Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my great pleasure to rise to speak in the debate on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014. Before we got to the details of the bill, we had the unfortunate circumstance of sitting through the contributions from the member for Griffith and the member for Corio last night. I would like to make some comments on the contributions from that side of the chamber.

Certainly, the proposition put forward that Comcare simply do not have enough inspectors to enforce this legislation is plain wrong. My understanding is that, effectively, every state has some accreditors and inspectors from the state population who can enforce not only this legislation, but the state legislation and a whole pile of other things—including electrical safety acts and a wide range of legislation, including Comcare legislation. I wonder how those opposite think that this has been done for the last 15 years or more. Quite simply, we have public servants; we have federal activities; we have federal ownership of assets all over this country. Comcare has been providing those services for well over a decade, to the best of my knowledge. So it is quite simply outrageous that opposition members make these claims.

I will now turn to the bill itself. This is a bill which effectively allows employers who operate over multiple jurisdictions to insure through one agency, which is Comcare. It is about reducing red tape. As someone who has worked in the industry for many, many years, I know that it is exceptionally difficult for companies to cross state borders and operate across a range of legislation. I will give you some very simple examples. Currently—and these are some changes that we have just made—if you wish to construct a building which has a contribution from the Commonwealth valued at over $5 million you need to be a construction firm which is accredited with the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner. Unfortunately, to gain an accreditation with the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner it takes a substantial amount of people and money, and you then need to maintain that accreditation. When you cross the border to Queensland, for example, you need to be accredited under what is called the PQC system for construction in Queensland. Not only do you need federal safety accreditation but you also need to be a prequalified contractor between levels 1 and 4.

The other issue that we have is that in regional areas projects like this simply cannot be built by a local builder—someone who could easily do the work and someone who is accredited inside one of the state systems. Unfortunately, they do not have the capacity to pay to be accredited at the federal level.

This is a good piece of legislation. It provides an opportunity for a large organisation to simply have one system for insurance which looks after their employees. If staff such as electricians in these organisations—and this is a different set of legislation—are moved around different states, they need to be relicensed in other areas. Quite simply, you could be working at the southern end of the country. If you gain employment at a large construction project in the northern end of the country, you would then need to pay for a whole lot of licensing to be accredited in that state as well.

So it is not just around this legislation that this is an issue. It costs an enormous amount of money and it adds onto something that is commonly known as pass-through. Unfortunately, pass-through is costing the Australian taxpayer an enormous amount of money. It means that every organisation that gets involved in a project from top to bottom takes their little piece—their little cut—as they are entitled to. Pass-through could add up to 30 or 40 per cent. Unfortunately, that means that you get less value on the ground. An absolutely outrageous example of this was the BER projects put forward by the opposition when they were in government. BER projects were some of the most expensive projects I have ever seen. Pass-through on those projects was enormous. The actual square-metre rate was outrageous. There were lots of builders who made an enormous amount of money on things which were unnecessary.

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, very much. The cost to the taxpayer is important. The bill deals with a number of different areas, including, for example, changes around serious and wilful misconduct. I do not think that it is reasonable, and I am sure that the people of Australia would not think that it is reasonable, that if you leave your workplace in your lunch hour and you go down the road and perform hang-gliding—or go rock-climbing, go for a run, or play Rugby League—you would expect the employer to cover these things if you are injured. Quite simply, this is a good change and it is something that should be supported.

The responsibility for self is something I think we have lost over some decades. You should be responsible for yourself and the actions that you take. The multiple layers of legislation—whether it in OHS, WorkCover or common law—makes it very, very difficult for people to be self-aware. One of the complaints I get from tradesmen, in particular—older tradesmen who have been around for some time—is that the skill base has been lost by those in the younger generation. The things that they need, to have to be safe and to be able to perform the activities that are required, have been lost. Older tradesmen talk about working at heights as something which they were trained in. Now it is something that you receive a certificate for, which in my view is just unhelpful. Unfortunately, all of these layers of legislation result in reams and reams of paperwork for these organisations.

As someone who has been a lead auditor, accredited with RAB/QSA, to assess construction sites and a whole pile of other activities, I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that what this results in is risk-shifting. Quite simply, organisations now try to ensure that they pass audit to be able to get their work done, because if they do not pass audit they quite simply get knocked off the list and no longer win any more construction projects. There are ways that they manage to do this. For instance, as an auditor, you will roll up to the site and in some circumstances there will be no workers there, because on that day they just happen to be unavailable, or the concrete pour was not ready and so they all had the day off. You end up at a site which is literally empty. There is no machinery, no equipment, but there is an office full of paperwork for you to look through. Now, paperwork, unfortunately, does not help in improving OHS risks.

I heard the contribution from the member for Griffith and I agree that 159 deaths or any death in a workplace is unacceptable. However, as someone who has been involved in investigating any number of these things, unfortunately, it is atypical that it is something very simple which causes a fatality. A person steps forward, they step back, they step sideways and they do not look, and that is something which is very difficult to manage and control. It is an absolute tragedy for their families; it is a tragedy for the organisation; it is bad for morale; and it is bad all round for the nation. I agree 100 per cent that we do not want any fatalities in workplaces. The member for Griffith also commented on common law damages in Queensland and how there might be opportunities for these to shift; they are not available under Comcare. Unfortunately, the best benefit out of common law goes to funding lawyers. Lawyers make an enormous amount of money out of common law claims and processes. I think there is a better way to deal with that, and it is something which we should look at in the future.

This bill is all about reducing red tape, and that is something which I support. As I said previously, there are a number of organisations which Comcare already covers for insurance, including Defence and the Public Service. There are systems in place already that are able to deal with enforcement of the act, and of course investigation of that should be warranted.

This is a bill which I support. It allows companies who operate in multiple jurisdictions to reduce some of their costs. One of the great benefits of reducing costs for employers is that it gives them the ability to employ more people, and that is something which we should all be concerned about. Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for allowing me to make this contribution. I support the bill.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014, if enacted, will directly and indirectly risk the workplace health and safety of Australian workers. Some of the speakers on this bill have highlighted why this bill is so important. I want to draw out one of the comments made by the previous speaker, the member for Hinkler, to show just how out of touch some members of this parliament are. I seriously doubt the majority of workers in Australia go hang gliding in their lunchbreak. I am yet to meet a worker who in their 40- or 50-minute lunchbreak can go hang gliding and that is the reason they should not qualify for workers compensation if an injury occurs. That simply does not happen in Australian workplaces. I have never met a cleaner, I have never met a child-care worker and I have never met a nurse or an ambo who, in their lunchbreak, rather than eating their lunch, rather than doing whatever personal jobs they may have, like going to the bank or paying their bills or sitting down and just resting, has gone hang gliding. That is the quality of the contributions from, and the understanding of, some of the members of the government. It is simply outrageous to attack workers in that way.

This bill seeks to do one thing. This bill seeks to weaken the protection and support for workers who have been injured in their workplace—but we should not be surprised by that, coming from this government, because attacking workers seems to be the No. 1 job of this government. They will tell you that this bill is about reducing red tape and about reducing the cost and the impost on business. That is just simply not true. This bill is about removing the rights of Australian workers to fair and reasonable cover when they suffer the misfortune of a workplace related injury.

The coalition government, in drafting this bill, did not consult or flag these changes prior to the election, prior to their gaining government. So this is another example of where they have not been honest with Australian workers and the Australian people about what they intended to do in government. We on this side of the House are concerned—I am concerned—that the proposed changes will create huge costs in the future by effectively creating high-risk gaps in the health and safety monitoring within this country. What we are saying is that, if people move into a system that does not have the correct care, if workers rights are put at risk, if their safety is put at risk, the long-term costs could be enormous, not just for workplaces, not just for premiums and not just for what businesses will pay but also for our health system. The government must immediately guarantee that no worker will be worse off under this system. That is something they have not done. The government have not come in here and guaranteed that no worker will be worse off—but I am sure they did prior to the election! They seem to be doing that a lot at the moment: there is what they said before the election and what they say after the election.

This government is again attacking the fair wages and conditions and the workplace health and safety of thousands and thousands, if not millions, of workers in this country. An example of the way in which the government is attacking workplace health and safety is through this bill. The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 proposes seriously negative changes to the Comcare scheme. This bill will directly and indirectly risk the workplace health and safety of Australian workers. As I said, the government must stop this from happening. They must fix the problems in this bill before they put workers at risk.

It is clear that the government has little understanding of this issue; they have failed to meet injured workers. Not every professional job is a desk job. Not in every professional job do people have the luxury that we have of donning a suit and being able to walk around. The majority of low-paid workers jobs—whether they be in construction, cleaning, nursing or age care—are manual jobs, they are physical jobs and injuries do occur

In the cleaning industry repetitive work—the lifting, the cleaning and all the rest of the manual work—quite commonly leads to long-term injuries to the back and shoulders. People have to retire early because of serious injury and then are not able to work. To offer those workers decent schemes for occupational health and safety and compensation is not red tape. It is not red tape to ensure that those workers get the support that they need. A survey by United Voice of Spotless Cleaning members found that they do not have enough time to do the job properly and that increases the risk of injury. In fact, almost 60 per cent of Spotless cleaners said that they suffered from stress as a result of unreasonable workloads, and we are not just talking about the emotional stress; we are talking about the physical stress on the body. Stress takes its toll on cleaners, with many reporting physical injuries, personal breakdowns and even sometimes pressure at home because they are simply crippled by their workloads. If these cleaners do sustain an injury, it means that they can no longer work, but what is this government's solution? It is not to support them, but to move to a scheme with weaker support for them.

In construction, forestry and mining industries a worker is seriously injured or dies every six minutes. These are high-risk physical jobs, and rather than offering those who are seriously injured a decent insurance system and the best support, this government, in this legislation, is weakening their rights and their access to decent support. Construction workers frequently rank safety as the No. 1 priority. To give you one example of CFMEU member: Kym was only 17 at the time and he said it was a scary day down there at the Barcoo Outlet. He said:

One of our fellow workers did not come home from work that day. He got pinned up against a panel and got squashed. It was very scary. He was only 24.

Kym's experience unfortunately is not unique in the Australian construction industry. Too many people have attended funerals of friends and family who have died from workplace related injuries; too many have had serious injuries that prevent them from working for the rest of their lives.

Just look at the statistics: the agricultural, forestry, fishing, manufacturing, transport and storage industries have had the highest incident rates of serious injuries for many years. In fact, in 2011-12 the rates were up 80 per cent on other industries. Given these results, there is more need than ever for stronger support for workers compensation—not weaker, but stronger support. Labourers and those in similar occupations—production workers, transport workers, tradespersons—have the highest incident rates of serious injury. The physical and manual jobs have the highest rate of serious injury, and we need to ensure that they get the best support. Yet, as many speakers from this side of the House have noted, this bill seeks to weaken that support. These occupations have consistently had double the rate of injuries of all other occupations. Within the current make-up of the workforce there are some jobs that are incredibly physical and they do take a toll on the body. We need to make sure that there is a workers compensation scheme that can support them to the rest of their lives.

I will never forget the day that the county court in Victoria handed down a record fine resulting from the death of a worker at the Fosters Abbotsford Brewery. The Fosters Group was fined more than $1.25 million after pleading guilty to two workplace safety charges. Following the upgrade of the Victorian Occupational Health & Safety Act, the fine was the highest ever imposed for an individual. I will never forget the sadness of the workplace delegates on that day. The death of their co-worker could have been avoided, had the company worked with their OH&S committee and complied with various directives and key notices from Worksafe. Worse still, a worker had been seriously injured in a similar accident only 12 months earlier. To this day that worker is still not able to work and requires support.

Finally I will tell the story of Rosa, who was a Crown Casino shop delegate and who worked as a security officer. She turned up to work one day and out of nowhere was king hit. It was an awful incident. As a result of that king hit, Rosa suffered a brain injury, has terrible short-term memory loss and can never work again. Where is the support for Rosa? It is up to us and to states and the Commonwealth to ensure that she gets the best possible compensation and support. But this bill weakens her position and makes it harder for Rosa and people like her to receive the support that they need and deserve.

The government in this bill seeks to weaken the support for any worker and their family who find themselves in tragic situations like Rosa's. Let us put to one side that these workplace injuries could have been avoided with stronger occupational health and safety practices. I am sure it is another area of red tape that this government would like to dismantle. This bill seeks to weaken the support for workers who have been injured. To make a small saving for businesses, injured workers and their families will have to bear the financial and emotional hardship of being excluded from certain aspects of workers compensation. This bill proposes the reintroduction of the exclusion from eligibility for workers compensation during recess breaks. The government's justification for this is that, on their recess breaks, they are not having lunch in the tearoom, but are out there hang-gliding. That is why they have put forward this legislation—because they believe that people are not sitting in the tearoom; what they are doing is hang-gliding or playing rugby. Who on earth does that on their lunch break?

The current act provides for an employee to be covered for temporary absences from work during ordinary recesses. That provision should stay. This bill also seeks to weaken common-law damages claims and common-law rights that should exist. The bill is a series of exclusions from compensation that will make Comcare an outlier for Australia for the harsh and unjust way it would treat injured or deceased workers.

Further issues include that Comcare is not equipped or designed to cope with this level of expansion. Only 44 health and safety inspectors currently work for Comcare. If the government are serious about this bill, are they going to increase the number of inspectors employed by Comcare? Are they going to start talking about a new employment plan? It is really important. If there are currently 44, one of those 44 will probably never make their way to Bendigo for an inspection to look at what possible breaches there could be. So is the government planning to increase the number of inspectors that we have? In my state of Victoria we have already seen a weakening and a reduction in the number of safety inspectors, which is already down to 212. This is why some unions in our state have increased the number of health and safety representatives—because they know that they are not getting the support from their governments that they need.

As I have said, this bill is a bad bill. It will create confusion, anomalies and unfairness. It is sadly true of the government's entire approach to working people. They seek to demonise workers, not support them. They seek to say that laws and acts that exist to ensure that workers get the best possible support in a moment of tragedy, when they incur a workplace injury, are red tape. This bill is a bad bill and it should be opposed.

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

We oppose the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 because it is a vicious attack on workers' safety and on their protection at work. It is a throwback to the Howard years, to those years of Work Choices and attacks on workers. It disregards workers' interests and their safety at work.

I would observe that this bill is completely inconsistent with the Abbott government's supposed attitude to federation. What this bill represents is a centralisation of workers compensation by stealth, by loophole, by the back door, by raiding other governments' responsibilities—in this case, raiding the state government responsibilities on workers compensation and workers' safety. There have been no discussions, no conversation with interested parties, no dialogue and no warning that the government will take this approach. There is nothing about it in Real Solutions, that infamous document. This is simply reaching back into the old jumbled toolbox of the Howard years to come up with a bill that viciously disregards people's safety at work. It is completely intellectually inconsistent with every other piece of legislation and act of direction that they might be putting forward.

We have had the Commission of Audit, which the government has relied upon to justify their very unfair budget—$80 billion worth of cuts to health and education and a GP tax on everybody who walks through a waiting room, everybody who gets a blood test or a scan. Yet recommendation No. 7 of the Commission of Audit, 'Reforming the Federation—clarifying roles and responsibilities', talks about the roles of Commonwealth and state governments and then being informed by:

(a) the principle of 'subsidiarity' so that policy and service delivery is as far as is practicable delivered by the level of government closest to the people receiving those services;

(b) ensuring that each level of government is sovereign in its own sphere; and

(c) ensuring minimal duplication between the Commonwealth and the States and, where overlap cannot be avoided, ensuring appropriate cooperation occurs at all times.

That is what the government's Commission of Audit said. What do we find in this bill? We find a completely incoherent raiding of state government responsibilities. Is it supported by state governments? Has there been a dialogue with state governments? No. The shadow minister, the member for O'Connor, pointed out that this is opposed by the Queensland government, opposed by the Territory government—and for very good reasons: this bill has not been thought out, it undermines workers safety and it runs completely against good order between state and Commonwealth governments.

We have been very impressed by some of the speeches and contributions of those opposite. People have been talking about hang-gliding—maybe we should call it the 'hang-gliding bill'; I do not know. There is that sort of fanciful disregard for workers. As if anybody is going hang-gliding on their rest break. It is just a bizarre assertion. I took note of the speech by the member for Lyons yesterday. He was complaining that roofers, people in the building industry, had to wear steel-capped boots. Where is this guy? He is back in the pre-1930s; he is back in the 1890s. It is bizarre. In talking about health and safety, he states in Hansard:

It is, quite frankly, insidious.

That is the word he used in relation to safety at work—'insidious'. The Collins English Dictionary, which has been going since 1819, describes 'insidious' as 'stealthy, subtle, cunning, or treacherous' and 'working in a subtle or apparently innocuous way, but nevertheless deadly'. I would submit that he should not be saying that about health and safety in this country, about people having to wear safety boots—steel-capped boots. He should be saying that about this bill and about the government's approach, because it is insidious. It is insidious and it is treacherous, for all the reasons I said before.

The details of this bill—and we saw this during the Howard years—basically act to undermine state government workers compensation schemes, because it plucks very large employers, national employers, out of the state-based schemes and puts them in a scheme that was basically designed for Commonwealth public servants. So it does not matter whether you are a retail worker in South Australia, or you drive trucks, or you work in warehouses, or you are an electrician. Suddenly, you are plucked out of a system that you might have been employed under for years—and not just a compensation system, but also the regulation of your workplace in relation to health and safety. Suddenly, you are plucked out of the system that you know well, that your employer knows well, that your union might know well or your representative might know well. You are plucked out of that system and placed in a system that is designed for Commonwealth public servants, and nobody else. I have seen cases of workers who have been in that situation—Australia Post is a pretty clear example of where this has happened—and if those workers had a choice of which system they were given, or which system they were to be employed under, they would choose the state-based schemes every single time. And they would be wise to do so, because there is a lot of red tape in the system. It might not be red tape for employers, but it is red tape for workers. They have to jump through many, many hoops as compared to the state-based compensation systems.

We know that there are just 44 inspectors. I think we have about 70 in South Australia, from memory. That might be a bit old now, but it would be at least a third higher than the current Commonwealth number is for the entire country. Yet we expect these 44 people not only to inspect the workplaces of Commonwealth public servants but also to now get on planes to go and inspect workplaces in Adelaide or Port Hedland—

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Alice Springs.

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

Alice Springs, the Territory, Darwin. The Territory government opposes this bill for these reasons, no doubt. What a farce it is to expect workers to be under such a system.

There are problems in the definition and we have had members opposite, such as the member for Hinkler, get up here and talk about hanging gliding, but what he does not do is talk about police officers, who might go to McDonald's or somewhere like that when they are on their break. They might go somewhere a touch healthier, such as Subway, or somewhere like that, when they are on their break. The member for Solomon would know police officers who go on their break.

Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am married to a police officer.

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

Well, there you go. Does he want to be in Comcare? Does he want to be covered on his breaks, or not? It is a pretty important question. Some workers do not have a tea room. In my electorate, you see the workers for one company all sitting out on the footpath having a smoko and eating their lunch. These are the problems with the definition.

The other problem with the definitions is this idea that if someone has acted with wilful disregard or in a harmful way we can shunt them out of the scheme. It sounds good if you are on conservative talkback radio, or at the front bar. It sounds good if you just shoot your mouth off. But it is not actually that good, because what you are doing is moving away from a no-fault scheme to a scheme that does apply blame and fault. If you want that system, we will start having industrial manslaughter laws in this country, and we will start assigning blame not just to workers but to companies, to company directors and to managers who act in the same way—who act with wilful disregard for people's lives or for injuring people. That is what happens when you move away from a no-fault scheme, which is the basis of all of these health and safety schemes since they were first introduced in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. I forget the Lord who made the recommendations.

We know that this bill represents a vicious attack on workers. It is not a broken promise, because they just did not tell anybody they were going to do it. But it is, I think, symptomatic of what The Australian talks about: short-term tactical wins overcoming the basic narrative of the government. In this case, they try to tell us that they are for small government, they try to tell us that they want to make changes to our Federation, and then they walk into this parliament with a bill that centralises health and safety in this country without any cooperation or consideration or thinking or consultation with the states, with the unions, with companies or with anybody else. This is a bad idea. It is a bad bill. It is bad for workers, bad for the country, and bad for state governments.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What this government does not realise is that one person's red tape is another person's protection. For people who have to earn a living by going to work to bring home an income, that protection can literally be the difference between life and death. That protection can be the difference between whether you come home safe and sound or whether you come home with an injury. And so to say that we can just look at this bill simply in the context as part of a reduction in red tape is to miss a fundamental point. What we should be debating here in this place is how can we make Australian workplaces safer. What we should be debating is how can we make sure that everyone who goes to work at the start of the day or the start of their shift comes home safe and sound. That should be the guiding principle.

Instead, we have this bill. What will this bill mean in practice? This bill will mean that when someone in an affected workplace fronts up for work there will be fewer requirements that their workplace is safe. It means that if someone who fronts up for work gets injured, they will have fewer rights, and their family will have fewer rights, and less compensation. How will this bill do that? This bill will make it easier for employers to slip out of at times rigorous safety standards in state-based schemes and move into a federal scheme that was not designed to look after people's safety in the same way that state schemes were. The federal scheme has in many significant respects some lower standards. It has less enforcement, so fewer inspectors who go around and make sure the scheme gets enforced, and it provides fewer rights if a worker is injured.

To understand why this is the case it is important to understand how these schemes developed and why there is a difference in our federated country between the Commonwealth scheme and the state schemes. The state schemes have traditionally had primary responsibility for looking after most of the workers in this country—looking after their rights when it comes to safety and looking after their rights when it comes to compensation. Regulation for most of the more dangerous work we have in this country, including in areas like construction and mining, has been developed in the state systems. That is just the fact—it is a reality of our federation and of our Constitution.

It is also a fact that these industries are much more dangerous than other occupations. Safe Work Australia tells us that over the last five years almost one worker dies a week in the construction industry—211 over the five years from 2008 to 2012. That is nearly twice the national rate for other industries. They also tell us that the rate of getting serious injuries in the construction industry is nearly 50 per cent higher than the national average. You only have to look across to New Zealand and see the disaster of the Pike River mine, you only have to look at Beaconsfield in Tasmania and you only have to look at the serious diseases, such as black lung, that mineworkers get elsewhere around the world to understand the dangerous nature of working in the mining sector. There are many other dangerous industries. Over time, in the state-based systems we have developed good systems of safety for those industries. They could always be better but the systems that have been developed in many respects are world leading. After the Pike River collapse, New Zealand looked at the check inspector system of regulating mineworkers that we have here, and they picked up a lot of what the Australian states are currently doing. In mining, for example, people whose job it is to look after the health and safety of workers have a seat at the table and have the ability to ensure that laws are enforced. No-one is going to look out for a person's safety at work quite like someone who is working in the workplace themselves, or who comes from it. They have the strongest interest in making sure that the workplace is safe and they deserve a seat at the table and to have a role in determining whether or not health and safety requirements are being complied with.

Separately from all that, we have had developing over time the Commonwealth system. Because, again, of the division of powers between the state and federal parliaments, the Commonwealth system has been largely developed around white-collar workers who work in Commonwealth agencies or, over time, with privatisation and the like, in competitors to those Commonwealth agencies. When you compare the two, you find that the standards are quite different, the level of rigor is quite different, the level of involvement of people at work in enforcing their own safety at work is quite different and the capacity of the various agencies to enforce safety at work is different. Comcare has 44 inspectors. Queensland has 216—that is just in Queensland, let alone the rest of the country. They are the people who are responsible for doing the jobs you see in the ads that the state agencies run regularly on television, where an employer fears the knock at the door from the workplace inspector, who is able to come in and check that health and safety regulations are being complied with. So there are 216 in Queensland and 44 for the whole of the Commonwealth in Comcare.

There is not only much less regulation and enforcement going on at the federal level; there is a massive difference in what happens if that regulation is breached and a worker gets injured. Under the Commonwealth scheme you cannot sue for damages at common law in the same way that you can in the states. You cannot go and get the payment that you are entitled to if the employer has been guilty of negligence. Instead, you get the equivalent of a pension-style payment under the Comcare scheme. Under the existing federal scheme, and under this bill, you will not be covered when you are on your breaks. It may come as news to those in the government, but most people when they are on their breaks are not necessarily on free time at the place they would choose to be if they did not have to be at work. Most people do not voluntarily on their day off come into the office and sit in the lunch room. Most people on their day off do not voluntarily go out at 10.30 and sit somewhere in the city to have a 10-minute break. You are having a break, because you are having a break from work. That is why you are covered in the state schemes. But under this bill you will not be covered, if people move you into this new federal scheme.

If you move into this new federal scheme, you also will not be covered in cases of misconduct. This is important. This bill says that if someone dies on the job, for example, and their family is then seeking compensation for them, the employer or the insurer can say, 'Hang on—they weren't doing the job properly. I think they were committing misconduct. I'm going to challenge this.' Then, when the person dies, the family is now going to have to be put through a court case to prove whether their mum or dad, who has just been killed at work, was committing misconduct at the time. And their payments will be held up while all of that is happening, because the employer or the insurer will be appealing it.

We will move away from the no-fault scheme that we have at the moment to one that is based on exactly that kind of litigation. As the previous speaker alluded to, you are not going to see, on the other side, the Commonwealth government saying, 'Oh well, it's time to reintroduce Commonwealth industrial manslaughter laws to make sure that employers are held to account and sent to prison if they do the wrong thing.' You are not going to see a lifting of standards. Instead, you are going to be putting families and people who rely on compensation for someone who has been injured through double the pain: the pain of losing someone who has been injured or killed at work and then the pain of having to go through a court case to determine whether they committed misconduct. That is how this government thinks that people who die or get injured at work should be treated. Of course, the dispute settlement procedures under the federal scheme are much more difficult to access than for people in the state system.

On that misconduct point: the government refers to the various reviews all the time during their speeches and in the explanatory memorandum, including the Hanks review. The Hanks review said there was no problem with that clause and did not recommend any change, but that does not stop the government from saying, 'We're going to make life even tougher for people at work.'

What does this government want to do? Faced with those two different schemes and standards of work, the government is asking, 'How wide can we open the door for employers to move as quickly as possible from those state schemes that give workers better protection into the federal scheme, so they can save a bit of money? How quickly can we encourage people through so that standards of safety and compensation can be dropped?'

If you want to have a discussion about harmonising national safety and compensation laws, then the questions should be, 'How can we lift safety for people at work? How can we ensure that everyone has the best access to compensation, if they are unfortunate enough to get injured or someone in their family is getting injured?' Instead, the government is doing it the other way round: 'How can we race to the bottom as quickly as we possibly can?'

It is not a surprise to some of us who followed what this government has done when it comes to protecting people's rights at work for a number of years. It may well come as a surprise to people who voted for the government, because the government did not tell them before the election that this was on the books. The government did not tell them before the election, 'We're potentially going to make your workplaces less safe and give you less compensation if you get injured.' It is becoming clearer day by day that there is a reason this government did not tell people what they were doing or what they intended to do before the election: had they told them, they would have been completely unelectable. Had they told people, 'We're going to charge you more to go and see the doctor, we're going to take money out of public schools and hospitals and we're going to make your workplaces less safe,' no-one would have voted for them.

This is a bill that was not promised or put up in lights before the election. It is a bill that will reduce safety for people at work and will reduce the compensation for people who are injured. On that basis this bill should be opposed.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have followed this debate across the chamber and I am sad that we had the member for Lyons refer to the insidious creep of health and safety. You would have thought that even the most conservative member of this parliament would understand the importance of health and safety in the workplace, the need to regulate it properly and look after the interests of workers—as well as employers, I might say.

The intent of this bill is very clear, to me at least. It will tear away safety protections for many all over this country. It will have the effect of directly and indirectly risking the workplace health and safety of Australian workers in every state and territory. It will remove the rights of workers to a fair and reasonable cover when they suffer workplace injury or illness, if their employer comes under this legislation. This is from a government who, as we were reminded before the last election, said there would be no changes to workplace relations in their first term. This is a change to workplace relations, let there be no doubt about it.

We know that in the preparation of this proposal there has been no adequate consultation with those who will be affected by it or their representatives. It was not flagged before the election; it is not part of their election policy; and it is legislation without a mandate but also without any real policy justification. It undercuts all existing workers compensation around this country—that is what its effect will be.

We know that workers compensation legislation should have two main principles: to prevent work-related injury or illness from occurring in the first place; and to provide fair benefits to help and compensate those workers who suffer injury or illness as a result of their work. This will do precisely the opposite. It is indeed a sad indictment of this government and of those who sit on the government benches, because it will mean that there will be workers who will suffer the consequences of work injuries for the rest of their lives without any assistance from a workers compensation scheme, potentially. It means that potentially, workers doing the same job but with a different employer, who suffer a similar injury or injuries, will have different workers compensation rights and different health and safety standards applied to them—even though they might live in the same jurisdiction. How can this be sustainable? The worker who is covered by Comcare will have fewer rights and fewer health and safety protections, all in the name of small savings, apparently, and of cutting red tape.

We have heard discussion around the issue of no coverage under this legislation for ordinary recess breaks. How can anyone contemplate that you should excise recess breaks out of a workers compensation arrangement? It is worthwhile contemplating for a moment the history of this: the Hawke government in 1998—and I was a member of that government; I remember the debates around the country at the time—established the Comcare scheme, which protected workers temporarily absent from work during an ordinary recess like a lunch break. That was in 1988. Is it any surprise to us that in 2007, under the Howard government's Work Choices scheme, this was removed? So why should we be surprised that the Abbott government chooses to reintroduce this precise proposal—to exempt ordinary recess breaks from coverage? That is just a damnation.

It is also proposed in this bill, as we know now, that there be no coverage for death and serious and permanent injury if wilful misconduct is alleged. What a mean and gratuitous proposal this is. Nearly all jurisdictions across this country have exclusionary provision that deny compensation for injuries caused by wilful misconduct; however, in the case of a death or serious and permanent incapacity, Australian workers compensation schemes have historically, over tens of years, made an exception. This bill, if passed, would mean that Comcare will be the only workers compensation scheme in the country to exclude assistance in cases of deceased or seriously permanently incapacitated workers, if the death or incapacity happened as a result of what is described as 'wilful misconduct'. This is really hard to understand. What penny-pinching government would want to deny the capacity for the family of someone who is deceased or permanently incapacitated to have access to support? But that is precisely what this legislation does. And this also: Comcare currently denies workers compensation to those who voluntarily and unreasonably submit to a normal risk or injury during an ordinary recess. This bill extends that conclusion to usual working hours. This change means that what is and is not a voluntary assumption of abnormal risk when undertaking work will be the subject of endless and costly legal disputation. It means no protection for vulnerable workers; those who are asked or directed to do dangerous jobs by their coworkers, who are afraid of losing their jobs. It means—and I notice that some people have just arrived in the gallery—no protection for police, or for nurses, or for workers who are exposed to risk as part of their normal working day. Some workers who are injured or ill because of their job may have no workers compensation whatsoever: no assistance with medical bills, no support for rehabilitation, and no income.

It is not my intention to traverse the whole of the legislation, because others have done that. But I want to go to some of the submissions to the Senate inquiry into this bill. In particular, I want to go to the submission from the Northern Territory government. I do it for two reasons: firstly, I think it is not a bad submission, because it raises some serious questions; and secondly, it makes it very clear how this bill is discriminatory in its effect and impacts upon every community across the country. In that submission the Northern Territory government say: 'It is difficult to estimate how many employers would pursue an option to participate in the Comcare scheme but the potential consequence could be: …loss of an NT based claims service for injured workers.' That is really important, because what they are concerned about is the size of the premium pool, the potential for rates to increase, and the cost of insurance going up. I mention that because I think it is a very good submission, in that context. Yet at the same time, this week—this very week—the Northern Territory government of its own volition has taken the step of selling off the Territory Insurance Office to Allianz. This is going to mean that on the one hand we have them saying, 'we are concerned about this piece of Commonwealth legislation which could have a significant impact on people who need insurance on the Northern Territory for workers compensation'—employers and employees—and on the other hand they are actually selling the Territory Insurance Office—a government insurance office. It will—absolutely—mean that premium rates across the Northern Territory will go up, and that some insurance will not be available. There is real concern about the impact of that stupid decision—that really asinine decision—by the Northern Territory government, and the impact it will have on communities across the Northern Territory, including the people of Darwin, who will potentially suffer some cyclonic event into the future; or floods in Alice Springs; or floods in Katherine. We know that some of these products which are currently supplied and underwritten by the Northern Territory government through the Territory Insurance Office are potentially not going to be provided into the future. And if they are provided, we can absolutely guarantee—absolutely—that every Northern Territory insurance holder who is under the TIO insurance policies and is now transferred to Allianz will have their rates increased, we think by anything up to 200 or 300 per cent. That is a condemnation.

Deputy Speaker, if you accept on the one hand the importance of the submission that the Northern Territory government has made, around this insurance issue of Comcare in the Northern Territory, and around this bill, you have to say to yourself: how can they do that then—and now actually sell off the Territory Insurance Office? The Northern Territory community is awake to them and the Northern Territory community will mark them down. I am positive that they will get the retribution they properly deserve when the next Northern Territory general election comes along.

It is very clear to us that this piece of legislation should not be supported. It is unfair, anomalous and confusing for small business and for workers. Injured workers lose rights and benefits. It weakens occupational health and safety. It reintroduces three unfair and unnecessary exclusions to injured workers claiming workers compensation. It saves little, if any, money. We will oppose this bill.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to sum up the debate on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 on behalf of the Minister for Education and the relevant minister in the Senate. Let me make this point from the outset: having heard much of the debate from the opposition and the representative from the Greens, I would note that throughout the period of the home insulation program we warned, industry warned, the community warned and the media warned of safety risks. Recently, the royal commissioner Ian Hanger QC made profound findings that warnings had been ignored, that the government had ample opportunity to heed the advice given in the public domain and elsewhere and, most profoundly and significantly, that the deaths that occurred could have been avoided. I will restate that: the deaths that occurred could have been avoided.

Against that background, where we had such significant findings by a royal commissioner, which have led to the government engaging in a process of rightly and appropriately working with the families to provide compensation and working with the effected small businesses to provide compensation, I do not think that those on the opposition benches are in any position to provide any commentary whatsoever in relation to safety matters. Their performance in government was a matter of deep and profound regret for the families of those affected, for the businesses affected and for the nation as a whole.

I thank all members who have participated in debate but note that, to my regret, the opposition are either being wilfully ignorant or making statements about the provisions of the bill that are simply not sustainable. As we know, employers operating in multiple states have to deal with different workers compensation schemes and work health and safety regulations in each jurisdiction around Australia. This myriad regulation increases red tape for employers and is confusing for workers, who are subject to different regulations and benefits depending on which state or territory they are employed in. For example, an employee of a national bank working in a branch in Perth will have different work health and safety rules and a different workers compensation scheme than an employee of the same bank working in the Sydney office. This simply makes no sense.

Consistent with the government's deregulation agenda and simplification and streamlining approach, this bill will reduce the cost of the regulatory burden on the economy by implementing the recommendations of the review of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988, a review commissioned by the former Gillard government and undertaken by Mr Peter Hanks QC and Dr Allan Hawke AC, both of whom are distinguished in their field. Allan Hawke of course has a long tradition of service to Australian governments of all persuasions and has assisted recently in matters in relation to the Northern Territory. Additionally, costs will be reduced by removing injuries from the coverage of the Comcare scheme where those injuries occur in circumstances outside the control of the employer.

Specifically, the bill proposes amendments to (1) remove the requirement for the Minister for Employment to declare a corporation to be granted a licence for self-insurance while maintaining the ability for the minister to issue directions to the Safety Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission, which will streamline the current two-stage self-insurance licensing process for certain corporations under the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988; (2) remove the outdated requirement that a corporation must be in competition with a Commonwealth authority or former Commonwealth authority to enter the Comcare scheme; (3) enable corporations currently required to meet workers compensation obligations under two or more workers compensation laws of a state or territory to apply to the commission to join the Comcare scheme as self-insuring licensees—this is the national employer test; (4) enable the commission to grant licences to related corporations; (5) make consequential changes to extend the coverage provisions of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 to those corporations that obtain a licence to self-insure under the SRC Act; and (6) exclude access to workers compensation where either injuries occur during recess breaks away from an employer's premises or a person engages in serious or wilful misconduct, even if the injury results in death or serious and permanent impairment. The amendments contained in the bill will reduce the regulatory impact on the economy by approximately $32.8 million each year for the next 10 years, which are savings that businesses will then have available to invest, including, potentially, in more jobs and better safety in those enterprises.

In relation to issues raised during the debate, the opposition has claimed that the amendments will do a number of things. These claims are not accurate. It was claimed during the debate that the bill was not widely consulted upon by the government and therefore the government has no mandate to bring this bill to the parliament. Not surprisingly, this statement is flatly, plainly false, untrue and incorrect. The amendments in the bill arose largely from the recommendations of the review which was announced by the Gillard government in 2012.

During the development of the report of the review and after the report's release in March 2013, public consultations with key stakeholders occurred. Key bodies consulted included, amongst others, unions, workers, employer organisations, insurers, health practitioner bodies, legal practitioners plus licensees and premium payers under the Comcare scheme. Relevant issues raised in the consultation period were considered by government. This bill flows from the recommendations of one of Australia's most distinguished former public servants, respected by both sides of parliament, Allan Hawke.

Further, relevant state and territory officials were consulted on matters, including allowing national employers to join the Comcare scheme, with responses that were obtained from states and territories being taken into consideration by the government prior to the introduction of the bill on 19 March 2014. If I may speculate, given the provenance of the review, the history of the review and the nature of the recommendations, it is my contention that had there not been a change in government a similar bill with identical or almost identical provisions would have been put forward. That is my opinion.

Additionally, during the debate, it was suggested that the commission and Comcare do not have the experience and capacity to manage the changes proposed in the bill and because of this workplace health and safety would be put at risk. The government clearly rejects this claim. The commission and Comcare have the capacity and experience to manage the proposed changes, and this will not risk workplace health and safety. I repeat that—it will not risk workplace health and safety.

Self-insurance under the Comcare scheme is funded by regulatory contributions by the licensees that reflect the cost incurred by the commission and Comcare in the performance of their respective regulatory functions. As such, the increased costs of meeting the regulatory responsibilities for both workers compensation and work health and safety will be resourced through the increase in regulatory funding due to the predicted increase in the number of licences. For example, if more companies decide to self-insure, Comcare would need to expand the number of inspectors. Further, Comcare has over the past decade shown it can increase its capacity to regulate non-Commonwealth licensees, including self-insurers , from a wide range of industries, including banking, defence, transport and telecommunications.

Additionally, the SRC Act requires the commission must not grant a licence to an applicant if the applicant's past and likely future performance in complying with work health and safety legislation reveals that it has not met the standards of state legislators in the past and is not likely to meet those required by Comcare as the regulator of the WHS Act and the commission in the future. This compares favourably and dramatically with the loose and unsafe arrangements which were in place during the Home Insulation Program, which defied the warnings of unions, industry and state bodies.

In relation to the question of the work health and safety needs of higher risk industries, such as mining, for example, it is the government's expectation that the commission would not approve a self-insurance licence until Comcare has built the necessary capacity over time as it has already done for other industries.

It was further asserted on the topic of the impact of the bill and state and territory workers compensation schemes that changes in the bill will undermine all the existing workers compensation schemes in Australia. There is simply no evidence to support this assertion. During the review and the development of the bill, concerns were raised about the possible impact on the viability of state and territory work health and safety schemes and workers compensation schemes due to a potential exodus of large employers from those schemes. In short, the concerns are that, if large employers move to the Comcare scheme, premium rates will increase for the remaining employers in the state and territory schemes. However, the 2004 Productivity Commission inquiry into national workers compensation and occupational health and safety frameworks noted that concerns such as these were not supported by the evidence. In particular, actuarial assessments concluded that, the larger the employer was, the closer the premium the employer paid would be to the true cost of claims and expenses for it such that the impact of the exit of such employers would be relatively neutral for state and territory schemes. Advice provided to the government is that circumstances in the work health and safety and workers compensation areas have not changed materially since the 2004 assessment such that the impact will remain minimal.

Finally, it was claimed in debate that the bill contains a third new exclusionary provision related to voluntary assumptions of a normal risk. That statement is simply incorrect. No such provision exists within the bill. As clearly explained in the explanatory memorandum, the change to the section that deals with voluntary and unreasonable assumption of risk that has been in place since 1988 has merely been consequentially amended. The section that has been in place since 1988 has merely been consequentially amended—I repeat that for emphasis and for the House to understand clearly.

I note the bill excludes access to workers compensation where injuries occur during recess breaks away from an employer's premises where a person engages in serious and wilful misconduct, even if the injury results in death or serious and permanent impairment. This replicates and represents the position that exists in both South Australia and Tasmania and which has done so for some time. I would note that one is currently a Labor jurisdiction and, until recently, the other was a Labor jurisdiction. Where a worker is away from the workplace and undertaking activities, be they dangerous not, associated with the employee's employment or at the request or direction of the employer, they will still be covered if they are subject to injury. In conclusion, I would again like to thank members who participated in the debate on this important legislation. I commend the legislation to the House.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the bill be now read a second time.