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

I rise today to support the Safe Work Australia Amendment (Role and Functions) Bill 2017 before the House. Labor has a long and established history of supporting the fight for workplace health and safety and for workers compensation. Since the fatal day back in 1956 when a bucket of piping hot bitumen fell off a multi-storey hoist on builders below, workers' safety and workers compensation has formed an important cornerstone in Australian working history. The core of any workplace health and safety legislation is a simple truth: whilst employers' rights to operate a functional and profitable business are important, they can never override the right for an employee to have a safe workplace. To put it simply, it is never acceptable to put profit before the value of a human life. I'll say it again: it is never acceptable to put profit before the value of human life. This is a core belief, an aspect of Australian Labor Party values. We will always fight for strong workplace protections and to ensure access for all employees to compensation when workplace protections fail.

Of course, for workplace health and safety legislation to work in its fullest, it needs to be consistent, enforceable and accessible across the nation. If we are to take the concept of workplace health and safety seriously, we must be able to provide employers with enough information and resources to protect workers from preventable harm and to give employees access to the information and resources to protect themselves from harm and to be compensated when due diligence either is not performed or fails. Under this notion, it was Labor in government that established Safe Work Australia. As a reform focused body, Safe Work Australia has the scope not only to coordinate, monitor and promote national efforts on workplace health and safety and workers compensation but also to actively agitate for unification of workplace health and safety laws across states, with a direct line of communication to both the relevant ministerial council and COAG. This marked the first time since Federation that state and territory governments, alongside employer and employee representatives, had agreed to coordinate their efforts towards unification of occupational health and safety legislation and practice through a tripartite agreement.

As a statutory body, Safe Work Australia has delivered on its goals of reducing workplace fatality and serious injury. However, we must always be vigilant. It has also achieved through helping to reshape and negotiate workplace health and safety laws across Australia by developing national policy to ease compliance and enforcement processes across state boundaries. Further, Safe Work Australia acts as a research centre by collating data and publishing reports and guidance material on workplace health and safety strategy for workers and workers compensation policy.

I just checked the Safe Work Australia website today. It provides a sobering reminder of how important their work is. Twenty-four per cent of the workers who died in the period from 2003 to 2015 were employed in the transport, postal and warehouse industry. Two hundred and forty-seven workers who died in the agricultural industry between 2003 and 2015 died in a vehicle collision or rollover. Twenty-eight per cent of the workers who died in the construction industry during the same period died after a fall from a height. This year alone, there have been 18 deaths in the construction industry from 1 January 2017 to 2 August 2017 and, sadly and tragically, one since 2 August. Over the same period, there were 46 deaths in the transport, postal and warehouse industry and 23 deaths in the agricultural, forestry and fishing industry.

These are workplace deaths that all could have been avoided. So many families have been heartbroken and devastated in just the first half of this year alone. Again, it is never acceptable to put profit before the value of human life, and it reminds all of us that we have a lot of work to do to ensure that this rate of death in our workplaces does not continue.

Labor support this amendment, and we congratulate those opposite on the small step that they have taken to ensure national compliance and consistency with workplace health and safety. However, in congratulating them, we also ask: how serious are those opposite when it comes to workplace health and safety? A number of other reforms that the government have pursued since coming to office are inconsistent with this position on workplace health and safety. For all their hyperventilating about the need to reintroduce the ABCC, what practical outcomes has it achieved in improving workplace health and safety? All it has done is created more red tape between construction workers and their workplace rights—as I mentioned, there have been 19 deaths this year alone in construction.

The ABCC, stitched up by this Prime Minister, reverses the onus of proof and makes it harder for workers to defend themselves. It makes it harder for them to speak up about workplace health and safety issues. And all we have from those opposite is complaints—rhetoric and complaints about how standing up for their workplace safety rights is somehow corruption, and it needs to be investigated by the ABCC. It is a commission that fundamentally restricts workers' democratic rights. It is a commission that strips workers of their basic rights and equity before the law, including in the area of workplace health and safety. It is a commission that gives workers no protections from the abuse of power of this new regulator. Time and time again, we have heard from workers, and from organisers of their relevant union, how they have been pulled before the ABCC for talking about issues of workplace health and safety. The case of a union and workers being investigated for talking about suicide in the workplace and the case of a union official who held in his arms a co-worker who died in his arms, and who was then pulled up before the ABCC, are just not acceptable.

We will never forget those workers who have been killed in our workplaces while those opposite scramble to do their best to protect the big end of town and not take seriously what is going on in industries like construction when it comes to workplace health and safety. Nor will we forget the flippant disregard that those opposite have shown the transport industry in this country. Again, I remind the House of the statistic. So far this year, in the period between 1 January and 2 August alone, we have lost 46 people in the transport industry on our roads.

When an independent umpire like the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal tells you that, unless change is made to the remuneration of truck drivers around our country, you can expect more deaths on the road, you should listen. Instead, when the government was told what was essential to do in terms of pay review aimed at saving workers' lives, this government's reaction was to shut down and abolish the tribunal. That's right; when presented with the hard evidence from the tribunal that was designed to examine safety on our roads and which made the unequivocal link between truck drivers' pay and road fatalities, this Prime Minister and this government simply shut it down. The name of the tribunal says it all: Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal.

Despite this, those opposite still have the gall to stand here in this place and claim not only that they care about workers' safety but that they are the best friend of workers. All we have seen so far from this government in other bills are measures deliberately designed to strip workers of hard-fought protections, to shut down tribunals that could present solutions to resolve disputes and enforce protections and conditions and to further strip unions and their workers of the ability to examine and investigate places to ensure workplace health and safety. The government should be alarmed at some of the things we are hearing in our workplaces, and these should be the issues of the day that the government is pursuing.

This government's ideology has clouded their capability even to see workers on the ground. So obsessed are they with clearing the tables for the big end of town that they barely notice the cries of those who are being hit by falling debris or placed in very dangerous workplace situations. We have seen this time and time again from them. It is part of their DNA. From the period of Work Choices to deliberate and orchestrated union busting to slashing penalty rates, those opposite have fought to stop workers standing up for their rights, including their workplace health and safety rights. Their actions speak louder than their words.

If this government was serious about improving workplace health and safety, they would strengthen collective bargaining and strengthen the ability for workers to speak up without prosecution instead of gutting union power. They would understand that only those who feel secure in their work and workplace have the ability, the opportunity and sometimes the courage to raise and fight for safer work conditions for them and their co-workers. Despite the Prime Minister's ever-eroding farce of pretending to be the workers' friend, the number of antiworker bills passed by this government is closing in on 20.

Labor is committed to ensuring that workers feel secure and safe in their workplace and have the tools and processes they need to resolve disputes and to re-address workplace issues as they arise. We need to fight to ensure that workers are able to collectively negotiate their conditions in a fair and sustainable way. This policy commitment underscores Labor's industrial relations policy. The work that Labor's Safe Work Australia is doing has proven itself to be useful, effective and life-saving. The recent mandated review in Safe Work Australia's role and functions has raised some areas where the act can be updated and reflect modern terminology to further clarify its role. This amendment seeks to address these issues within that report. Specifically, Safe Work Australia Amendment (Role and Functions) Bill 2017 seeks to update the language of the Safe Work Australia Act 2008 for ease of access, to bring it in line with current terminology and to guard this legislation against further changes in terminology in this space. This amendment also clarifies the role of Safe Work Australia to solidify its purpose and ensure it has a proper framework within which to perform its functions. To that end, this amendment also seeks to clarify and consolidate the functions of Safe Work Australia, including ensuring improvements in workplace health and safety and safety outcomes in workers compensation.

In line with these amendments, Safe Work Australia will develop, evaluate and revise national workplace health and safety laws and workers' compensation policy, and support the strategies to ensure equitable access to information and resourcing of stakeholders. This amendment will allow Safe Work Australia to liaise with international workplace health and safety bodies to further act as Australia's expert in representing specialised collaborative international forums. We believe these changes and the clarifications presented in this amendment will strengthen Safe Work Australia and will allow it to continue its important work. I commend this bill to the House.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the opposition for their support and members for their contributions to this debate. The Safe Work Australia Amendment (Role and Functions) Bill 2017 demonstrates the Australian government's strong commitment to working collaboratively with states and territories, and employee and employer representatives, to improve the safety of Australia's workplaces and its workers' compensation arrangements. The bill is informed by the recommendations of the review of the role and functions of Safe Work Australia, which was tabled in the parliament on 8 November, 2016. The bill clarifies Safe Work Australia's role and updates Safe Work Australia's functions to ensure they are clear, achievable, remain contemporary and support Safe Work Australia's role into the future. With the passage of this bill, Safe Work Australia will be better placed to respond effectively to the complex challenges that affect health and safety in Australian workplaces now and into the future.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.