Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Exit Arrangements) Bill 2015 that is before us, and I can assure Senator Back that I absolutely, 100 per cent support workers getting their full entitlement to a workers compensation scheme. To suggest that if you vote against the bill somehow you are voting against the safety and the wellbeing of workers if they are injured is absolute rubbish.

This is one of three bills around workers compensation which will disadvantage workers. This is bill No. 2, and the Abbott government really does need to lay out its plan. There is bill No. 1, although it has not come into the Senate, there is bill No. 2, which is before us today, and, of course, there is a third bill, and to suggest that somehow these bills are unrelated is not true. There are relationships between all of them, and it is clearly about disadvantaging workers. If they are not related then why have they been brought in together and why are they all about Comcare? Of course they are related, and this bill is being put before the Senate because the government thinks that perhaps it will get support for this bill and it will start the softening up process to get the other two bills in place.

Indeed, we were able to have an inquiry for the first bill, and what stakeholders told us in that process was that, yes, they had had meetings with the department, but they were bound by rules of confidentiality. So they were not allowed to speak outside of the meetings about the content of those meetings and when they sought additional information about bills coming forward they were not told anything either. What sort of consultation process is it when we bind people and when we make them sign documents so that they will not utter a word about what happened in the meeting and when they sought information about future bills they were told that was not part of the discussion? That is not an open and transparent process, and of course those stakeholders had every right to be suspicious and to be very concerned about what was going to come next because of these confidentiality provisions. In the inquiry we had on that first bill we asked the department if we could have further information, but we were told, no, we could not either. I think we ended up getting the list of who attended those secret meetings, but we were not able to get much further than that.

Labor opposes this bill. Fundamentally, this bill will allow employers and insurers to scheme swap at will between state and national schemes. The arrangement laid out in this bill may potentially lead to the economic collapse of state schemes, and Labor believes it is likely to drive up premiums for small- to medium-sized employers. Again, with this bill, the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee was denied a public hearing by a majority of government senators on the committee, and it is absolutely shameful that this open and transparent process was denied to us. It is the second time that I have reported in this place that, on government controlled inquiries, senators have been denied an open and public transparent process. It is one thing to have submissions in front of you; it is quite another to have witnesses in front of you where they make particular statements that are worth exploring or they give you further information than was in their written submission.

But, no, the Abbott government and its senators in this place absolutely denied an open, public, transparent hearing into this bill. So it is left to Labor to defend and raise our concerns in this place about the bill because we were denied that opportunity through the Senate processes. More and more we are seeing that, when the government do not want to be held accountable, when they do not want to listen to independent evidence and experts, they simply use their numbers and deny the Labor senators that opportunity for an open and public hearing. It does lead me to say: what are they hiding? What is it about this bill, in particular, that they do not want transparency to be on the record?

Despite what we heard from government senators, there is no need to rush this bill. There is simply no need to rush this bill, because, despite the Australian Capital Territory signalling it wishes to exit the bill, it is a long way from doing that. The Australian Capital Territory government is in the process of consulting about the makeup of any new scheme. It does not yet have a designated scheme and it will not for some time. So why the rush? As we know, there is a bill that has not been voted on in this place that looks to cut workers' entitlements, and what I think the government are trying to do is to soften up the crossbench senators and get this bill through and then say to them: 'It's all a part of a tranche. There are three bills here. You voted for the first bill. The sky hasn't fallen down. Let's bring the other bills in.' I am sure that is their plan.

It is time that the Abbott government laid out their plan and stopped trying to pretend there is no link between any of these bills, because there is a link. The Australian Capital Territory government is out there running an open and transparent process—unlike the opportunities to have an open and transparent public hearing in this place, which we were denied by government senators. So why the rush? Rather than try and push a bill through the Senate, why aren't the Abbott government talking to the Australian Capital Territory government? Why aren't they talking to them? Maybe they are. But, again, we do not know, because we did not have that public hearing. But what we do know from the Abbott government's track record is that they do not like to consult. They do not like open consultations. They do not like independent advice. They do not really like anything contrary to their own positions. So the Abbott government thinks the only way forward is to rush this bill through.

Labor wants to be absolutely certain that no worker will be worse off as a result of this bill. I speak from experience. I worked for quite some time as the workers compensation officer at the WA branch of United Voice. In that role, one of the hardest roles I have ever done in my career, I met workers with debilitating injuries—low-paid workers, cleaners, orderlies, nurses, early childhood educators, and manufacturing workers, many with debilitating injuries. I met workers who desperately wanted to get back to work. They wanted to look after their families and do all the things they did before they suffered a workplace injury. I worked with good employers who respected workers and did everything in their power to get workers back to work and to start the rehabilitation process. Unfortunately, and in the majority of cases, I also met employers and insurers whose agenda was to reduce their costs and to take no responsibility for injured workers. Sadly, I saw too many workers caught up in a situation not of their making and completely outside of their control. I saw deliberate actions taken by insurers and employers to drag out claims, to deny benefits, to put workers in a situation where they had no money coming in, to blame workers for their workplace injury and to suggest it was because a worker smoked or was not fit enough or was old. They would use any excuse rather than take responsibility for the fact that their workplace had injured that worker.

I saw workers treated disgracefully at the hands of employers and insurers: workers who throughout their working life had given extra and who did not knock off right at the end of the shift; workers who always were willing to take on additional roles, who gave loyal service and who expected in their time of need their employer to act in the same way when they needed support. I have seen workers totally broken who started out with a physical injury and ended up with mental disabilities, not because of their injuries but because of the way they were treated once they entered the workers compensation scheme. There were far too many who were broken individuals as a result of a workplace injury not of their own making. As a Labor senator in this place I stand for fairness and justice for these workers.

I want to touch on an other point raised by Senator Back that came out at the hearing we had on the first bill, and I must say that I could not believe what I was hearing. I did not want to believe the words on the page, where the first bill sought to take away the right to workers compensation during an unpaid work break, such as a lunch break. Let us just imagine the early childhood educator who started her shift at seven o'clock and works in the city and maybe travels an hour to get to work. She would have left home at six o'clock, so maybe she got up at five o'clock to start her day. At lunch time she will want to have a break. I do not know whether you have been into a child care centre but, unlike perhaps in a big manufacturing workplace, or in a hospital or in an aged care facility, the staff rooms are very small. They often serve as meeting rooms for other workers or as places where workers do programming. So they are not always a place to relax, to get away from the children and to have a desperately needed break. Working with children is rewarding work, but it is also hard work. From my experience as an organiser in the early childhood sector, I can tell you that many workers like to get out and have a break—they like to leave the centre at lunch time. If that worker leaves the centre and walks over to the shopping centre and then trips and hurts herself, under the bill before the Senate she will be out on her own.

I can also tell you that many of those workers work a day shift. As you would know, getting to the bank or the post office is often something workers do in their unpaid break, because it is the only time they can do those things. I heard Senator Back say, 'Oh, well they will be covered by public liability or they will be covered by motor vehicle insurance.' Can you imagine the scenario? There I am leaving the child care centre and I walk down the pavement and I trip. As a low-paid educator earning about $21 or $22 an hour, am I going to engage a lawyer to sue the council? How likely is that? It is incredibly unlikely, and it is impossible. I would not know where an early childhood educator would get the funds to stump up money for a lawyer to sue the council, and to win. We know those claims are arduous and are hard to prove. What if I am injured walking across the road. Do I then make a claim on motor vehicles? Or if I finally get into the shopping centre and I trip over will I then go after the shopping centre's public liability? What a ridiculous statement to make that somehow someone else is responsible for that worker.

The other thing I can inform the Senate is that the break in child care centres is an hour long, not because the worker needs it, but because the employers like to stretch the day out so that they do not have to bring additional staff in. They have that worker there from seven until four o'clock and they give them an hour off because they want to lengthen the shift to reduce their rosters so that they do not have to bring other workers in. Here we are saying that that worker who leaves the childcare service at lunchtime to have a break or to pay a bill or to get to the post office is somehow on her own. What a ridiculous statement to make! It shows how absolutely out-of-touch this Abbott government is that they do not know what workers do during their lunch hour.

During the Senate inquiry we heard—Senator Abetz and the Abbott government are very good at making things up—about the worker who goes surfing and incurs an injury. I do not know how many workers Senator Abetz has met, but over my lifetime as a union official I have met thousands, and I have never yet met one who went surfing during their lunch break. I have met plenty who went shopping, who bought the dinner, who went to the post office, who paid the bills, who rang their kids to check on how they were doing and did all the things that all of us do as part of our daily life. But that is what you will hear from those opposite: 'What about the person who goes surfing?' What about the early childhood educator who simply goes to pay a bill and then gets denied workers compensation because she has had an accident outside of the workplace? That is ridiculous, and it is not something that Labor senators will support in this place.

I want to be absolutely sure—whether it is this bill, bill No. 1; or whether it is this bill before us, No. 2; or whether it is the incorrectly-titled bill No. 3, 'Improving the Comcare scheme'—that no worker will be worse off. But those assurances are not there—they are clearly not there with these bills. And nothing I have read and nothing I have heard and nothing in my own experience as a workers compensation officer and as an organiser gives me confidence that the bills deliver confidence and real surety and protection for workers. What I see in this bill continues the Abbott government's anti-worker and anti-union agenda. I counted the bills the other day because I got invited to speak at the national day of mourning for workers killed on the job in Perth, and the Abbott government has brought something like 15 anti-worker or anti-union bills before this place. Remember when we heard that Work Choices was dead, buried and cremated? Well, it is not. The Abbott government is trying to attack workers and their unions by stealth through 15 bills—most of them rejected in this place. That is Work Choices—when you start to take away workers rights and when you start to reduce their access to unions. I have spoken before about the appalling death rate in the construction industry which goes completely unnoticed by the Abbott government.

We should have a bill to immediately look at and stop workplace deaths, not these sorts of bills which rip entitlements away from workers. It is a disgrace that we do not respect those who toil, that we do not respect lives, that we think it is somehow okay for someone to lose their life when earning their livelihood. Labor senators do not stand for that, and that is why we oppose these bills. The Abbott government has not undertaken proper consultation with all of the relevant stakeholders about this. No doubt they will tell us: 'We had secret confidential meetings that no-one is allowed to tell you about.' But they denied us a proper hearing where we could get evidence out in the open on this particular bill.

It is really important that there is a thorough investigation of the legislation, because the Abbott government has already sought to make adverse changes to the Comcare scheme. These proposed changes will directly and indirectly risk the workplace health and safety of Australian workers. What we heard in the first hearing—and that is the only hearing I can refer to, because we have not had a hearing on this bill—was that somehow we needed to make these changes to the Comcare scheme because of red tape. I tell you what: if the choice for me and other Labor senators is between red tape and workers' lives, or between red tape and workers remaining fit and well in the workplace, then I will pick red tape any day. I know there is not a Labor senator here who would say: 'Let's reduce red tape and create a risk that injures or, in extreme examples, where a worker dies.' No. There is a view from the Abbott government that all red tape is somehow bad; but it is not, because workers in this country need red tape to protect them. They absolutely need that. We will not be supporting words that say 'improving' and 'simplifying', because we know that that reduces workers entitlements and puts them at risk. We will not be supporting this bill.