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

I rise to speak on the Comcare and Seacare Legislation Amendment (Pension Age and Catastrophic Injury) Bill 2017. Labor will support this bill. This bill amends the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act and the Seafarers Act to ensure that injured employees in receipt of weekly compensation payments for incapacity can continue to receive those payments until they reach pension age as defined in the Social Security Act 1991. The qualifying age for the age pension under the Social Security Act 1991 will begin to increase on 1 July this year. By linking compensation for incapacity with the pension age rather than age 65, these amendments will result in no gap between the cessation of compensation for incapacity and eligibility for receipt of the age pension.

This bill also amends the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act and the seafarers act to align these acts with minimum benchmarks for catastrophic workplace injuries in the National Injury Insurance Scheme. The bill removes the cap on weekly compensation payable for household services and attendant care services for employees with catastrophic injury. An employee with a catastrophic injury will also be eligible to receive compensation for household services from the day of the injury, without the current 28-day waiting period.

While we support the bill and the measures it takes to align the payments to the pension age, it is worth noting the Turnbull government's agenda to increase the pension age to 70. This signature unfair policy from the horror 2014 budget is still there. The policy to have the pension age increased to the age of 70 is still an objective of the Turnbull government. In effect, the Prime Minister of this country and of this government wants to give Australia the oldest pension age in the developed world. The Prime Minister wants to make construction workers, nurses, tradies, farmers, seafarers and other workers work until they are 70 before they are eligible for the age pension. It is something that underlines how out of touch this Prime Minister and this government are when it comes to the difficulties that confront workers in workplaces over this period.

The idea put forward, without any planning whatsoever, that people who have much of their work being of a physical nature could actually work until 70 says how little the government understands workplaces. We are not suggesting that people should not be able to voluntarily work beyond the age that is currently set down for the pension, but we know that there are many people who just cannot work up until that age. It is quite extraordinary that this country will be in a position to have the highest pension age of the developed world as a result of the objectives of the government.

I applaud the bill to fix up the current arrangements and increase the age so that there is no longer a gap insofar as insurance and compensation are concerned and their intersection with the pension age, but I think this bill is a reminder that we have a government which is in pursuit of lifting the pension age to 70 years of age. There are people now in their 40s and 50s who will have to work until they are 70. If people understood the nature of the work of construction workers or nurses or people who work in aged care, the difficulties they confront, the injuries that arise and the wear and tear on their body, then the idea that they would have to work until 70 would just not be tenable. What it would need, if we were to ever consider it at all, would be much greater involvement in the way in which people would undertake work in the period up until their retirement age. I do not think there has been sufficient work undertaken. But I do know this, though: before I was in this place, I represented working people and I saw too many unable to continue to undertake work because of injuries—hernias, carpal tunnel syndrome, back injuries or whatever it was—and the stress placed on their body. People think it is a problem that afflicts male occupations, but, as I have said and as everyone knows who has any understanding of these issues, this applies to nurses as much as it does to construction workers. It is extraordinary that the government has not contemplated this problem.

We do support this bill, because we are removing the gap that exists currently. We do accept that there are people who want to work beyond the current pension age—there is no problem with that—but we do not accept the idea that you cannot get a pension until you reach age 70. The pension age keeps increasing and people have to keep watching it move away from them when they have worked so many years of their life, particularly if they have been vulnerable physically in their workplace and are feeling the wear and tear of work over many, many decades. We feel that little consideration has been given to this initiative.

Indeed, it is extraordinary too that much of the 2014 budget has been revoked, rejected and repudiated by the current Prime Minister and the government, but not this policy and not the policy to lift the pension age to the highest level of any comparable country. I think the government has to rethink its position. The Prime Minister likes to say he believes in fairness, but he actually is trying to force millions of Australians to work until they are 70 before they can access the age pension. We will support this bill, but we will not support Malcolm Turnbull's cruel attempts to increase the pension age.

While I am on my feet, I would also like to say that it is worth reminding the parliament, and through it hardworking Australians, that the Turnbull government is still pursuing two other bills to amend the Comcare scheme. These are related; these are incidental to the bill before us. The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Improving the Comcare Scheme) Bill 2015, with its Orwellian title, will exclude workers from the Comcare scheme and significantly reduce the compensation available for those who remain eligible. This bill attempts to reduce the liabilities of the Comcare scheme at the expense of people injured at work.

There is also the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 which, if enacted, will directly and indirectly risk the workplace health and safety of Australian workers. It will also remove the rights of Australian workers to fair and reasonable cover when they suffer the misfortune of a work-related injury or illness. This government will stop at nothing to attack workers. It is only because of the staunch opposition of the Labor Party that these bills have been stalled and have been prevented from being enacted, and we will hold that position because of the unfairness intrinsic in those two other bills.

To sum up, we do support this bill. This is fixing something that needs to be fixed, and for that reason we will support it. But we will never support the coalition's agenda to create coward workforces that are easy to hire, easy to fire and more open or more vulnerable to injury, where if you are injured they deprive you of the things you need to return to work or have a decent life in the event you cannot return to work. This bill, for the reasons I have outlined, is something we can support; but we are concerned that the government still has not given up on pursuing those other areas to change compensation and Comcare arrangements in this country.

We would ask the government to rethink its position on that and we would ask the government to rethink its position on the harsh policy to increase the pension age to 70 that it announced in 2014, which I believe has been ill thought out. It shows a callous disregard for workers and it shows no understanding of workplaces and the difficulties that workers confront, whether they be construction workers or nurses, in dealing with the wear and tear on their bodies and the difficulties each and every day when they do such magnificent work in this country.

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

As the previous speaker has said, Labor will be supporting this bill. The Comcare and Seacare Legislation Amendment (Pension Age and Catastrophic Injury) Bill 2017 does correct an anomaly that has been created because we have lifted the pension age, yet there is the flow-on effect to other areas of legislation, like safety rehabilitation and compensation for seafarers. This bill corrects that. It ensures that people who suffer a catastrophic injury at work, who are being covered by compensation, will continue to be covered. It will not finish at 65 and then force them into the unfortunate situation of being on Newstart for two years. It means they will continue on the current schemes until they reach the pension age of 67.

I rise to say a few things about injured workers and about how it is the responsibility of all of us in this place to ensure that we have best practice laws and to ensure that in a time when workers are in need our help, when they have suffered a catastrophic injury at work, we are doing all we can to support their recovery. But if they not able to recover to return to work, we will support them in their life and until they reach the pension age.

One of the other good things about this particular bill is that it ensures that household services will continue without the current 28-day waiting period. An employee with a catastrophic injury will also be eligible to receive compensation for the household services from the day of the injury without incurring the current 28-day period. This is good news for families where this occurs. Let's just think about these families for a moment. Someone gets up and goes to work as everybody does, and a catastrophic injury occurs. The first thing that happens is that person goes to hospital. All of a sudden, what is happening at home? If they have children, who is picking up the children? If they have to modify the home, who is there to do that? If they need a nurse at home, who is there to help with that? When you have a catastrophic injury you need help from day 1. The 28-day waiting period is something that does not fit with what has actually occurred, so it is a good development that people will now receive household services from the day of their injury.

Where do these injuries occur? We have a lot of dangerous industries in this country, such as manufacturing. I recall in my time at United Voice when I was there as an organiser that some of the most heartbreaking phone calls I would receive were from delegates to say there has been a serious incident at work and asking us to come down and meet with the members and talk to the staff about what has happened. In manufacturing food and beverages there was a particularly bad incident at CUB where somebody was quite severely injured. They have not and will not return to work. In that particular case, unfortunately, the company did not follow the direction of WorkSafe or the PIN notices that proceeded. Almost 12 months later, another catastrophic incident occurred and an individual—a worker—lost their life. At the time, the fine handed down against the company at the county court was the largest in Australian history for negligence in a workplace causing death of an employee. Unfortunately, since then there have been other fines issued for employers who have knowingly not followed safety instruction from the authorities and bigger fines have been issued. It is a problem for us in this country in industries where there is dangerous work going on. Incidences are increasing, not decreasing.

I would like to talk about another industry where we have injuries and incidences on the increase, and that is the construction industry. We know through media reports, investigations and public findings that in workplaces that are not unionised, where there is not a good safety committee in place, where there are employers that are not acting in the best interests of their workforce and where they are rushing to get things completed we have seen an increase in the numbers of deaths or serious injuries. In Perth, two backpackers were killed because they had lunch in the wrong spot and a big concrete sheet fell on these individuals. There was the very public case of a backpacker who took off her safety harness and fell down a shaft. Another, working for the same company, was killed at work when she had been working on the site for less than six months. All of these cases are going through their process of inquiry. What is frustrating is that they could have been avoided if the company had been proactive, had engaged the union—the CFMEU—had engaged their workforce and had proper safety arrangements and training requirements in place.

The injuries within construction are rising. It is no coincidence that it is at the same time the ABCC has been reintroduced. It appears that, just as in the past, the moment that the government introduces a draconian regime like the ABCC, the focus is all on the union officials and not on the employers. We see a body that chases people about right of entry notices rather than one that chases employers who have not ensured that they have a safe workplace.

I will give one example from before it was the ABCC, when it was Fair Work Building and Construction. It was in my own area, the Bendigo electorate. This was during the process of building the Ulumbarra Theatre. There was a significant contribution from the federal government and state and local governments to build the Ulumbarra Theatre. There was a serious workplace incident: a worker fell into the orchestra pit. The safety equipment that had been in place, the barriers that had been up, had been removed, and he fell in, and almost literally lost his head—there was some quite serious damage to the back of his neck and to his head. He was then in hospital for quite some period of time. He, to this day, has not returned to work and may never return to work. At the time, it made the news. Union officials were on site. Workers were on site. They got him the best quality care that they could.

This is also a site where we had a number of contractors. They were not paid on time by the builder. They went to the wall. They lost everything. Their workers lost everything. They were able to get some stuff back through GEERS.

So this was a project that was riddled with problems. Yet what happened six months later was not that the company was fined for this worker almost literally losing his head and suffering a catastrophic workplace injury; it was not that the companies that had gone broke received compensation because the builder had not paid them on time—no. The organiser for the CFMEU was pulled up before Fair Work Building and Construction, which said: 'You didn't produce your worker's permit when asked.'

I am really concerned that the government is putting workplace health and safety at the very end of its list, as their dogged pursuit and their ideological hatred of unions become the first priority of this government—not ensuring best practice when it comes to workplace health and safety; not ensuring that workers are paid on time; not ensuring that we are cracking down on phoenixing so that employees are paid by their employer and do not have to go through the FEG program to receive their basic entitlements.

There are so many areas in our workplaces that this government needs to improve on, yet their only focus has been on bullying and on pushing forward on draconian rules and laws like the ABCC that target unions and target workers who are only trying to ensure that all of their workmates, at the end of the day, go home safe.

As a previous speaker also said, there is a real problem with this government trying to push the pension age from 67 up to 70. It is something that was in this government's first budget in 2014, in their 2015 budget, in their 2016 budget and now is in their 2017 budget.

This government is still not listening. They are still not listening to people who work in trades—in trades where you need to use your physical body. These people are not like politicians, who get to sit on the nice green benches; these are people who, day in day out, are on their feet and whose bodies, for many of them, will not last until they are 70. I am talking about tradies, nurses, farmers, seafarers, and cleaners—like our own Parliament House cleaners, who have still not received a pay rise since this government scrapped the Clean Start guidelines; they are still on the same money.

I note that, whilst we, the politicians in this place, have received a pay rise and whilst our staff have now received a pay rise, the cleaners here in Parliament House have not. They work really hard. Cleaning is a job that is tough on the body. They have not received a pay rise yet. I would like to take this opportunity to call on the government to think about their cleaners and reward them with a fair and decent pay rise. They have not had one, and it is not right.

Cleaning is a job which people struggle to do until they are 70. Whilst some are still cleaning until they are 70, when you chat to a cleaner who is 70 they say it is because they still need to keep working. They still need to keep paying the bills, they still have a mortgage or their husband or wife is not working. But they should not have to be made to clean—

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member for Bendigo will have an opportunity that time to continue her remarks.