Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

So it will never occur—thank you very much. Businesses that go through the responsible task of getting independent and professional advice on their workplaces—from people who have had more than just five days training, who do a full assessment and then a regular reassessment of the workplace because the employer is concerned about work health and safety issues—would be incurring a double whammy. So did the government consider the benefits of providing exemptions to those businesses that seriously engage independent, professional advice in relation to these types of issues? There are bodies that provide that sort of advice and do assessments. Indeed, I have been to some businesses in Queensland, in fact in Dr Emerson's electorate, as I recall, where the employer does that and has done for a number of years. He now finds that, having regularly expended all that money, he will now have to send an employee for a five-day training course at extra expense to his business. He is now contemplating dropping the independent, professional assessments that he was getting annually, because it is one or the other: one that he will have to do under this legislation or the other that is not a legislative requirement.