Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendments be disagreed to.

The amendments moved by the Senate to the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 are opposed by the government, and they are opposed by the government for one simple reason: in July this year, the Council of Australian Governments agreed to a historic decision—that is, to take action, finally, on harmonising occupational health and safety laws around this country. This has been a long sought after reform. Indeed, it was so long sought after that it made an appearance on the agenda of the former Liberal government, the Howard government, but like so many other things that appeared on the Howard government’s agenda the Howard government talked but got nothing done.

In February 2006, when the Howard government was in office, COAG did agree to develop strategies to improve the development and uptake of national occupational health and safety standards. But after that agreement there was no effective further action. It therefore fell to this government to actually commence a reform that has been long sought after—long sought after by the business community and long sought after by those who care passionately about occupational health and safety standards for Australian workers.

In entering into the Intergovernmental Agreement for Regulatory and Operational Reform in Occupational Health and Safety, the Commonwealth entered a very specific agreement with our state and territory colleagues. It was a specific agreement about the creation of a new body, the subject of this legislation, Safe Work Australia. We also, as part of that agreement, agreed that we would use our best endeavours to have enacted the legislation required to establish Safe Work Australia as outlined in the intergovernmental agreement. That is, in order to reach a historic agreement with our state and territory colleagues, we agreed with them on the shape of Safe Work Australia and we agreed with them that we would use our best endeavours to ensure legislation passed in the form that they wanted—a Safe Work Australia in the form that they were expecting.

I understand that in the lead-up to the making of the intergovernmental agreement various participants in the discussions may have had different views. That is to be expected when the Commonwealth, states and territories are working on a historic deal—that people would come to the table with differing perspectives—but the essence of moving in this area, and indeed the essence of ending the blame game between the Commonwealth and states and territories, is for people to sit around a table, make an agreement and then for that agreement to be adhered to. The Commonwealth will adhere to the things we agree to do in the intergovernmental agreement. That means that we will seek passage of the Safe Work Australia Bill unamended by the amendments that are before the House today because that delivers on the obligations the Commonwealth took upon itself in entering into this agreement.

I would note that the amendments that have been moved and appear before the House today are also amendments that do not come to this parliament in a good spirit. As I indicated in the parliament last week and as the leaked shadow cabinet submission of the Liberal Party makes clear, these amendments are not motivated by a desire to improve this legislation; they are motivated by a desire to put provisions into the legislation that will ultimately derail this process. This is unacceptable to the government and should be unacceptable to anyone who cares about occupational health and safety harmonisation. The government says that these amendments should be disagreed to. The government will pursue passage of this bill in the form that the government presented it—without these amendments in it. Should it be necessary, because the Liberal Party pursues this course of folly, the government will not further proceed with this bill. The government will report to COAG that occupational health and safety harmonisation has been derailed by the Liberal Party and the process delayed. And the government will ensure that that is reported to the business community and that the business community understands the spoiler role the Liberal Party has taken.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nothing could portray the arrogance and contempt that this government has for this parliament more that a refusal to entertain these very simple amendments that make the government’s existing legislation better. The whole world is telling you that you are wrong: in this case the opposition, the Greens, the Independent senators—and that, quite frankly, is an unlikely alliance—the ACTU and ACCI. They are all saying that the government has got this wrong, yet the government is refusing to listen. This is exactly what the Deputy Prime Minister is doing: refusing to listen. The Deputy Prime Minister is walking away from safety consultation at the highest level by refusing to incorporate the Senate amendments of her Safe Work Australia Bill 2008. The bill has been amended because the bill is fundamentally flawed.

I would just like to comment on what the Deputy Prime Minister was saying with regard to this leaked shadow cabinet submission that she keeps referring to. As unseemly as it is for the Deputy Prime Minister to be rummaging around in my bins, I am very happy for her to table this submission and then the Australian people can make a judgement. I am very happy for her to table this leaked cabinet submission, then everyone can make a judgement and see that what she is claiming about that submission is completely and utterly false. When the ACTU, ACCI, the Greens and the Independent senators are all supporting these amendments, yet the minister absolutely refuses to entertain them, that is just being bloody-minded and stubborn.

Labor has sold out Australian workers and industry in the interests of placating particular state bureaucracies. The Deputy Prime Minister is refusing to accept that a process that does not seek to actively engage employers and workers in a meaningful way will not bring safety improvements necessary for Australian workplaces. The whole point of an effective occupational health and safety regime is that it encourages employers and employees to take responsibility for safety within their own workplaces. It is widely acknowledged that this approach is the best approach to create safe workplaces. The government’s bill, before it was amended, did not even contain a set of objects for this new body, Safe Work Australia. Contrary to what the Deputy Prime Minister was saying, the opposition is supportive of a national occupational health and safety regime. The reality is that it will be the government that will be holding up this process if they stubbornly and unnecessarily refuse to countenance these sensible Senate amendments. They are amendments that were supported by every other member of the Senate with the exception of government senators, and, as I have said, they are also supported by the ACTU and ACCI—again, as unlikely an alliance as the alliance that we have formed in the Senate to amend this bill.

I will go through what these amendments are—these shocking amendments that the government will not even consider. The amendments outline the objects of the new body, Safe WorkAustralia. They do this because surely it makes sense to highlight to the Australian what the new body exists for. The minister was saying that somehow this is going to imperil the intergovernmental agreement, but she refuses to even go back and consult the states about what these amendments might mean. She would have more credibility if she walked in here and said, ‘We’ve gone back to the states and they find that it’s unacceptable,’ yet all we are seeing is stubbornness and a refusal to even look at the amendments.

The amendments also restore effective levels of representation to employer and employee representatives. The term that people use is ‘social partners’. This is, quite frankly, possibly the most important part of the amendments. As I have said, it is ultimately the responsibility of employers and employees to secure workplace safety. They need to adopt a culture in which they take shared responsibility for the safety of their workplace. We can sit here in this place and legislate ad nauseam but nothing is as important as this cultural acceptance by employers and employees that workplace safety is their responsibility. I will be happy to run through some of the other amendments as this debate continues. (Time expired)

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In respect of the proposition that the amendments be disagreed to, the contribution by the shadow minister for workplace relations shows that he simply does not understand what is at the centre of this debate. We live in a democracy. I know that that passes the opposition by when they lose elections and determine in their arrogance that they should still be running the place. Something that the Liberal Party might like to reflect on is that we have a system in which governments are elected. Ministers in portfolio areas come together in ministerial councils. Under the former Howard government, what used to happen is that ministers came together in those ministerial councils and nothing got done, because of the unreasonableness, incompetence and laziness of the Howard government. Under this government, we are meeting in ministerial councils and COAG and getting things done.

Most particularly, we are committed in this area to harmonising occupational health and safety laws. To give you an idea of how quickly we are moving in this area after more than a decade of incompetence and nothing getting done, we are committed to the delivery of an exposure draft of model laws in May 2009. We are committed to those model laws going to the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council in September 2009. Anybody who knows anything about this area knows that that is the undertaking of a huge amount of work in a limited time period. Consequently, there is not a day to waste if we are going to deliver on this major agenda for businesses and working people in this country.

What the opposition is effectively asking the government to do is to not adhere to its word as given when it entered the intergovernmental agreement and to stop proceeding with this legislation to enter new rounds of discussions, inevitably leading to a new intergovernmental agreement. Even if that were possible—and that is an if—it would occasion major time delay. The opposition is standing here trying to pretend that somehow these are just sensible amendments that do not go to the heart of what was agreed between governments. But these amendments go to things like who is represented and in what numbers on Safe Work Australia.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They guffaw in their arrogance. The amendments go to the voting majorities that will make decisions in Safe Work Australia. These things were worked through in great detail by the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council. As I said when I first spoke in the parliament, people came to that table with different views. You would expect that. But the essence of entering an intergovernmental agreement is that people sit round a table, have a discussion, someone gives a bit, another person gives a bit and an agreement is made. That is what happened around the table of the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council. It resulted in this historic agreement, something that the Howard government could never deliver.

Now it has been brought to the parliament because we want to get on with this process of harmonising laws. If the Liberal Party, with its improper motivations in relation to this matter, as revealed by a shadow cabinet submission, stays committed—

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Training and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order, Mr Speaker. Out of the words of the Deputy Prime Minister, to suggest that any member of parliament has improper motives is disorderly and should be done by way of a substantive motion.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. The member will resume his seat.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the Liberal Party remains committed to this folly, then the position that we will end up in is that this legislation will not be further proceeded with at this stage and the Liberal Party will have derailed national occupational health and safety. (Time expired)

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It appears that the Deputy Prime Minister is going to stick to the idea that somehow governments around Australia can just sit down, nut out an agreement and then expect the parliament—not matter what has been decided—to just rubber stamp it. Why even bother having this chamber and why even bother having the other chamber if the federal government will just sit down with their state Labor mates—of course, with the exception now in Western Australia—hammer out an agreement and then expect, no matter what is decided, the parliament to accept it. I think that logic is profoundly undemocratic. For once, you will find me defending the very important prerogatives of the Senate.

I think it is very important that we outline the amendments. Again I would invite the Deputy Prime Minister to table the leaked cabinet submission that she keeps crowing about. I would be very happy for her to table it. She seems to think that that means we have improper motives. It says nothing of the sort. I would be very happy for her to table this alleged document. Then people could actually make a judgement about whether or not we have improper motives. We support the idea of a national OH&S system and, through these amendments, we are trying to improve the legislation that the government seems to think the parliament just has to accept no matter what.

I talked in my earlier contribution about the representation of the social partners on Safe Work Australia. I would be very interested in who the government thinks might best represent workers and employers on this body, because apparently they cannot decide that it should be the ACTU and ACCI. The Senate is being able to help them do that. These are appropriate representatives of employers and workers in this country. They are acknowledged as the peak bodies. If the Deputy Prime Minister has a different view about who should represent workers then we would be very happy to hear it. But we think it is sensible that it be the ACTU, as that is a role they have traditionally played. I would be very happy to hear it if she thinks they are not a genuine representative of workers or if there is a better representative body in Australia to sit on this body and represent the interests of workers.

With these amendments we—in conjunction with our partners in the Senate—are trying to stop the employers and the employees being drowned out by state government bureaucracies by introducing a more balanced voting process. It will help employers and employees engage with this process rather than be just appendages who will sit there and be consistently drowned out by state government bureaucracies. We have also moved to improve the independence of the social partners on this body. The government’s bill said that they will have a power of veto over anyone who is nominated to this committee. If ACCI wants to nominate somebody or if the ACTU wants to nominate a particular representative and the government does not like them, they will just say, ‘No, they cannot sit on Safe Work Australia.’ How can they be independently represented if that is the case?

We have also moved to improve the independence of the CEO, freeing him from unnecessary ministerial interference that could imperil his job if he was doing something that the government did not like. We think that is important because it gives him or her freedom of action to do their job without incurring ministerial displeasure. Let us say you were the CEO of this new body and you were pursuing a course that the government of the day did not like. Of course, this government will not always be the government of Australia; that will change over time. We believe that the CEO should have the capacity to act without having hanging over his head the threat of losing his job. These are all very sensible amendments designed to facilitate a fairer and more effective move towards a national OH&S system. They enhance the engagement of the very people within our community who are responsible for delivering workplace safety—that is, employers and employees.

The Deputy Prime Minister continues to hide behind this alleged commitment to the intergovernmental agreement and does not even countenance accepting these Senate amendments, yet she refuses to go back and engage with the states about whether they might accept them. We have had some indication that some of the states might accept these amendments, but she is too arrogant to even ask the question. You would have more credibility if you walked into this chamber and said, ‘I’ve gone back to the states; this will imperil the intergovernmental agreement.’ The reality is that you cannot even do that. I would be very interested if you would outline which of the amendments you feel does imperil the intergovernmental agreement. (Time expired)

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I say again: at heart this is a simple proposition and one that members of the Liberal Party ought to be capable of understanding. Proposition No. 1: the intergovernmental agreement that I am referring to is not a creature of state bureaucracies. The shadow minister might want to come to the dispatch box and say that because he thinks it diminishes it, but it is simply not true. The intergovernmental agreement was talked about in great detail at the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council, a meeting of elected representatives from elected governments around the country.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senators are elected representatives!

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The shadow minister refers to senators. I can give him a little tip on the functioning of democracy in this country: there will never be an elected government formed entirely of senators. In order to be the government, you need to have the majority in this House of Representatives and you need to have the majority in the lower houses around the country. You need to be the government that the people voted for. When the elected representatives of elected governments around the country met, they worked on this agreement. It is not the creature of state bureaucracies; it is the creature of elected representatives. Yes, people had different views. Yes, there was lively discussion. In order to reach agreement, some people had to compromise on one thing or another thing and a consensus emerged. That consensus is in the intergovernmental agreement and we, the Commonwealth government—the national government—said in the course of making the agreement and as part of the agreement’s terms that we would come to this parliament with our best endeavours to turn what was agreed about the composition of this body, what was agreed about the voting structures of this body and what was agreed about the management and oversight of this body into law, and the Safe Work Australia Bill represents that agreement.

If, as the opposition is suggesting, we should go back and have these discussions again then what I am indicating to the opposition is that that has the potential to derail this process for many months. We are committed to an ambitious timetable of reform, with model laws as an exposure draft going to the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council during the course of next year, something the Howard government wanted to do and spectacularly failed to achieve. I understand the Liberal Party might have their views about what they would have said had they been in these meetings of elected representatives. But the reality is that the Liberal Party, because they are not the government of this country—and at some point they might want to consider that—were not in those meetings as those arrangements were being made. So the choice for the Liberal Party is a very clear one. They have expressed their view; I understand that. They have come to this parliament and have had an opportunity, in both the House and the Senate, to express their view, but ultimately the decision for them is a very clear one. Having expressed their view will they accept that the government, in line with the commitments it gave in the intergovernmental agreement, is going to pursue this legislation in the form in which it brought it to the parliament so we can acquit our obligations under the intergovernmental agreement and keep it moving, or are the Liberal Party going to dig in and prevent that? I am going to say once again to members of the Liberal party: if you do that, the government will report to the Council of Australian Governments and to the Australian business community that the occupational health and safety harmonisation process has been derailed by the Liberal Party.

I say, too, that the shadow minister—who I know has not been in this place for that long a time, but he was here in the last parliament—would recall the way in which the Howard government treated this chamber, and he may like to think, as he comes to the dispatch box engaging in rants and raves about the way in which parliament is proceeding, about some of the things that happened under the Howard government with his support. Can I remind him, for example, of the ramming through of the Work Choices bill. (Time expired)

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Training and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendments to the Safe Work Australia Bill 2008. There will be times during your period in government when you will have to admit that you got it wrong and you will have to come into this chamber and eat humble pie. Unfortunately we have a minister for whom such an admission runs right across her DNA. What we are considering is the whole area of occupational health and safety, and at the centre of occupational health and safety and the governance arrangements is that they are tripartite arrangements. Everyone understands that. It is government, employers and employees.

The only argument we have heard in favour of this is that, essentially, this has been made as part of the intergovernmental agreement. What we can say to the minister is: you had an existing governance structure that was already there when you came into government, and it provided three representatives for the ACTU and three representatives for the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. We do not know what your proposal was to COAG. We do not know if your proposal was initially to reduce the numbers of workers’ representatives and employers’ representatives to COAG or if that is something that you traded at COAG. But what we are saying is that this is wrong. In an area like occupational health and safety it takes a real genius to find a way—an area in which we are broadly supportive of a harmonised occupational health and safety system. Yet what we see from this minister is that she has managed to provide a structure which is not going to be able to get the outcomes. As much as the minister would like to be in every workplace in Australia, in actuality any government relies on employers and employees.

You need to have a look at how isolated the Labor Party leadership is on this issue. When it went to the Senate, these amendments were supported by the Greens and by Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding. They are supported by the ACTU and they are supported by ACCI. What we are saying as an opposition is that you need to say that you got it wrong, because you are completely isolated on this, Minister. We believe that in the area of occupational health and safety, having a truly tripartite governance arrangement makes a lot of sense.

A number of the other amendments are good amendments, but I think that the most important one is making sure that there is a fair representation from all stakeholders. What is required is for the minister to go back to COAG. We have a COAG meeting in November and a COAG meeting in December. The minister can go back to the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council. The whole idea that this rests on an intergovernmental agreement shows an enormous degree of arrogance and hubris from a government which has only run 11 months of its course. What we are saying is that the ACTU should have greater representation on this body. What is your objection to that, Minister? What is your objection to maintaining the same representation for the ACTU as was already there on the Australian Safety and Compensation Council when you came to government? These amendments are about improving the structure. There is a role here for the parliament. The parliament is not a silent partner. We are not a rubber stamp to this minister or this government. The parliament has a role. Workers should have greater representation on Safe Work Australia and so should employers. You need to address why you object to having a greater representation from the ACTU on Safe Work Australia and why, when you came to government, you cut the representation from what existed for the preceding body. (Time expired)

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

Who wants the call?

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very happy to go again.

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

I remind the House that if you want the call you need to be on your feet.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I actually thought that the government might have said something more to defend their intransigence over these Senate amendments, but astonishingly they seem to have run out of argument. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Deputy Prime Minister has consistently repeated the importance of the intergovernmental agreement, yet in her own legislation she has failed to include some of the provisions that were negotiated in this intergovernmental agreement. Apparently she is so wedded to this idea of the intergovernmental agreement—and she is using that as a further reason for refusing to even look at these sensible Senate amendments—yet once we take a closer look at her implementation of the intergovernmental agreement into legislation in this place it is revealed that she has failed to follow the intergovernmental agreement in a number of areas. The Deputy Prime Minister has failed to include in the legislation a requirement to provide the parliament with an annual report on the progress and the achievements of the new authority. The Deputy Prime Minister comes into this place, announces that it is impossible for this parliament to change the intergovernmental agreement and yet we find that she herself has not even followed it in preparing her own legislation.

It is outrageous arrogance for this government to come in and just expect the parliament to rubber stamp whatever it has decided in consultation with fellow state Labor governments. It is outrageous arrogance to think that the Senate or this House has no role to play in improving legislation. Why even have the Senate if the government is just going to sit down with its state Labor mates—with the exception of Western Australia—hammer out an agreement and then come back to this place and say, ‘You have to accept this agreement or the whole process stalls’, even though the government has not even accepted all of the intergovernmental agreement in preparing its own legislation.

The Safe Work Australia Bill 2008 is fundamentally flawed. It is fundamentally flawed because it refuses to outline the objects of the new body, it refuses to grant independence to the social partners—in this case the ACTU and ACCI—and it refuses to give them any leeway to nominate their own representatives to this body. The amendments restore effective levels of representation to employers and employees and they introduce a balanced voting process which is designed to engage the very people who need to be engaged when it comes to occupational health and safety—that is, the people who actually occupy workplaces in Australia. It is workers and employers, not people who sit around in legislatures, who are not at the front line of this. We cannot legislate for safety in Australian workplaces ad nauseam without buying in from employers and employees. These amendments also ensure that workers and industry are effectively and ably represented. They free these bodies from unnecessary ministerial interference and they free the CEO from unnecessary interference also. They establish an audit committee to examine the finances and the expenditure of Safe Work Australia, something that you would think this government, which talks about accountability, might support—but, no, apparently not in this instance. The Deputy Prime Minister just continues to hide behind her commitment to this intergovernmental agreement as some sort of catch-all for the fact that this parliament apparently has no role whatsoever in the legislative process.

When you have an alliance between the opposition, the Greens and the Independents in the Senate and when they are supported in what they have decided to do by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Australian Council of Trade Unions—a body not necessarily noted for its friendliness towards the Liberal and National parties in this country—then it takes a particular kind of arrogance and a particular stubbornness just to say: ‘We will not even entertain any of these amendments. We refuse to go back to the states and talk to them about this even though we have information that the states might not necessarily mind. All we will do is come in here, insist that we are right and that the rest of the world is wrong and we will refuse to countenance these sensible amendments’—amendments that make the Deputy Prime Minister’s legislation better.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I say to the Liberal Party members who have spoken that hypocrisy is thick in the air in this chamber today. If the Liberal Party had cared so passionately about occupational health and safety over 12 long years of government, you would have thought they would have got something done. But they did not. And then when you hear the Liberal Party in this place saying that somehow they care about the representation of the union movement, you know you smell a rat. You know that you smell a rat because we watched the Liberal Party over 12 long years, particularly in the Work Choices period, act to ensure that people were denied appropriate representation by trade unions. As much as anything else they were of course dedicated to disadvantaging working Australians; they were of course dedicated to making sure that 16- and 17-year-olds in their first job could be ripped off fundamentally by their first Australian workplace agreement—and they laugh with delight at that prospect; and they were of course dedicated to the destruction of the Australian trade union movement. So when the Liberal Party come into this place and say that somehow they have had a road to Damascus conversion, that they now care about the representation of the trade union movement on a body like Safe Work Australia, you will forgive me if I say that I smell a rat.

The rat that I smell has been made very clear by the leaked shadow cabinet briefing, because we actually find the true motivations of the Liberal Party in the document that went for internal discussions to its highest council in opposition, the shadow cabinet.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: to stop the Deputy Prime Minister deliberately misleading this chamber again, I invite her to table that document, and people can make their own judgement about its contents.

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

There is no point of order. The member for Stirling will resume his seat.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Their own internal document from the opposition’s highest decision-making body, the shadow cabinet, says that the proposed amendments are to ‘assist in defeating future policy proposals by State or Federal Labor’. So that is what it is all about. I referred to it in parliament last week, and that is their true motivation. With that true motivation revealed, what is being said in this debate I think can be viewed with some clarity. What this is about is pursuing a set of amendments which, if adopted, they think would so flaw this process that it would be derailed. What I am saying very clearly to the Liberal Party is that the government is committed to delivering on the intergovernmental agreement.

Much of this debate has proceeded as if it is something about decisions I have made independently of others and something that I have determined personally. Of course that is not the case. What happened here is that elected representatives from elected governments around the country sat around a table and worked out the best way forward. People compromised and exchanged views, and we got to the intergovernmental agreement that is before the parliament as the foundation stone for the bill before the parliament. So we are delivering on that intergovernmental agreement. We gave our word to use our best endeavours to do that. We will do that. I counsel the Liberal party against digging in and derailing the occupational health and safety process, because we will make that very clear at COAG and to the business community. With those words, I move:

That the question be now put.

Question put.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the reasons for the House of Representatives disagreeing to the amendments of the Senate, and I move:

That the reasons be adopted.

Question agreed to.