Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Three, if you do not count the department, Senator Canavan. I went back to the secretariat concerned that Senator Lines felt that she had not had the opportunity to delve further into those submissions and flesh out some of those concerning aspects for her. The secretariat advised that no questions on notice were submitted by senators during the process of the report being developed. To me that indicated that no senator had any concern with what the ACTU had written, what the ETU had written or indeed what the Victorian government had written, and that no senator wanted to flesh out in any greater detail the submission from the Department of Employment on this bill. So, Senator Lines, I reject the fact that there was not an open and transparent process in the writing of the report on this piece of legislation.

Senator O'Neill, in her contribution, started to extol the virtues of human rights and the different international conventions and treaties that the human rights committee has to go through to assess whether legislation is compatible with our human rights. I did not quite get from Senator O'Neill's contribution what the conclusion was of those particular processes; however, I am happy to report to the Senate that, having gone through the human rights process, the bill is indeed compatible with human rights because it advances the protection of human rights.

Some key issues came out of the report, but the primary purpose of the bill is to ensure a Commonwealth authority does not exit the Comcare scheme without contributing appropriate ongoing costs for injured employees who remain in the scheme and to cover liabilities—the primary purpose of the bill is to protect the system that protects workers. The Comcare scheme, as we heard earlier, covers a range of workers compensation and work-related injuries to Commonwealth and Australian Capital Territory public servants, employees of Commonwealth and ACT statutory authorities and corporations, ADF members for injuries before 1 July 2004 and employees of corporations who have a licence to self-insure under the SRC Act. In February 2015, the ACT government announced its intention to leave the Comcare scheme due to long delays in the scheme, excessive premiums and ineffective rehabilitation. That was sourced from a Canberra Times media report of 26 February 2015.

The ACT government—and I think at the time the Chief Minister was current Senator Katy Gallagher—made the decision, which seems quite sensible, to leave a scheme that was costing that government money because of excessive premiums and ineffective rehabilitation. There were issues for the ACT government and issues for the workers covered by the scheme because it was not providing appropriate rehabilitation. The ETU submission to the inquiry supported the ACT government's move to exit the Comcare scheme for these reasons. So I am looking forward to Senator Gallagher's contribution to this debate, because in this place the Labor Party is obviously not in support of the ACT Labor government's decision and the implementation of that decision through this bill's primary function. But we should not be surprised, Senator Canavan, at the hypocrisy of the federal ALP opposition in not supporting the ACT government's previous decision. The flexibility in their policy position knows no bounds. In fact, for the next Olympic Games, we might hold some trials on the ovals on the Senate side of Parliament House to see which Labor Party senator is the most flexible—we could get them in the gymnastics comp to the Olympics. Anyway, I digress from the bill and I apologise for not staying relevant to the material before us.

For very good reasons, the ACT government decided to leave the scheme, and, as we proceeded through the submissions, the committee noted:

… maintaining the financial sustainability of the Comcare scheme through appropriate exit contributions for ongoing claims management and liabilities is integral to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the scheme to pay claims and support injured employees.

Again, this goes to the very heart of the difference between that side of the chamber and this side of the chamber. On this side of the chamber, we are interested in policies, legislation and approaches that go to financial sustainability. Financial sustainability is in our DNA—in everything we do and in everything we bring to this chamber. Indeed, it is a hallmark of our budget, brought down this week. We are a government committed to ensuring not only the financial sustainability of the Comcare scheme but, indeed, the financial sustainability of our entire nation. I will be happy later in my contribution to go through some of the measures announced this week that reflect our commitment to financial sustainability. The committee noted concern regarding the potential impact on employees. However, the report states:

The committee is satisfied that the bill will not change any existing benefits or entitlements for injured workers.

That brings me to some of Senator Lines's other assertions made during her contribution. She continually asserted that this is an anti-worker bill. Quite the contrary—it is a bill that attempts to ensure the financial sustainability of a scheme that underpins many workers' compensation entitlements. For her to put forward, once again, the rhetoric that our government does not care about workers right throughout Australia is, again, just attempting to use language to paint this side of the parliament in a certain way, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The Abbott government is the best friend the workers of Australia have ever had. If you look just at our budget, we are completely focused on ensuring that young people throughout this nation are able to access jobs through youth transition programs. We are looking at overhauling apprenticeship programs so that we can ensure they have the skills they need that are relevant to our industries within our communities. We have programs to ensure that older Australians are supported back into the workforce. Our entire jobs program is focused on those long-term unemployed and on assisting them back into the workforce.

That is one end of that conversation; the other end is that you have to actually support the employers of the workers of Australia. If you do not have employers, you cannot have jobs for the workers of Australia, and that is why our budget is completely focused on bringing capacity and support to the small businesses around Australia, to ensure that they can go out into their communities with confidence and build their balance sheets so that they have the money in the till to put on that additional employee—because, if you do not get it right as a small business owner, the impact is significant.

Another assertion Senator Lines made was that we on this side believe that all red tape is bad—that our commitment to not having over-burdensome red tape is somehow in our DNA. What we are interested in is effective and efficient legislation and regulation. We want to achieve positive outcomes for our communities, individuals, businesses and economies, but we do not want to make that regulation so burdensome that we stifle innovation and growth, at either an individual level or an economic level.

One piece of regulation that I think has been a great initiative of the Abbott-Truss government relates to the Foreign Investment Review Board changes. They are important for Australia's growth and innovation, contributing to the prosperity of our businesses, our communities and the broader society. We absolutely welcome foreign investment in this country. It stimulates our economy and grows our local community, providing, once again, jobs for Australians young and old. But we have to ensure that that foreign investment is in our national interest. It does not matter whether you are an American company wanting to buy a farm or a Chinese investor wanting to buy an apartment in Toorak—it does not matter who you are or where you are from; we need an appropriate mechanism to assess that investment to ensure that it is, indeed, in our national interest. We should not shy away from that. That is a piece of regulation we have implemented that I think has been of great benefit and something that the community has long called for. I am very proud of our government achieving that.

I also want, in the time left available to me, to go through some of the fabulous ways that our government are supporting the workers of Australia through our budget. We have been focused on stimulating small businesses. Those businesses with turnovers less than $2 million will be able to access tax relief in terms of purchasing assets. That is going to run ripples right throughout the community. Right across regional Australia the biggest employer in the community—75 per cent of employment—comes from the small business sector. This is going to have huge flow-on effects for the towns that I care about in regional Victoria, that Senator Canavan cares about in regional Queensland, and that is important. It is very important.

When we turn to the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Exit Arrangements) Bill 2015 before us, our government is committed to actually getting it right. I have been hearing critique from the other side about the splitting of the bills. The opposition have a problem because we have taken the initiative and chunked that legislation down to bring it into the Senate and have the conversations, which this particular Senate requires us to have as a government. That is not a bad thing. Last week the opposition were critiquing us for putting too much in one bill, and in showing that some things were dependent on others, et cetera. We just cannot seem to get it right for the Labor opposition. I wonder whether they will get it right tonight. I am looking forward to the Leader of the Opposition's budget in reply speech. I noticed on Tuesday night that the opposition were very, very loud for, maybe, the first three minutes of the Treasurer's address. They increasingly got more and more quiet as our government's sole focus on families and on job creation, and the very real and common sense approaches we are taking to solving those problems became apparent.