictions—the Commonwealth, the six states and the two territories. Each state and territory has historically had its own health and safety laws. The Commonwealth currently has two statutes, and there are also state based industry-specific safety laws. This jurisdictional jigsaw puzzle has been driven by our constitutional arrangements historically since Federation. The High Court judgement in the Work Choices case in late 2006, though, provides the potential for change in this area of regulation by endorsing the capacity of the Commonwealth to rely upon the corporations power to a greater degree to legislate in this type of field.

While the current health and safety laws are in some ways consistent, there are still, with so many jurisdictions, enough fundamental differences between them to make many elements of them unique. This can be a very unsatisfactory position for workers who, in an increasingly mobile economic environment, might move from one jurisdiction to another and be subject to different rights and entitlements—particularly in relation to compensation entitlements, in my experience. Indeed, as the Deputy Prime Minister noted while introducing this bill:

Inconsistencies between jurisdictions mean that some workers are at risk of poorer safety standards than their counterparts in other states.

Of course, that is evident when you have differing standards in different jurisdictions.

But this circumstance is also bad for business, which faces different rules and the costs of complying with different systems. This is why the Labor Party, the Rudd Labor government, supports the harmonisation of these systems, and that requires the leadership that has been shown by the government. Unfortunately, currently there is no national body that is able to demonstrate leadership on these issues in a specific way or move the agenda of harmonisation forward through cooperative federalism. The body that is currently meant to be fulfilling that role is the Australian Safety and Compensation Council. That council was established by the Howard government in 2004. It replaced the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission, or Worksafe Australia, which had been set up, as I mentioned in my introductory remarks, by the Hawke government in the mid-1980s. The National Occupational Health and Safety Commission was a tripartite body that had real responsibilities and powers and played a valuable role in the formulation of workplace safety elements.

Unfortunately, and perhaps as a sign of the previous government’s unwillingness to genuinely deal with this issue, the Australian Safety and Compensation Council’s powers were limited only to coordinating, monitoring and promoting, and it lacked sufficient teeth to have a substantive role in promoting occupational health and safety across the Australian workforce. That is why, at the last election, Labor committed to:

• replace the existing Australian Safety and Compensation Council with an independent and authoritative institution to drive an inclusive approach to improving health and safety standards and delivering the reform agenda.

Labor promised to do so by applying the following principles, which are extremely important in guiding the approach to this bill: an inclusive approach to the harmonisation process, where the concerns and suggestions of the states, unions and employer groups would be properly considered; consideration of the implication for compliance efforts required to ensure any increased consistency extends to enforcement of standards; the consideration of the resource implications for all levels of government in administering any increase in harmonised laws; and, also, the observance of COAG’s current directive that there be no reduction in safety standards or current levels of support for injured workers. Particularly with my background, I believe that commitment is extremely important in approaching this issue, and for the harmonisation of occupational health and safety arrangements in the future it is critical that employee rights and entitlements in relation to compensation, not just in the regulation of occupational health and safety, are not diminished.

The substance of the bill now before the parliament delivers on these commitments and stays true to the principles that were outlined in Labor’s policy. But before I explain in greater detail the substance of the bill, I would like to place it in the context of two broader aims of the government, which are, firstly, to improve safety outcomes and workers compensation arrangements and, secondly, to move toward what has been described as a seamless national economy. Firstly, the government is committed to improving safety outcomes and workers compensation arrangements across Australia. To achieve this, the government has already undertaken a review of the Comcare scheme. It set up an independent panel of experts to conduct a national occupational health and safety review and it has developed a landmark intergovernmental agreement with the state and territory governments to harmonise occupational health and safety legislation nationally. These are extremely important steps which the government has taken, and the establishment of Safe Work Australia, consequent upon the enactment of this bill, will illustrate concrete progress in the government’s commitment to these objectives.

The second element that I wish to place in context is the Rudd government’s commitment to establish a seamless national economy. The government aims to do this by removing unnecessary state duplications, overlaps and differences through cooperative federalism. As I have already stated, the current health and safety and workers compensation systems are fragmented across nine jurisdictions, making them an obvious candidate for reform, albeit with a careful approach. It also makes good business sense to move towards a new harmonised system and, if appropriate in the future, to utilise the corporations power of the Constitution to help build on the harmonisation of the occupational health and safety arrangements.

Over 39,000 companies now conduct their business across different jurisdictions. That imposes upon them a significant cost in complying with different rules and regulations. In submissions to a 2004 examination of occupational health and safety systems, undertaken by the Productivity Commission, a number of companies quantified the cost of a failure to harmonise these laws. For example, CSR estimated the cost of maintaining and renewing five self-insurance licences at over $700,00 per annum, compared to $200,00 for a single licence. Insurance Australia Group estimated that the existence of multiple schemes added $10.1 million to the one-off cost of setting up a single national IT platform. In total, it estimated that having to comply with multiple jurisdictions added about $1.7 million to IT costs annually. Further, it estimated that a national scheme could offer to the group overall operating cost savings of $1.2 million per annum and could reduce actuarial costs by $400,000 per year. Skilled Engineering, another company with which I am very familiar, estimated that the annual cost savings to a company operating under a single set of national OH&S laws and workers compensation rules would be in excess of $2.5 million. That represents 15 per cent of a company’s annual costs for OH&S and workers compensation premiums. Those are just three examples from companies which would stand to benefit from a sensible harmonisation of the proposed laws. Multiply that across the 39,000 businesses doing business over different jurisdictions in Australia and it is obvious that there would be significant economic savings and efficiencies to be gained.

However, it is very important to note that any savings delivered through harmonisation must come as a result of a reduction in red tape and multiple systems. In no way should savings come as a result of any diminution of either workers’ rights or the occupational health and safety duties and responsibilities of employers to their employees.

The purpose of this bill is to establish Safe Work Australia as an independent Commonwealth statutory body in order to improve occupational health and safety outcomes and workers compensation arrangements. As I indicated earlier, Safe Work Australia will replace the Australian Safety and Compensation Council. In contrast to the ASCC, Safe Work Australia will have substantive powers and responsibilities. It will develop national policy relating to occupational health and safety and workers compensation and, in the process, will advance the cause of harmonisation. It will also prepare, monitor and revise model occupational health and safety legislation for consideration by all relevant parties. It will develop a compliance and enforcement policy to ensure nationally consistent regulatory approaches across all jurisdictions. It will develop proposals relating to the harmonisation of workers compensation arrangements. It will collect, analyse and publish occupational health and safety and workers compensation data and will undertake and publish research. It will drive national communications strategies to raise awareness of health and safety at work, which is extremely important, and will further develop the national occupational health and safety strategy that was developed to cover the period 2002-12. Finally, Safe Work Australia will have the responsibility of advising the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council on these matters.

The bill before the House also creates mechanisms for reviews and revision of Safe Work Australia so that the government can ensure that this body is able to fulfil its intended role and purpose. Importantly, Safe Work Australia will be a tripartite body. It will comprise 15 members, including an independent chair, nine members representing the Commonwealth and each state and territory, two members representing the interests of employees and two representing the interests of employers and executives. The bill allows for the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to make these appointments on advice from each representative organisation.

To ensure that the best expertise is utilised when required, the bill also allows for Safe Work Australia to constitute committees to draw upon a wide range of expertise for the performance of its functions. That will be an important part of its work, due to the breadth and complexity of occupational health and safety issues, the identification of hazards and the drafting of policy responses, particularly for prevention, which is often one of the most difficult areas in this field.

Demonstrating the government’s approach to cooperative federalism, the body will be jointly funded by the Commonwealth and the states and territories and its work will be focused on the intergovernmental agreement between the Commonwealth and our state and territory counterparts to harmonise occupational health and safety legislation nationally. I think the commitment of the states and territories to jointly fund, with the Commonwealth, the organisation is testament to the success to date in fostering consensus on the importance of this effort to harmonise occupational health and safety arrangements nationally.

I think there is evidence—and one would hope that there is—at a greater level than has been experienced previously in our Federation of a recognition of the necessity and importance for employers and employees throughout the national economy of having an increasingly consistent set of occupational health and safety arrangements and, ultimately, standard workers compensation arrangements.

On that issue, in my experience of dealing with people who have contracted asbestos related diseases it has always escaped me how the differential outcomes that are frequently the result of compensation proceedings in the different jurisdictions could be just and fair. It is important that we work towards a nationally fair and decent system that is equitable for all people unfortunate enough to be injured at work or exposed to a hazard to their health.

Occupational health and safety is an area of policy that is extremely important for the government and that has been unfolding at the federal level for some years. It is extremely important at a national level because it affects the lives of literally millions of Australians and their families. As a decent society we must ensure that we have decent and fair occupational health and safety regulation. It has always been a passion of mine, working in this area, and I have been a strong advocate of strong occupational health and safety laws and decent workers compensation schemes which offer appropriate financial security for injured employees and their families. I am also on the public record supporting a harmonisation of these laws across Australia and have held that view for a considerable period. It is for all of those reasons that I am proud to support the bill before the House today, because it does take us much closer to achieving those goals.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like the previous speaker, I take great pleasure in speaking to this legislation as somebody who has spent a large part of their working life advocating change in this area. It is really pleasing to see that the government is taking action to improve occupational health and safety throughout Australia—something that unfortunately deteriorated under the previous government. We need to have a safe workplace because it contributes to the overall productivity of the country and the social fabric of our society.

The Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 proposes to establish Safe Work Australia as an independent Commonwealth statutory body with the purpose of improving workers compensation arrangements and occupational health and safety outcomes in Australia. It establishes operational arrangements to support Safe Work Australia, including provisions relating to the nomination, appointment and terms and conditions of members; conflict of interest issues; the conduct of meetings and decision-making processes; the development of plans; and requirements for reporting to the Workplace Relations Ministers Council. It enables the chair to constitute committees to draw upon a wide range of expertise for the performance of its functions. This is a cooperative approach that stops the blame game that has taken place in so many areas by bringing the states and other players together to work constructively to create safe workplaces throughout Australia.

Safe Work Australia will be a reform focused body with the power to make recommendations directly to the Workplace Relations Ministers Council. It will replace the Australian Safety and Compensation Council, which was established by the Howard government as an advisory body whose functions were confined to coordinating, monitoring and promoting national efforts on health and safety and workers compensation. I think I can safely say that that body was not a great success and did nothing to enhance workplace safety within Australia.

Safe Work Australia will be funded 50 per cent by the Commonwealth and 50 per cent by the states and territories. It is estimated to cost $17 million in the first full year, and the Commonwealth will contribute $8.5 million. It will be a tripartite body made up of 15 members, including an independent chair, nine members representing the Commonwealth and each state and territory, two members representing the interests of workers, two members representing the interests of employers, and a CEO. The minister will make all appointments to Safe Work Australia based on nominations from each body.

The members, supported by the CEO and staff, will together form a statutory agency under the Public Service Act. This will be subject to Commonwealth governance regimes and will be a prescribed agency under the Financial Management and Accountability Act. It will remove inconsistencies between jurisdictions and make our health, safety and compensation systems less complicated. Previously, inconsistencies between jurisdictions resulted in the risk that safety standards for workers were poorer in some states than they were in others.

Back in 2003 I was a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment and Workplace Relations. We conducted an inquiry into aspects of workers compensation schemes and prepared the report Back on the job. One of the findings of the report was that there was a need for national consistency. The need for greater national consistency in the operation of workers compensation schemes was raised frequently throughout the inquiry. The committee felt strongly that a national framework for workers compensation was needed to remove the complexities and deal with cross-border issues. This would lessen the potential for problems to exist in the area not only of workers compensation but also of occupational health and safety. As a long-term advocate for a consistent system—a system that is actually focused on the need to create a safe workplace—I feel that this legislation before us goes a long way towards doing that.

The inconsistencies, some of which I have referred to, increase costs, complexity and paperwork for businesses that operate across state boundaries. I have been a caseworker working with somebody who has been injured in a different jurisdiction. At that particular time, the complexities of the system worked against the employer, against the worker and against obtaining a good outcome. That is just one example of how the inconsistencies that come from not having a seamless approach to workers compensation and work safety create problems.

This consistency is badly needed because more than 300 Australians are killed at work each year and more die as a result of work related diseases. They are mums or dads, somebody’s son or daughter, who go to work to earn a living to care for their families and loved ones and, as a result of their work, they lose their lives. Each year more than 140,000 Australians are seriously injured at work. Many of those will never work again, despite the fact that they would very much like to work and that they do everything in their power to undertake rehabilitation and retraining. Their lives are changed forever. That is one of the issues that Safe Work Australia will be addressing by creating safe workplaces. While the cost to the economy is estimated at $34 billion a year, the associated cost to the injured workers and their families just cannot be measured. It is not only loss of income but also a loss of their whole way of life, their self-perception and their relationships with their friends. It really is a life-changing event. I do not think that too many people really appreciate the significance that a workplace injury can have on a man or a woman.

If the passage of this bill is delayed beyond this spring sitting Safe Work Australia cannot commence before 1 March 2009. This would put the COAG timetable for occupational health and safety harmonisation in jeopardy as the exposure draft of the model legislation is due to be released in May 2009. The member for Chisholm is following me and I know that she will be emphasising all these important issues. Safe Work Australia will develop national policy relating to OH&S and workers compensation; prepare, monitor and revise the model of OH&S legislation; develop a compliance and enforcement policy to ensure consistent regulatory approaches across all jurisdictions; develop proposals relating to harmonisation of workers compensation arrangements; collect, analyse and publish OH&S and workers compensation data; undertake and publish research; drive national communication strategies to raise awareness of health and safety at work; and further develop the National Occupational Health and Safety Strategy 2002-12. I will finish there and allow the member for Chisholm to take over. I strongly support this legislation.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to put on the record my thanks to the member for Shortland for a sterling effort under adverse conditions. She is probably suffering from a bit of work related illness herself, I should imagine! These are demanding sitting patterns we are doing and it is bringing a lot of us down with coughs and colds, so I say to the member for Shortland: well done.

The Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 establishes an independent national body whose role will be to improve occupational health and safety outcomes and workers compensation arrangements across Australia. It is an ambitious bit of legislation but one whose time has definitely come. Its time actually came quite some time ago. The Rudd Labor government sees the necessity to create a seamless national framework for occupational health and safety and workers compensation not only for the individuals whose lives are at stake but for the 39,000 businesses that operate Australia-wide. Businesses no longer know state boundaries. It is anomalous to think that a business operating in all the states and territories should be operating under different terms and conditions in respect of workers compensation and occupational health and safety, but that is what currently takes place.

In my previous life, which now seems a long time ago—indeed it is, coming up to my tenth year of being in the parliament—I worked for the Finance Sector Union. We dealt with the major banks, and they were operating Australia-wide. An injured employee in New South Wales had to deal with a totally different workers compensation and OH&S system from what there was in Victoria. This created enormous complexity for the banks. They had duplications at every level to deal with this. It also created problems from a union perspective because you were trying to deal with something at a company level, but it was not at a company level. It was at a state-by-state level. These were quite serious issues.

I vividly remember the day one of the organisers rang to say that there had been a robbery at one of the outlets in Perth that I had been supervising and dealing with the staff there. Luckily nobody was killed on that occasion. It is a fairly traumatic experience when somebody walks in with a sawn-off shotgun and puts it in your face. There was a great deal of stress and anxiety and, fundamentally, then follow-up claims for workers compensation and dealings around OH&S issues about the safety of those workplaces. Each state and territory had a different regime. We had to put in place different things and it was quite complicated. At that stage in Victoria, the workers compensation legislation had been changed by the then Liberal government. In that case, because it was a stress related claim to do with a bank robbery, there was actually no compensation for the individuals involved. It was a fairly stressful thing to have to say to an individual, ‘Turning up for work in the next couple of weeks is going to be fairly tense, but having faced a fairly aggressive bank robber you are not going to be recognised, rewarded or compensated.’ If they had been in another state, yes, they would have had some recognition. In the case in Perth there was some compensation, some recognition and some time given. But for a similar situation in Victoria a couple of months later nothing was given.

This legislation is needed to take away the unnecessary duplications, the overlaps and the complexities—most importantly for the workers on the front-line day in, day out, but also for businesses so that they have a much more coherent Australia-wide set of standards. The health and safety of the Australian workforce is high on the government’s list of priorities. It is something that we have moved to very quickly and it is something that we want to get on top of. The establishment of Safe Work Australia will give us the impetus to do that.

Currently Australia ranks in the top five countries for reducing work related deaths—but, still, too many people die each year. This year more than 140,000 Australians will be seriously injured at work and more than 250 Australians will die as a result of a workplace injury. This is estimated to cost the economy $34 billion per year. But, as the member for Shortland said, that pales into insignificance when you look at the cost to the families involved in those deaths.

In my first job, which now seems a very long time ago, having left university, I worked at VicRoads. I vividly remember the day that one of my colleagues rang from the Western Ring Road site to say that there had been a tragic accident and that a contractor had died on site. As it involved a coronial inquest, the truck with the individual in it had to stay on site until the coroner could come out. My colleague had to sit by the truck with the dead worker in it for over six hours. It was a fairly traumatic experience sitting there. I remember trying to find the wife of the contractor so that we could have someone explain to her that her husband was not coming home that night. It was a very stressful day. I remember my colleague coming back to work the next day. He had worked for a long time at the Australian Workers Union and at the time was working on the construction site for VicRoads as a liaison officer. Although he had seen a lot of things in his days, sitting next to someone’s dead body for six hours was probably the most traumatic thing he had ever done. The operator of the truck was fined and then prosecuted under laws in Victoria. It was an unsafe practice that led to the death of that individual. The man was fairly young and it was his second day on that job. He left behind a wife and a couple of little kids. When you send your husband off to work, the father of your kids, you do not think that he is not going to come home. It happens all too often and it is something that we need to take more seriously. We need to have good occupational health and safety practices in place to ensure that someone is not killed on their second day at work.

The statistics are quite compelling. The Compendium of workers’ compensation statistics Australia 2005-06 states that the preliminary number of work related serious compensation claims reported in Australia for 2005-06 was 139,630. Of these claims, 231 were compensatory fatalities. The last time we collected statistics, 231 fatalities were recorded. Of the 139,630 serious injury claims, a high proportion, 68 per cent, were male. Men accounted for 69 per cent of injury and poisoning claims—that is a fairly large number of poisoning claims—and 65 per cent of disease claims. Obviously, males are predominantly in the more dangerous lines of work—the construction, manufacturing, transport and agriculture sectors. For men and women combined, there were 16 claims per 1,000 employees—a high proportion—in 2005-06, comprising 11 injury and poisoning claims and 4.6 disease claims per 1,000 employees.

From the Statistical report notified fatalities, July 2006 to June 2007, there were 162 notified work related fatalities—146 workers and 16 bystanders. So 16 people unluckily turned up at work sites and were killed. The number of fatalities was 16 per cent higher than in 2003-04, the first year of data collection, despite a 42 per cent decrease in fatalities over the period at agriculture, forestry and fishing workplaces. Most fatalities were male—146 in total; 14 fatalities were female and the gender was unknown in two other fatalities. Five industries account for seven out of every 10 notified work related fatalities: 17 fatalities occurred at a workplace primarily engaged in construction; 17 in agriculture, forestry and fishing; 17 in transport and storage; 11 in manufacturing; and nine in mining. The most common causes of fatalities were vehicle accidents, where there were 30 fatalities. Others included: being hit by moving objects, 29 fatalities; being hit by falling objects, 29 fatalities; falls from a height, 28 fatalities; electrocution, 13 fatalities; and being trapped by moving machinery, 11 fatalities. Again, as I say, you do not expect someone to go off to work and not return.

Many people in this place will know that my husband is a paramedic. Ambos do not talk about what they do; it is one of those coping mechanisms. It is quite interesting nowadays that when he comes home from work and the kids say, ‘What did you do today, Daddy?’ generally the answer is that some guy’s heart did not work or something like that. Occasionally, if he is fairly quiet, it will be, ‘We were at a work site and there was a terrible accident.’ The terrible accidents he has seen over the years are fairly frightening. On one occasion he did recount that someone was electrocuted on a work site. He said the smell would never leave him. Again, you do not expect that to be part and parcel of going to work.

That is why we need good legislation. We need consistent legislation. We need it so that people understand it and can enforce it. On the whole, employers want to do the right thing. Unions want to do the right thing. They want to come together with a set of standards that they understand. Under Safe Work Australia we will have this bipartisan grouping, with representatives from the employer groups, the trade unions, the states and the Commonwealth coming together to ensure that we have consistency across the board. The previous government let this area fall. We are now picking it up and running with it.

The interesting thing about workplace fatalities is that they are concentrated within an age group—most commonly 35 to 44 years of age. Generally these are people with young families, so the cost and the impact are not just on the individual but on their family. It is also very interesting, if you go through the Notified fatalities statistical report, to see the types of accidents that occur. They are predominantly vehicle accidents, such as pedestrians struck by vehicles at work sites or workers struck by other moving objects, particularly in manufacturing and obviously within the agriculture area, with the rolling of farm equipment such as tractors. Another cause is workers being struck by falling objects. In my time at VicRoads another contractor was killed when, unfortunately, he was not given safety equipment at a site. He went up on a roof and a big gust of wind came along and he went with the roof. He did not get to go home. Other causes of death at work sites are falls from heights and electrocution.

We need to ensure, via this legislation, that there is a constructive process where everybody’s voice can be heard. We need to produce a set of legislation that will govern how OH&S and workers compensation are harmonised across the sector. I commend the bills to the House.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 and related bill. This bill will establish Safe Work Australia as a new and independent statutory body to improve occupational health and safety outcomes for working Australians. Safe Work Australia will also handle workers compensation arrangements throughout Australia. Occupational health and safety has been, until now, primarily a state responsibility. Following the Work Choices decision of the High Court, there is at least the possibility that it may not remain so, but Labor was elected at the last election with a commitment to do more to ensure that appropriate standards are provided to all Australian workers wherever they work. It is Labor’s policy to work cooperatively with the states and territories to ensure that there are appropriate minimum national standards and to bring about a nationally consistent occupational health and safety framework. That framework will reflect best Australian and best international safety practice. This bill gives effect to the policy that Labor was elected to implement.

Safe Work Australia will replace the Australian Safety and Compensation Council and will enable better collaboration between the Commonwealth and the states and territories to deal effectively with the health and safety of Australian workers. Safe Work Australia will be funded 50 per cent by the Commonwealth and 50 per cent by the states and territories and will be able to make recommendations directly to the Workplace Relations Ministers Council. Safe Work Australia will be able to coordinate the national policy on occupational health and safety laws and prepare model legislation which can be applied to all jurisdictions. As you have heard from other speakers, Mr Deputy Speaker, this is another example of the Rudd government’s action on creating a seamless national economy without the countless state duplications, overlaps and differences.

As I said, Safe Work Australia will replace the Australian Safety and Compensation Council. That council, established by the former government, did not have the functions to effect any substantive change in this area. The council was confined to coordinating and promoting occupational health and safety policy nationwide. Safe Work Australia will undertake that function and many other functions as well. Safe Work Australia will develop national policy on occupational health and safety issues. It will draft, monitor and revise model occupational health and safety legislation for nationwide application. It will develop consistent policy on compliance and enforcement to ensure national consistency, following the national review of occupational health and safety laws announced by the Deputy Prime Minister in April 2008. It will develop harmonisation proposals for workers compensation arrangements. It will collect, analyse and publish data on occupational health and safety and workers compensation. It will further develop the National Occupational Health and Safety Strategy 2002-12 and it will advise the Workplace Relations Ministers Council on occupational health and safety and workers compensation matters.

Occupational health and safety is a critical area of reform. We need to ensure that all workplaces in Australia are safe workplaces. Safety should be of paramount concern to all stakeholders in all industries. We have heard from many speakers in this debate the sombre statistics. More than 300 Australians are killed each year at work. Very many thousands more die as a result of work related diseases—many more than the national road toll. Over 140,000 Australians are injured at work every year. This comes at a cost of $34 billion a year to the Australian economy and an inestimable amount of pain and loss to workers, their families, their workmates and their friends.

There are many recent appalling examples of work related death. The disaster at Wittenoom and the disgrace of James Hardie come to mind. In that regard it has been estimated that the total number of asbestos related deaths will reach at least 40,000 and possibly as many as 60,000 people by 2020. In total, almost half a million Australian workers experience a work related injury or illness each year, which means that there are millions of Australians suffering from work related health conditions.

Maintenance and improvement of occupational health and safety is critical to ensuring the livelihoods of all working Australians. People are entitled to expect that at the end of their working day they will come home uninjured. Good occupational health and safety conditions are also good for business, as employees enjoy safer working conditions, have improved morale and deliver higher productivity. Workplaces with good occupational health and safety can face fewer workplace injuries and benefit from higher retention rates.

In 2002, the National Occupational Health and Safety Strategy adopted under the former government had the following national priorities: (1) reducing high incidence and severity risks, (2) improving the capacity of business operators and workers to manage occupational health and safety effectively, (3) preventing occupational disease more effectively, (4) eliminating hazards at the design stage and (5) strengthening the capacity of government to influence OH&S outcomes. It should be noted that there is no direct reference to the traditional protectors of safety on work sites, the trade unions of this country. It was the coalition government’s blind ideological opposition to trade unions which led it to repeatedly attempt to limit the role of unions in maintaining levels of occupational health and safety in workplaces. I could mention the former government’s attempt to remove unions from their role in occupational health and safety which we saw in the Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Amendment Bill 2000, which lapsed on the prorogation of the parliament for the 2001 election.

It is worth noting that the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission, the former government’s own commission, reported in November 2002 in these terms:

... there is indirect but strong evidence that employee participation, either direct or representative, is an essential component of effective occupational health and safety management.

This is a pithy endorsement of a principled approach recognised for decades in the United Kingdom and in this country, and that approach is a collaborative approach to safety between employees and employers, including in that process the relevant unions. Freedom of association and rights of union entry to workplaces are important components of this approach to safety. Unions have a key role to play in safety. Most employers are very responsible and very concerned about safety, but not all are. State occupational health and safety authorities cannot visit or inspect every workplace, and the work of state agencies is supplemented by unions.

In June 2002, the former government made a further attempt to attack union involvement in occupational health and safety with another bill, the Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Amendment (Employee Involvement and Compliance) Bill 2002, which was not supported in the Senate. The former government continued to ignore the large body of work that demonstrates the invaluable role that unions have played in improving safety. I will mention just a couple of examples of that work. There is a 2003 paper by Professor Walters entitled Workplace arrangements for OHS in the 21st century, which stated:

... in workplaces, in which joint arrangements were in place and especially where trade unions were involved, injury rates were considerably improved.

In another work the following year, Professors Walters, Johnstone and Quinlan, in a report entitled Statutory OHS workplace arrangements for the modern labour market, reported on a range of international and Australian studies and said that the research gives:

... support to the notion that joint arrangements, trade unions and trade union representation on health and safety at the workplace are associated with better health and safety outcomes than when employers manage OH&S without representative worker participation.

Regrettably, these and other studies were ignored by the former government and, indeed, are continuing to be ignored by those opposite who have spoken on this bill.

In late 2005, we saw the former government—then with its new control of the Senate and following on from its introduction of the harsh Work Choices legislation—make a further attack on the involvement of unions in occupational health and safety, with a further bill, the Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Amendment Bill 2005. Those amendments introduced so-called management arrangements which replaced occupational health agreements, traditionally developed through tripartite agreements between unions, employees and employers. The 2005-06 legislation also removed all reference to unions and replaced the term with ‘employee representatives’ and proposed that employers, not employees, would control the election of workplace health and safety representatives. This was very much a backward step which ignored all of the accepted wisdom about the need to involve unions in occupational health and safety matters.

It was all part of the former government’s attack on the working conditions and rights of Australian workers in the form of the harsh Work Choices laws. It really poses the question: why would you seek to limit the role of unions in occupational health and safety when unions have a unique and well-recognised role to play in identifying occupational health and safety hazards and have all developed specific strategies to deal with occupational health and safety issues?

The speeches from opposition members on this bill have demonstrated that those opposite have learned nothing from the election last year. It would seem that they still do not understand that the Australian people have rejected the harsh Work Choices approach to industrial relations. Most of the speeches from those opposite, rather than talking about safety matters, spent time attacking state Labor governments and unions. I refer in particular to the speech given by the member for Curtin, the new shadow Treasurer, who described Safe Work Australia, the institution that this bill is going to introduce, as ‘just another botched policy’. One could ask whether the member for Curtin failed to ask the employers’ body, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, before she rushed to condemn the Safe Work Australia proposal. Perhaps she should have asked ACCI before she rushed to condemn, because these are the welcoming words of the Chief Executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in relation to the introduction of this bill on 4 September. Mr Peter Anderson had this to say:

The introduction of the Safe Work Australia Bill is an opportunity for industry and business organisations to give higher priority to workplace safety and to reaffirm their commitment to a consultative approach to occupational health and safety (OH&S) issues, at both a policy and workplace level.

It is also an opportunity for governments and the parliament to establish a sustainable and genuine tripartite body at a national level to further the goals of the National OH&S Strategy, and to work towards greater national consistency and practicality in OH&S policy, legislation and standards.

ACCI will work with governments, business organisations, unions and the parliament in examining the Bill and improving institutional arrangements for OH&S in Australia.

Far from thinking that there was anything flawed about this policy or the establishment of Safe Work Australia, we have, from one of the premier employer bodies, welcoming words.

The member for Curtin, the new shadow Treasurer, is so blinded by her hatred of the trade union movement that, in her speech on the Safe Work Australia Bill—an important piece of legislation about occupational health and safety—when she talked about the construction industry she did not once mention safety. Indeed, the member for Curtin frothed at the mouth about the Australian Building and Construction Commission instead of talking about the subject matter of this bill, which is occupational health and safety.

The member for Curtin said that the building commission is ‘under threat from the Labor government’. It again appears that the member for Curtin has not understood what happened in this country last November. Labor was elected on a platform which included the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission from January 2010. That could not have been made clearer, and the Australian people appreciated and approved that policy because they were sick of the confrontation and conflict of the former government’s approach to industrial relations.

The member for Curtin went on to refer to some statistics about the building and construction industry, noting that it contributes some 6.7 per cent to Australia’s GDP and also that it employs 940,000 workers, which is nine per cent of the Australian workforce. You would think that we might then have heard from the member for Curtin some statistics about the safety record in the building and construction industry. But no, there was not one word about safety in the building and construction industry from the shadow Treasurer. Indeed, the shadow Treasurer ranted about unions, bleated about the powers of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and attacked former Federal Court judge Murray Wilcox QC, who is presently inquiring into the regulation of the building and construction industry.

What the member for Curtin should have done is to refer to the statistics of the Australian Safety and Compensation Council, which show the alarmingly bad safety record of the building and construction industry. I will just give some of them, because they show what a problem we have in this country and why it is important that we pay attention to occupational health and safety, particularly in the construction industry. The 2005-06 figures showed that the fatalities incidence rate in the building and construction industry was twice as high as the all-industries rate. Over the same period, the serious claims incidence rate was the fourth highest of all industries. This equates to 39 employees a day sustaining a serious work-related injury or disease requiring one week or more off work. There were 30 notified fatalities during the nine-month period from July 2007 to March 2008—that is 30 deaths in 36 weeks, and that is the worst performance since 1 July 2003. I would say to the member for Curtin that she should stop worrying so much about the trade unions in the building and construction industry and start worrying about safety in the building and construction industry.

If the Building and Construction Commission is to be mentioned at all in the context of occupational health and safety, a better inquiry might be to examine whether the threat of an investigation by the commission, or a threat of the use of coercive powers, may have had an overall negative effect on safety in the building and construction industry. There have been a number of recent suggestions that this is the case, arising from the fact that an action taken by a worker in relation to a safety concern is likely to be treated by the commission as an illegal industrial action with all of the consequences which flow from that.

Some curious criticisms have been made of this bill by those opposite in the course of this debate—notably claims made by opposition speakers that the six-year review period for Safe Work Australia, which is provided for in this bill, is somehow inadequate. In making those claims, they appear to have created the impression that Safe Work Australia will not be reporting at all when, of course, that is far from the case. Clause 70 makes it clear that there is to be an annual report to the minister and to the ministerial council. What happens every six years is a review of the Safe Work Australia process and project and a report to the parliament about that.

The introduction of Safe Work Australia and the involvement, hard work and expertise of the trade union movement will improve workers’ safety. These reforms are needed to create better workplaces—which are safer workplaces—which will increase productivity and profitability. The wellbeing of working Australians is vital to this government. I commend the bills to the House.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise in support of the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 and a related bill. I thank the member for Isaacs for his contribution to the debate. I too listened with amazement to some of the comments coming from those opposite, especially from the member for Curtin. It was quite surprising to hear in that sustained attack the suggestion that the board is somehow stacked with ALP operatives. Over the next few months perhaps that will change if they come from Western Australia, but there seems to be a suggestion that the composition of the board is fundamentally flawed because it was recommended by the states that happened to have Labor premiers. The way the opposition railed about this, maybe they do not have much faith in these governments changing over the next couple of years, even though they are three-year appointments. We will wait and see.

‘Bipartisanship’ is a word we hear often in this parliament; I have heard it a couple of times over the last couple of weeks. But the word ‘bipartisan’ is obviously not understood by those opposite, so I thought I would just inform them a little bit. The English teacher in me asked me to bring along the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary. I just thought I would look up the word ‘partisan’. ‘Bi’ obviously means two, but ‘partisan’ is a word that means ‘a strong, especially unreasoning, supporter of a party or a cause et cetera.’ In military terms, it is a guerrilla in wartime. The other meaning is ‘loyal to a particular cause or biased’, from the French origins or, in the Italian dialect, ‘partisano’. So the word ‘bipartisan’ is obviously something not particularly understood by those opposite. Maybe they do not understand that it is ‘bi’, meaning two. Sometimes when I hear the member for Wentworth talking I think he must think that, when you trot out $30, it is ‘b-u-y partisan’ and you can buy support for something. Hopefully, the true meaning of the word ‘bipartisan’ will come into play in this House over the next couple of weeks.

This Safe Work Australia Bill will set up a new independent body to make help make Australian workplaces safer and will drive better workers compensation arrangements. My background before I was elected, apart from being an English teacher, included working for the peak mining body in Queensland—the Queensland Resources Council. The member for Isaacs touched on the building industry. Obviously, the mining sector, whilst it has nowhere near the same number of fatalities, has incredibly dangerous work sites. Certainly in years gone by there have been huge numbers of fatalities, especially in coalmines. When things go wrong in a coalmine and they explode, there are very serious consequences. So the mining sector is one that has benefited from union involvement over the years. Unlike the member for Curtin, the mining sector has that great relationship between government, unions and employers—that is, mining companies. They understand that tripartite approach to health and safety. I see Bill Shorten, the member for Maribyrnong, walking in. More than anyone, he understands how important the role is that unions play in making sure that health and safety conditions are improved in mining communities.

My other unfortunate, sad connection with health and safety is through my younger brother, Tim, who worked in the building trade. He was working in the building industry only about 10 metres over the border in New South Wales when a crane collapsed on him and the two men standing beside him, who were both killed. So it certainly has touched my family. In a lot of ways, my younger brother has never really recovered. Even though his back injuries were very serious, his psychological damage was much more serious.

I am looking forward to this Safe Work Australia initiative replacing the Australian Safety and Compensation Council. This will reduce the duplications and inconsistencies relating to workplace health and safety throughout Australia. It delivers on our election commitment to uphold safety standards while reducing complexity for employees and employers. Safe Work Australia will be jointly funded by the Commonwealth and state and territory governments and will include a total of 15 members from each of the Commonwealth, state and territory governments, two employee representatives and two employer representatives. The role of the Australian Safety and Compensation Council was to coordinate, monitor and promote national efforts on health and safety and workers’ compensation. Safe Work Australia will do much more than that, and it will drive national reforms to protect health and lives at work and cut costs for employers. This is all part of the Rudd government’s positive approach to corporate federalism, irrespective of whether the state governments are Labor, Liberal or some amalgam of those. The new body will be appointed by the minister and will make recommendations directly to the Workplace Relations Ministers Council.

The Rudd government were elected on a platform to restore balance and fairness to Australian workplaces. We have well and truly started on this journey by abolishing Howard’s unfair Australian workplace agreements. We saw that in no uncertain terms on election night when the member for Bennelong was voted out. That was something which had not happened previously to a sitting prime minister, apart from a gentleman by the name of Stanley Melbourne Bruce, the first Viscount Bruce of Melbourne. I looked up Stanley Melbourne Bruce; he was certainly an interesting character. He was only the second Australian to be granted a hereditary peerage of the United Kingdom parliament, and the only one whose peerage was formally created—that is, he took a seat in the House of Lords. Apparently there had been one granted before but the guy died at sea on his way to taking up his seat in the House of Lords. Stanley Melbourne Bruce was kicked out of federal parliament for introducing legislation that was attacking workers. At a time of riots and lockouts in New South Wales in 1929, he responded with the maritime industries bill, which basically did away with the ‘fair go’—much the same as when John Howard was trying to get rid of the Commonwealth Court Of Conciliation and Arbitration—and Australians, basically fair-minded people, responded by giving Labor a landslide victory. Stanley Melbourne Bruce, the first Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, was defeated by Labor’s Ted Holloway in his electorate of Flinders. I am not sure if the Holloway family is around or listening to this but they really should have their hands shaken.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Shorten interjecting

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not sure if Ted Holloway was a Queenslander. I might have to check. Obviously, the Queenslanders sent down Maxine McKew to get rid of John Howard. I will defer to the member for Maribyrnong as to Ted Holloway’s state of origin. Obviously the Hon. John Winston Howard was only the second prime minister to be voted out. Why? Because he attacked the ‘fair go’ and, more importantly, attacked the unions and health and safety, which is really an attack on the lives of people in workplaces.

We have also started work to make Australian workplaces not only safer but healthier. For example, we have undertaken a review of the Comcare scheme. Another shameful Howard government legacy was their gross neglect of Comcare. It was critically underresourced and unable to cope with its investigations workload. This obviously puts lives at risk, as anyone working in the construction sector would know.

The Rudd government has also set up an independent panel of experts to conduct a national occupational health and safety review and has developed an agreement with state and territory governments for nationally consistent occupational health and safety legislation. Having come from the mining sector, I know how particularly advanced this is, with governments, miners and unions sitting down together to work out ways to make businesses work smarter so that mining companies that go between states will not have to deal with different frameworks. This bill delivers on that agreement.

All Australians expect that, when a family member goes off to work, they will return home safely. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. More than 300 people are killed each year at work and more than 140,000 Australians are seriously injured. That sounds like simple statistics, but I can attest that my brother was seriously, seriously damaged by that workplace accident. So statistics do have personal tales behind them.

Australians still face danger in work sites around the country, and this is totally unacceptable. I think of people like Chris Geer and Steve Sayer, who fell to their deaths on a Gold Coast construction site earlier this year, at the time of the Queensland state conference, and there have unfortunately been more deaths, even on the Gold Coast, where my brother worked in the construction sector.

There should be no greater priority for employers than workplace safety, and I know that the overwhelming majority of employers are striving to do the right thing. I say that again: I know that most employers are trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately, many of these employers have been entangled in red tape, as they battle the different laws in place throughout Australia. The inconsistencies between the states also lead to poorer safety standards and lower compensation for some employees. Once again, I refer to my brother Timothy, who was a classic example. He was working for a Queensland company on the Twin Towns Services Club but, because it was 10 metres over the border—in fact, I think the crane even swung over into Queensland at stages—and the deaths and the accident occurred right over the border, there were all sorts of problems and red tape with getting Sydney lawyers to deal with something that was really a Queensland accident. It will be great to resolve some of those issues by having greater consistency.

National cooperation will help overcome these issues and improve people’s lives. Greater cooperation will improve health and safety standards for workers and reduce the complexity of compliance and regulation for business. To achieve this, Safe Work Australia will develop a national occupational health and safety and workers compensation policy; prepare, monitor and revise legislation; develop a compliance and enforcement policy to ensure regulatory consistency across the nation; progress harmonisation of workers compensation arrangements; collect, analyse and publish occupational health and safety and workers compensation data; drive national awareness strategies; and advise the Workplace Relations Ministers Council on occupational health and safety on workers compensation matters.

We must all be aware that, when it comes to occupational health and safety, there is too much at stake to be distracted by political games and turf wars. We have to get this right. This really is a time for bipartisanship. The only way to get this right is to work together in cooperation with all of the state and territory governments. Safe Work Australia will establish a platform to bring about even greater consistency and cooperation between all governments in the future. We must also continue to work with the many unions who strive to make workplaces safer for their members.

In closing, I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for introducing this legislation and for her commitment to safety in the workplace. She well knows that this type of legislation saves lives. I commend the bills to the House.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise this evening to strongly support the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 and the Safe Work Australia (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2008. The purpose of the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 is to establish Safe Work Australia as an independent Commonwealth statutory body to improve occupational health and safety outcomes and workers compensation arrangements in Australia on an ongoing basis. The bill is looking to simplify the current system and make it nationally consistent. It does not make sense to have multiple schemes. Why should different jurisdictions have lesser or greater safety standards than others?

The Safe Work Australia authority will be an inclusive, tripartite body representing the interests of the Commonwealth, the states and territories as well as employees and employers in Australia. The bill will play a pivotal role in realising the government’s commitment to working cooperatively with state and territory governments to improve OH&S outcomes and workers compensation arrangements in Australia. Safe Work Australia will be a reform focused body with the power to make recommendations directly to the Workplace Relations Ministers Council.

Occupational health and safety is a prime candidate for this sort of reform. The statistics are damning. Each year, more than 300 Australians are killed at work and many more die as a result of work related disease. Each year well over 100,000 Australians are seriously injured at work. These reforms are not just looking at death and serious injury; they are also looking at what people may see as minor injuries. These can have massive repercussions for individuals and their businesses.

In my old job as the National Secretary of the Australian Workers Union, I came across deaths, injury and disease in the workplace. As a union rep, my role was to ensure that workplaces were safe and to protect working Australians, to protect the rights of workers who had been injured previously and to seek equitable outcomes, as much as one can, for the families of those who were injured or worse. Trade unions have always led the way when it comes to improving occupational health and safety standards in Australia. Whether it is burns in the foundry, crushes in mines or falls at a construction site, these are all too often described as ‘accidents’. But it is not an accident, I contend, if it is preventable. Tragically, it is a fact that most people lose their lives in preventable circumstances.

In support of this bill I would like to draw the House’s attention to four arguments which I think underline the importance of this legislation. First of all, it is the basics which are killing people in Australia. In this I am heavily influenced by Dr Yossi Berger, the National Occupational Health and Safety Unit Director of the Australian Workers Union, a considered thinker and a person of great action in saving people’s lives people. Fitting guards on machinery still does not occur in Australian workplaces. The absence of lights and reverse beepers on mobile plant still kills people. Sixty years ago, not taking basic measures, like having first-aid kits stocked and accessible and ensuring that the hazards which lead to falls were well marked and guarded against, was causing 80 per cent of all the deaths in the workplace. Sixty years later, the killers and the causes are the same, and the culprits are still not caught.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister, if you would take an interjection: this time last century, one in 32 of us who went down the mines died. The union was very helpful in—

Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Kennedy!

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kennedy for his learned contribution. I appreciate that.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Theodore and the AWU.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy’s father was a great delegate of the Australian Workers Union, and we are grateful. It is obvious that we need to devote our full attention to the fundamental causes of deaths in our workplaces. You have to wonder how they can still happen.

That leads me to the second proposition in support of this legislation. After every workplace disaster—including the workplace disaster at Beaconsfield, in which Larry Knight was killed and Todd Russell and Brant Webb miraculously survived due to the efforts of their workmates and the whole community of Beaconsfield—there are the inquiries. On the Beaconsfield disaster, there was one conducted by Greg Melick, Senior Counsel, and the Tasmanian Coroner is investigating the matter again. Each inquiry will make a number of recommendations. We seem to have this utopian assumption that each time that people die and we have an inquiry, we will learn the lessons of the past and somehow safety will progressively improve. Logically, if this is the case, all disasters should ultimately stop. Clearly, though, this is not happening in Australia. You have to ask: why aren’t we learning the lessons of the past?

Research on mining disasters conducted by the AWU and research on the disaster of the Westralia and disasters in Nova Scotia and South Africa—12 different mining wardens inquiries, courts of inquiry and royal commissions—reveals not only that the inquiries have a lot in common but that the disasters have a lot in common, regardless of the continent on which or the industry in which they occur. I can predict now that the next inquiry into a tragedy where people are killed will recommend more training and education. I can also predict that the next inquiry into a set of fatalities will predict changes to equipment, standards, processes and the duties of specific personnel on site. Based on what has happened in the past and our health and safety amnesia, I have no doubt that the next inquiry will recommend improved occupational health and safety systems and more government oversight. However, I can also predict with absolutely no fear of contradiction that it is very likely that in the next disaster we see—like all the ones we have seen over the last 100 years of Australian industrial history—there will be no recommendation for legal action against the company or senior personnel and almost none against nominated individuals to be held personally responsible for making sure that the inquiry’s recommendations follow through.

One thing which I will be putting to the new Safe Work Australia is the need to employ more historians, because the lessons that we will learn in the future are merely those that we have forgotten in the past. Wherever there is an inquiry, in this place or elsewhere, someone should be made responsible for ensuring that, after we hold an inquiry and review the recommendations, in two, three, five and 10 years time, those recommendations are still being honoured. I think that this is a crucial lesson in health and safety.

We know that there is rarely a smoking gun in these disasters—certainly not that I have seen. There is very rarely a single event or a single person at which we can point the finger at and say, ‘You did this.’ Blame for the sake of itself is not useful; blame does not bring back the dead. What we need to know is that the recommendations of the next inquiry will be followed through. Someone has to be put in charge whenever problems occur, to evaluate how effective the changes are and to see if the new lessons are working or not, and someone must be available to fix them. I believe there need to be penalties attached if recommendations are not put in place in a timely fashion, to make sense of the useless waste and tragedy of people’s injury and death.

We know, furthermore, that communication is fundamental to the success of all agencies in health and safety. Safe Work Australia itself cannot guarantee the safety of all workers. For instance, look at diazinon. My old union and I argued for 12 years that the chemical diazinon should have no future. It was argued by other interests that diazinon is cheap and effective. Certainly it was never argued that it could be a fatal chemical and it regularly and seriously harmed workers. It was explained to us, ‘But diazinon is the economical product in rural industries.’ It was never explained that it attacks the nervous system, resulting in long-term ill health and sometimes death. We were told that farm workers cannot have the protection against diazinon of putting on a space suit to try and keep diazinon from their skin—‘That’s not the real world of the farm; don’t you understand?’ After 12 years, diazinon was phased out. Yet for more than 30 years before that it had been known that organophosphates—of which diazinon is one and sarin gas is another—are deadly. We know that two-thirds of all occupational fatalities are from chemically related diseases and by far the majority of these deaths happen in regional Australia. We see time and time again, while those who should know better wait and do nothing, workers harmed and families suffer.

I believe that Safe Work Australia should have discussions with the chemical manufacturers and should be encouraged to work with the people who work with the chemicals to look at the safest solutions. It comes down to cooperation. It is in the interests of all of us to keep workers and the sectors in which they work, including the agricultural sector, in good health. We need to find more solutions, and we can certainly find more solutions if there is less suspicion and more cooperation and if some people’s knee-jerk fear of trade unions was replaced by a sense of gratitude for all comers who wish to assist in making the place safer. After all, if a chemical can harm a worker, if a chemical can creep in through the most stringent safety measures, it should not even be on the market. It is a simple as that.

Indeed, workers need to feel that they can raise safety issues on a daily basis without fear or favour. They must feel confident that OH&S issues will be addressed by management and that their concerns will be taken seriously and dealt with promptly. I like this legislation because I support the empowerment of workers and the protection of their rights—and the right to a safe workplace should be the first and foremost right. The cost to our economy of work related disease has been estimated at $34 billion per year. This is an estimation of only the injuries that have been reported. Other speakers in support of this bill have identified the curse of asbestos, and the high tide of death from that disease has not yet fully hit the shores. But it is fair to say that, by the time asbestos has worked its way through the Australian workforce, more people will die of asbestosis and mesothelioma than died in the whole of World War I.

If we look at all the injuries that occurred beyond those dreadful killers that I have already mentioned, I think that we can do a lot better. When we look at the economic costs of workplace injury, death and disease, we see that they are significant losses. But, when we compare them to the costs of those injured and the effect on their families, workmates and friends, the cost is immeasurable. I think of men I have met before explosions and the catastrophic amputations they suffered, people sitting in rehabilitation wards with no legs and people who have had their lungs burnt to within an inch of their life by dirty aluminium smelt, and I can see the cost of what has happened to them, and the cost to their family and friends. I know the father whose child was born on the night that he was at shift and who came home four weeks later in burns bandages. His child has never seen him in anything other than a full-skin burns suit. I like this legislation because the focus of its reforms are on prevention. We are looking at something which could save the lives of Australian workers who unnecessarily lose their lives every year.

Safe Work Australia will run a communications strategy to raise awareness of health and safety in the workplace and safe practices which minimise harm. It will replace the Australian Safety and Compensation Council established by the Howard government as an advisory council whose functions were confined to coordinating, monitoring and promoting national efforts on health and safety and workers compensation. This new body will have substantive powers and responsibilities, unlike the previous pale imitation. It will develop national policy relating to OH&S and workers compensation, prepare monitor and revise OH&S model legislation and develop compliance and enforcement policies to ensure nationally consistent regulatory approaches across all jurisdictions. It will develop proposals relating to the harmonisation of workers compensation arrangements, collect, analyse and publish OH&S and workers compensation data and undertake and publish research. It will develop national communication strategies to raise the awareness of health and safety at work, and it will further develop the National Occupational and Health Safety Strategy 2002-2012. It will advise the Workplace Relations Ministers Council on these matters.

We will see review and revision of the effectiveness of the authority within the bill. We will ensure that there is an active body operating efficiently and responsibly in meeting its strategic and operational goals. The Rudd government has set itself the task of creating a seamless national economy, unhampered by unnecessary duplication, overlap and difference. The establishment of Safe Work Australia is an essential part of the government’s strategy to improve safety outcomes and workers compensation arrangements across Australia. This government has undertaken a review of the Comcare scheme, set up an independent panel of experts to undertake a national OH&S review and developed a landmark intergovernmental agreement with our state and territory counterparts to harmonise OH&S laws.

This legislation complements the most valuable tool of all in workplace safety. I would like to report to the House that Bill and Melinda Gates have an idea on the drawing board for little robots to travel the length and breadth of mines, quarries, hospitals and civil service buildings. Every hour these little robots would send back weak signals—OH&S messages. Rather than an orderly saying, ‘This doesn’t feel right,’ or perhaps a miner saying, ‘That machine is making a noise different to the one that I have heard every other day I have come here,’ or ‘At the start of my shift, this particular shaft of the mine was popping rocks with a different noise to what it has made every other day,’ imagine a computer that could send back weak signals on an hourly basis to the central mainframe of health and safety. Unfortunately, while this may be a good idea, this computer has not yet been invented. It is a shame, because every conscientious and diligent employer that I know—and 99 per cent of employers are and all of them try to be—would rush to Harvey Norman and buy this software.

These robots are not in the shops; they have not even been invented yet. But they do not need to be invented. What we have every day is the voices, the signals and the knowledge of workers. If we could somehow have a safety system supported by Safe Work Australia that would send the experiences of workers at the workplace and that could be collated by employers who listen—employers who take the time not only to communicate down to their workers but also to listen upwards from their workers—and if we had a system in Australia where bad news in every organisation was as well respected as good news, then I predict that we would not have many more inquiries because we would often prevent the disaster before it occurred.

We already have some of these systems in place. We have delegates and workplace safety officers, many of whom are union trained. In my experience, some of the finest people I have ever met are workplace safety reps who speak up on behalf of the experiences of their fellow workers, often at cost to their own careers and often at cost to their being seen as stirrers, troublemakers or bad news operators. I can think of Percy Pillai, Gavin Merriman, Sam Beechey and Dave Healy. All of these people have done much to promote health and safety in the industries I used to organise in. The list could go on to our offshore reps and to every sector of the economy. It is these people who are the frontline of health and safety. I am excited by this bill and its passage through the House and hopefully into law.

I think that this bill, together with respect for the voices of the experience of working Australians, together with intergovernmental agreement, can usher in a new era of cooperation and collaboration between the Commonwealth and the states in this important area. If we can do nothing else than ensuring that more parents and more families can come home to each other at the end of their shift then I believe that we have done a very good thing in supporting this legislation.

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

I rise to support the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008, and I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister for bringing the bill before the House. As someone who has worked in many different types of jobs—grape picking and shopping trolley collection, labouring on farms and cleaning offices—all of my personal experiences have taught me the value of a safe workplace. I think the value is not just in the peace of mind of workers not constantly fearing for their safety but also in productivity in the workplace as a whole. A safe workplace is a productive workplace. This is because a workplace injury hurts everyone. It hurts the worker injured, their family, their workmates and their firm’s productivity. It is incredibly unsettling for a workplace to have an accident in it. That is why a government that is serious about a worker’s safety is a government that is serious about Australia’s economy and its productivity.

This bill is another example of this government taking strong action to keep Australian workers safe and productive. In support of this bill, I wish to discuss the critical importance of improving workplace safety and workers compensation, particularly in the context of intergovernmental cooperation, but I also want to draw on my experience in the retail industry in particular.

More than 300 Australians are killed at work each year, and many more die as a result of work related disease. Each year over 140,000 Australians are seriously injured at work, and the pain and grief caused to friends and family by the loss of a loved one or the injury of a loved one are unimaginable to those who have not experienced it. Similarly, extreme hardship and struggle can follow a serious injury and have far-reaching effects on both the injured worker and their family, on relationships, on job prospects and on income.

There is absolutely no excuse for inaction when it comes to making workplaces safer for employees, and that is why I support the legislation to replace the Australian Safety and Compensation Council, which is a weak body, with the body Safe Work Australia, which has an increased ability to improve safety outcomes and workers compensation arrangements across the nation. The role of Safe Work Australia will include developing national policy, monitoring legislation and codes of practice, developing consistent enforcement policies and, most importantly, raising awareness of health and safety at the workplace level. This will effectively progress the improvement of workplace safety and workers compensation. Safe Work Australia will be a joint effort between both state and federal government. It is an example of cooperative federalism and a key reform area for the government.

Currently, workplace safety legislation frequently varies in structure and detail depending on which state a worker may reside in. This legislation and the Safe Work Australia body will help to nationalise workplace safety standards, eliminating unnecessary overlaps, duplications and inconsistencies in the structure of OH&S and workers compensation legislation. I can remember that, when I worked for the state minister for workers compensation in South Australia, the South Australian parliament had to pass a territorial bill to make sure that South Australian workers had coverage in other workers compensation jurisdictions. This is to prevent situations like that. This bill will also remove the difficulties workers, businesses and government currently experience when they are dealing with legislation that varies from state to state. As a result, it will ensure that employees are entitled to the same standards, hopefully, in workplace safety and remuneration as their interstate counterparts.

Rules are generally only upheld when they are understood. To have national OH&S legislation and workers compensation is to simplify it. This will result in increased public awareness and understanding of the law, making the system easier to follow and more effective. In effect, simplification and a national approach will lead to increased compliance.

Adding to the cooperation between state and federal government, the funding for Safe Work Australia will be evenly divided, with the Australian government contributing 50 per cent of the budget and the states and territories providing the other half, with the contribution of each state and territory being proportional to its own population. So this legislation is economically sound, and it demonstrates a clear partnership between governments that will benefit the over 3,000 employing businesses based in my electorate of Wakefield. Recently, the Australian Industry Group welcomed the focus of federal and state governments in working together on a system of harmonised OH&S legislation across Australian states and territories, so it is good for business.

This is part of a way of managing Australia’s economy and productivity and, at the same time, protecting the health and safety of workers. I believe the legislation will be a step forward for the government, business and workers and contribute to the government’s plan for a seamless national economy.

There are many references in this debate to heavy industry, building sites and meatworks and many references to asbestos and James Hardie. That is a good thing, but it does tend to obscure some of the other types of workplaces in the nation which are often quite dangerous but not associated with this debate in the popular mind.

Before I entered the House, I had the honour of working as an occupational health and safety officer for the SDA union in South Australia. The SDA has been committed to ensuring that workers are safe when they leave the workplace, as they were when they arrived. The SDA in South Australia has always had a hands-on commitment to safety, working with employers and employees, providing advice and training and, where necessary, being adamant about retail workers’ rights to a safe workplace.

Recently, the South Australian SDA has developed a workplace leadership program which aims to increase the number of health and safety representatives in the retail industry. I wish to recognise the efforts of Peter Malinauskas, the Secretary of the South Australian branch of the SDA, for this initiative. He has been a great leader on safety and other issues in the retail industry. I would also like to commend Reggie Martin, the trainer at the SDA, and Matt Ellis—key people in driving this project.

The retail and fast food industries are far more dangerous than people may realise. Recent statistics from the WorkCover SA Statistical Review showed that wholesale and retail trade employees make up 15.4 per cent of all workers compensation claims throughout 2006-07 in South Australia. These claims totalled $18.52 million in costs. Many young people work in this industry. It is dominated by people between the ages of 15 and 25, and often those workers are exposed to risks that are beyond their experience and beyond what their parents often expect them to face when they are entering work. There is a fairly benign view, I think, of the retail industry, but there are some very serious risks that workers face.

Two of those risks are manual handling and violence in the workplace. One of the emerging manual handling risks concerns the banning of plastic bags in South Australia. Whilst this is an environmentally desirable change to make, it does create new risks for retail workers, for checkout operators in particular, requiring them to lift green bags which are designed for multiple use, are larger than plastic bags, and have a capacity to be almost double in weight. Considering that retail trade employees in Australia make up 16.7 per cent of back injury claims, this does raise serious concerns for the physical health of the workers who will have to lift these bags almost non-stop during their shifts, in some cases, potentially causing injury over time. In addition, the hygiene of these reusable bags cannot always be guaranteed, and I know of many retail workers who have had some interesting amenity issues when dealing with some customers’ bags. I hope that bodies like Safe Work Australia will help to create a framework to address issues like this in a way that is nationally consistent and acknowledges the legitimate concerns of the union and the employees—the people who have to use these bags.

The other major concern for retail workers, which is often not recognised at all in the workplace safety debate, is that of workplace violence. Violence in the workplace can come in a variety of forms, but two of the most common are client aggression—that is, aggression from customers or patrons—and violence associated with robbery, which can include the threat of violence. Reports of workplace violence are particularly common amongst checkout operators and shop managers, as recorded in the WorkCover Statistical Review of 2006-07 and previous years. I think it is the open and accessible nature of retail workplaces which make those working in them extremely vulnerable to robbery, violence and antisocial behaviour. It is difficult to control that open environment.

I know of many incidents in which retail workers have been placed in situations of considerable danger. In one incident in 2004, a shop assistant in Adelaide, in the city’s CBD, was shot dead at her workplace by her estranged partner. It was a really tragic combination of domestic violence and violence in the workplace. It was an incident that led to a great deal of shock, grief and suffering in the workplace, and also for the family. People do not expect to witness that level of violence at work but, in my time as an official with the union, there were many examples of violence and antisocial behaviours in retail workplaces, and of robberies. Sadly, that happens around the nation. So, while those risks are not always acknowledged in the debate about workplace safety, they do have a massive impact on people’s workplaces, on their safety and on their lives at work.

Retail, hospitality and industries like that are part of the new economy. They are a growing part of the economy, with thousands and thousands of employees across the country. I guess it is because of risks like these, which are prevalent in the retail industry, that an active national body like Safe Work Australia is needed to provide nationally consistent approaches to safety issues that affect thousands of workers across the country. In my experience in dealing with employers and employees, safety representatives and other unions, the best way to achieve the highest workplace safety standards is by working in cooperation with employees, employers, businesses, unions and government, rather than by confrontation. I found that, in the main, employers would listen to legitimate issues if workers and companies had a dialogue and had an environment where a dialogue was possible, and that that, rather than the old way of confrontation, was a better way.

I think many of the speeches we have heard—in particular, those of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—were focused so heavily on confrontation that they really missed the importance of this bill. It is a great pity that they could not have brought a bit more goodwill to this debate. The Safe Work Australia Bill achieves a collaborative effort. It allows parties to make significant improvements to workers compensation and to occupational health and safety standards in workplaces across Australia, and I commend the bill to the House.

David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008. I am pleased to join the debate after the member for Wakefield. I listened with great interest to his comments in relation to occupational health and safety matters affecting workers in the retail sector.

When I consider issues of occupational health and safety, I often reflect on some of the more notorious examples, the more publicised examples, where individuals have suffered at the hands of poor practices within their workplaces. I recall not all that long ago in New South Wales a young man by the name of Joel Exner, who was 16. After just three days on the job, he fell 15 metres through a safety net. He did not have the appropriate harness on and, as a consequence of that, ended up dying. I think about cases such as that and about my experience as a young worker. These laws have a greater impact in particular on young people entering the workforce, often because a combination of not only inexperience but also the youthful zeal that comes with coming on to the job for the first time can encourage you to do things that perhaps are not in the best practice. If there are not appropriate practices in place throughout that workplace, that can lead to very dangerous situations.

I recall my first day on the job when I started work at 14 years and nine months. I worked for Target in the retail sector. I recall very well that one of the first jobs I was given was to go out to the loading dock and to bring in a large trolley that was full of tins of paint into the paint department. I was assigned to the paint department, which was the first port of call for any young male worker that joined the job. As I went into the loading dock, I saw this large cage trolley that had all of these tins of paint precariously balanced on the cage. I heard that I was being called over the loudspeaker to bring the paint to the paint department, so there was a sense of urgency. I quickly pulled the trolley off the lift, which was where it was placed, and as it came off the lift all of the paint tins started to tumble. I was very fortunate because I managed to get out of the way. I ended up with paint all over me, which was a pretty embarrassing way to start one’s working life.

I reflect back on that and I think about how lucky I was in those circumstances: new on the job, eager to impress and eager to do the best that I could but also lacking the experience and the supervision. Had I been Joel Exner, in a different type of workplace with the same lack of supervision, with the same set of circumstances that I have just described, I may not be here today. That is something that has always struck me—that we can be very lucky in life and others can be very unlucky. But these matters really should not come down to luck. It should be a question of all workplaces striving to achieve the greatest level of safety to protect those people that go off to earn a living, as we all are required to do and desire to do throughout our working lives.

The sentiments expressed within this bill, along with the agency that it seeks to construct, are sentiments that would be universally supported in this place. I certainly support them. I think one of the great things about this bill is that not only does it have that real focus on delivering better outcomes from an occupational health and safety perspective but it is also very much focused on achieving that by engaging all of the stakeholders. The body that is proposed is tripartite. Safe Work Australia will have the best of all available perspectives, with employer representatives, employee representatives, the chair, the CEO and Commonwealth and state representatives. I think it essential that we have each of the jurisdictions represented in that way because if we are to achieve uniform national laws in this area then it is going to require that level of cooperation.

In relation to the broader issue of safety at work, I was staggered to see some of the statistics. Some figures indicate that approximately 300 Australians are killed each year at work, but I saw some figures that were cited in an Access Economics report that said a staggering 8,000 or more Australians die each year from work related incidents or illnesses. I suspect the definition there is little broader but the force of those figures is such that that is a very large number of people throughout our community affected by a lack of safety within their workplace.

Each year over 140,000 Australians are seriously injured at work and 690,000 are injured or fall sick from work related causes—once again, that is taken from the Access Economics report. In NSW in 2006 there were 89 unpaid fines for serious workplace safety breaches, totalling almost $5 million. In the year from July 2006 to July 2007, 162 people died in workplaces, which was an increase of 157 from the previous year. I note that all of the available data indicates that older workers are at most risk when it comes to the workplace, particularly from the perspective of dying, but I acknowledge the point that I made it little earlier and that is that many young people are susceptible to the dangers of an unsafe workplace, largely because of the inexperience that they bring to the workplace.

The Productivity Commission embarked on a fairly wide-ranging inquiry into this area. Their final report was released in September 1995. Work, Health and Safety: an Inquiry into Occupational Health and Safety was a significant contribution to the debate, and I know that the former government, in response to the recommendations of the Productivity Commission, went about the business of setting up the body which this legislation now repeals—the Australian Safety and Compensation Council. The reports on the effectiveness or otherwise of that body have generally drawn the conclusion that that body was a toothless tiger and really was, in a structural sense, incapable of progressing and moving forward the national reform that is required.

I think it is worth making the point that one of the key reasons why this reform is so necessary and so important is that it is a part of this government’s agenda that we move towards a seamless national economy. There is no justification for maintaining separate and different systems of laws in this area, right across each of the jurisdictions in this country. Those anomalies, those anachronisms that exist, are only highlighted and exacerbated by the increasingly global nature of the community that we live in.

One of the areas that I have a particular interest in is road transport and the lack of safety on our roads, particularly for professional motor vehicle and truck drivers. Recently, I spoke in relation to the AusLink bill that was before the House and detailed some of the safety concerns that I have about the various practices of and the demands on people within the transport industry. I thought the member for Makin made a very salient point on this front a little earlier in the debate when he drew attention to the fact that, when it comes to road transport, state boundaries are of lesser significance than in many other workplaces. A truck driver’s workplace is in the cabin of their vehicle, and that may extend beyond the limits of one state, depending on where their pickup point and drop-off point may be. To have separate systems of laws in each jurisdiction not only overcomplicates the situation—we understand that this is a vestige of Federation—but also imposes a significant compliance cost burden on businesses.

This is one of the important aspects that the Productivity Commission report focused on. The report identified that those compliance costs were a real issue, particularly for businesses whose operations extended beyond the limits of one state. Some 39,000 multistate businesses had been identified back when that report was released and the overwhelming consensus of those businesses that participated in the consultation process was that there was a real need to overhaul the existing set of arrangements of various systems operating in respect of each of the jurisdictions. The cost to the economy was estimated by the Productivity Commission as being in the vicinity of $34 billion a year. That is the cost of a lack of safety in workplaces and the cost of not having uniform legislation with minimal compliance costs. So the costs to our economy are significant. Obviously the focus needs to be on ensuring safety in all workplaces, but that safety need not come at a greater cost than is required. Ensuring that we move towards harmonisation of our laws in this area will take us a long way towards achieving that objective.

One additional point that I would like to make in relation to the issue of business compliance is that, anecdotally in my discussions with various individuals involved in occupational health and safety risk management in industry, I have been receiving feedback that those particular companies whose operations extend beyond the limits of one state invariably seek to try—where a good, law-abiding corporate citizen is involved—to achieve the highest possible standard. They look at the jurisdiction that has the highest standard and they try to meet that across all of their operations. That is a noble objective and one that should be encouraged. The downside is that, if they are competing against other operators that are operating within the limits of only one particular state which may not have the same degree of regulation or which may not require such a high standard of practice, then those competitors may well have a competitive advantage. I do not think anyone in this place would like to see a player within the market having a competitive advantage because they are able to take advantage of lower standards when it comes to ensuring safety within the workplace, but I am advised by those in the sector that is sometimes the case.

I mentioned earlier that the forerunner to this body had been described by various groups as a toothless tiger. The table in section 6 sets out a number of items that identify the various functions that are to be conferred on Safe Work Australia. Item 2 refers to model OHS legislation and outlines the function:

… to prepare a model Act and model regulations relating to OHS and, if necessary, revise them:

(a)

for approval by the Ministerial Council; and

(b)

for adoption as laws of the Commonwealth, each of the States and each of the Territories.

Item 3 refers to the model OHS codes of practice; item 5, to policy dealing with compliance and enforcement of approved model OHS legislation; and item 6, to monitoring adoption of approved model OHS legislation in jurisdictions. There are various other items there, but the real focus of this bill and the powers conferred on this new body will be to seriously progress the agenda of harmonisation of laws in the occupational health and safety and workers compensation areas. The former body did not really have the powers to allow it to move forward and progress that agenda. As a consequence of the intergovernmental agreement that was entered into as recently as July of this year between the Commonwealth and the states, we see a new-found impetus to progress that agenda. This bill really does pick up on the various commitments that were given by the parties to that intergovernmental agreement and will hopefully provide the mechanism for progressing that agenda in the not too distant future.

Before I conclude, I just want to reflect on a case that has frequently been brought to my attention in the occupational health and safety context: the Viegas family. As a result of losing her husband just a few years ago, Mrs Viegas has been a tireless campaigner when it comes to occupational health and safety issues. Her husband, a 28-year-old at the time and a father of two young children, was killed at work. He died after cutting through a live wire at a Central Coast Westfield shopping centre. He had been told that the wire had been disconnected at the power board. Four and a half years down the track, I understand that Mrs Viegas is still campaigning for some justice in her particular case. The harsh reality of those circumstances—the fact that a young father, a young husband, did not return home at the end of his day—and the consequences that obviously flow from it, are something that I am sure the family, even 4½ years down the track, are only beginning to come to terms with.

These are the sorts of very unfortunate, tragic outcomes that can sometimes flow from a lack of safety in the workplace. I certainly hope and believe that the measures contained in this bill will go some way towards making our workplaces safer—first and foremost by giving us as a nation the mechanisms to drive forward with greater uniformity and greater harmonisation of our laws and to extend that harmonisation of laws to workplaces right across this country. Each and every workplace in this country deserves to be as safe as the community deem they should be. It is in that context that I support the bill.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment Participation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank members for their contribution to this cognate debate on the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008. At the outset I would like to remind members that this legislation will give effect to the Intergovernmental Agreement for Regulatory and Operational Reform in Occupational Health and Safety agreed by COAG on 3 July this year. I also note that very little has been said by members opposite about that historic agreement during the course of this debate. The intergovernmental agreement is a watershed in Commonwealth-state relations. For the first time, governments from each state and territory and the Commonwealth have formally committed to the harmonisation of OH&S laws and the implementation of uniform OH&S legislation, complemented by consistent approaches to compliance and enforcement.

The Australian government recognises that occupational health and safety is primarily a state and territory government responsibility and that true reform in this area can be achieved only with the Commonwealth, state and territory governments working cooperatively, as partners rather than as adversaries. The intergovernmental agreement ushered in a new era of cooperation and collaboration between the Commonwealth and the states and territories—a collaboration which will improve the health and safety of workers across Australia and reduce the complexity of regulation for businesses.

All members who have spoken to this legislation have accepted that Australia’s health, safety and compensation systems are unnecessarily complex and costly. Inconsistencies between the jurisdictions mean that some workers are at risk of poorer safety standards than their counterparts in other states. At the same time, these inconsistencies increase the complexity, paperwork and costs for the 39,000 Australian businesses that operate across state boundaries. The establishment of Safe Work Australia is an essential first step towards improving safety outcomes and workers compensation arrangements across Australia. Safe Work Australia will be an independent national body with an inclusive, tripartite membership. It will have 15 members, including an independent chair, nine members representing the Commonwealth and each state and territory, two members representing the interests of workers, two representing the interests of employers, and a CEO. Safe Work Australia will have its own staff and will operate under the Commonwealth’s accountability and governance frameworks. Safe Work Australia will play a pivotal role in realising the shared commitment of the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments to work together to achieve harmonisation of OH&S laws. It will have the important task of developing a model OH&S act, model regulations and model codes of practice for approval by workplace relations ministers.

The opposition has sought to deflect attention from its own appalling record in the area of occupational health and safety by arguing that Safe Work Australia has been designed to fail in achieving its objectives. They have questioned the composition of Safe Work Australia and the voting rules relating to the model OH&S legislation. They have claimed that the legislation is fundamentally flawed because it creates an imbalance between the representatives of the state and territory governments, on the one hand, and the representatives of employers and employees on the other. They have also claimed that these rules reduce the role and effectiveness of the workers’ and employers’ representatives. Contrary to what the members opposite would have this House believe, Safe Work Australia will be a genuine tripartite body. There will be two employer and two employee representatives on Safe Work Australia. The Commonwealth, states and territories will have only one representative each. With two members each from worker and employer bodies, the social partners will continue to play a significant role in the decision making and effectiveness of Safe Work Australia.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition contends that government representatives will be able to repeatedly override legitimate concerns raised by the social partners during OH&S harmonisation discussions. Not so. All questions will be decided by a two-thirds majority of the votes of members present and voting at a meeting. In the highly unlikely event that there is a split between the states and territories on the one hand and the employer and employee representatives on the other, the independent chair will have the deciding vote. Questions relating to the model OH&S legislation will require an absolute majority of all voting members who represent the Commonwealth, states and territories. This is as it should be because it is the Commonwealth, states and territories that will be required to enact the model OH&S laws.

What the members opposite have failed to acknowledge is that the composition of Safe Work Australia and the voting rules were agreed by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments as part of the negotiations on the Intergovernmental Agreement for Regulatory and Operational Reform in Occupational Health and Safety. They have conveniently overlooked the commitment demonstrated by the states and territories by negotiating the intergovernmental agreement. They have also conveniently overlooked the fact that the state and territory governments will be contributing 50 per cent of the funding for Safe Work Australia—another example of the cooperative approach adopted by this government. The opposition has also criticised the fact that Safe Work Australia is reliant on the cooperation and participation of the ministerial council to which it is required to directly report. The government makes no apology for this. If Australia is to have a harmonised set of OH&S laws, then it will only do so with the agreement of the states and territories. The ministerial council will have the responsibility to agree, by consensus, to the model OH&S legislation proposed by Safe Work Australia. Unless at least a majority of jurisdictional representatives on Safe Work Australia support the proposed model OH&S legislation, it is unlikely that the ministerial council would reach agreement by consensus.

The members opposite have also sought to misrepresent the reporting arrangements that apply to Safe Work Australia. Opposition members would have this House believe that the government is unwilling to report back to parliament on Safe Work Australia’s operations—that it would only do so every six years. This completely misrepresents the reporting requirements contained in the legislation, so allow me to correct the record. The provision latched onto by the members opposite relates to the review of Safe Work Australia’s ongoing role and function after a period of six years. Like any other body established by the Australian government, Safe Work Australia will be required to produce an annual report. This will be the responsibility of the CEO. The CEO will be required to provide an annual report to the minister, to Safe Work Australia and to the ministerial council. The annual report will, of course, be a public document. I am happy to provide an undertaking to this House to table a copy of Safe Work Australia’s annual report.

Occupational health and safety and workers compensation are too important to be neglected any longer. Workers’ lives and health are at stake and so too is the efficiency of our economy. Occupational health and safety and workers compensation reform will increase profitability and productivity and better protect the lives and health of Australians. Safe Work Australia will play a pivotal role in this reform. I therefore commend the bills to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.