Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The problem here is: we have got a supposedly tripartite, independent body where one member of that—government—has joined together to make a historic agreement that gives them a much stronger voice, a much stronger role than the other two parts of that body. What the amendments did was to try to even that out a bit and to improve the legislation. I appreciate the fact that you cannot give us a blow-by-blow description of what went on in the ministerial council meeting, but I am struggling to understand why the governments—state, territory and federal—did not think that these amendments, that improve the legislation, were even worth adequately considering. I get the sense that each of these amendments were not specifically considered in detail in the same way that the Senate considered them in detail. I would really like to know why these amendments threaten harmonisation of OH&S laws, when we are all trying to achieve the same outcome and these amendments actually improve the legislation. It certainly evens up the balance in terms of representation from the other two parts of the tripartite body, and that is the employers and the employees.