Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

That is what item 8 inserts, which is one of the amendments that the minister addressed. You can say ‘no’ but that is actually what you said.

Given what we know about the importance of tripartite arrangements, given what we know about how effective those have been in improving health and safety in the workplace and given what we know about the unacceptably high incidence of workplace injury in this country, it is extraordinary that the minister’s best response to a suggestion from the Democrats, supported by the opposition, about giving people a list of who is a representative in their workplace is the kind of response that says, ‘We do not want unions to have a privileged role.’