Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I think that this was very much a response to the concerns we had about driving some of these changes. I think many of the states and some of the departments within those state governments had not been focused on the concerns of industry, and part of the drive in the announcement that the Prime Minister made was to get the ministers and their departments focused on these things, not have some of the bureaucratic turf wars that were occurring further down the system. I think the introduction of a stronger business voice in this process is very important, because I know that, in the debate about national occupational health and safety laws, we had governments like the Victorian government being deliberately recalcitrant, not listening to industry, despite the fact that they had very strong industry support. Those reforms have been held up by a couple of Liberal states refusing to participate, despite the very strong industry demand that we get national laws. (Time expired)