Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about a very disturbing series of incidents here in Canberra. A worker fell through a fifth-storey penetration on a Thiess Pty Ltd building site in the ACT on Wednesday, 8 February, at approximately 1 pm. The worker fell onto air-conditioning ducting being installed. This broke his fall and saved him from falling a further six to nine metres. Had the ducting not stopped him, the incident may well have been fatal. Thankfully, the worker in this case was not seriously injured. However, it is not yet 12 months since another ACT worker from another site, a family man Mr Nic Spasovski, was tragically killed by falling through a penetration on another ACT building site.

Thiess has, through company lawyers, denied any responsibility for any workers injured on their construction sites, claiming instead that employees are the responsibility of the subcontractor they employ. This is an indictment on what seems to be emerging as the preferred practice of large construction companies to change the culture of their traditional responsibility and general duty of care under the relevant legislation to a culture that tries to shift that responsibility onto subcontractors on the building sites. It advocates a culture of reaping the gains of the boom in the construction industry but not accepting any of the risks associated with potentially dangerous industries such as building and construction. I have to say that I am surprised and disappointed at what can only be described as a lack of concern by the company Thiess. I think that their attitude on this occasion has been quite high-handed and morally questionable. This is an example of how the federal government’s Work Choices legislation has had an impact on reducing the ability—