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

On the basis of what the minister has indicated, obviously, we will support what appears to be the principle behind the amendment, which is ensuring that persons operating a major hazard facility must have a licence to operate and inserting appropriate penalties in the event that they do not.

However, I do again want to make a point about this amendment being introduced at this stage. We have previously seen the government tack on amendments to bills through this chamber—particularly in the last year and a half—where unrelated or only tangentially related amendments to other pieces of legislation are tacked onto a bill that is already in the place. One that comes to mind is the Work Choices amendments to the independent contractors legislation, which were really ‘fixing up your errors’ amendments that you tacked onto a bill that was about independent contractors. What we have here is a bill that was originally dealing with amendments to particular acts—the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 and the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988—and we now have a new set of amendments in relation to another piece of legislation, the Occupational Health and Safety Act 1991. It would be useful, I think, to the chamber if the government could indicate why it is that this amendment has now been tacked onto the end of this bill—a bill that amends primarily the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act and also some consequential or minor amendments to the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004. Why at this stage in the debate do we have another set of amendments to the Occupational Health and Safety Act and why were these not provided previously?