Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Every family should expect that their loved ones return home at the end of their shift or at the end of their day's work, but for the families of approximately 200 workers in Australia each year this doesn't happen. The impact of a death at work is devastating for families and it's devastating for the wider community and the economy as well.

The committee heard from parents, children, partners and loved ones, and I've got to say at times it was hard to listen, but I felt very privileged that the people, the witnesses, many of whom are up in the gallery today, gave that evidence to us. I felt very privileged to be on that committee and to be able to hear that evidence, because it's not easy to do—it's not easy to stand up and talk to someone about the grief you're feeling. For them to have done that is just so highly commendable. But we can and we must do better, and we know that.

While I remember, I'd also like to thank the secretariat involved in this committee, because I don't think it was easy for them to sit and hear the evidence every day either, and they did such a sterling effort, as they always do.

This committee report makes 34 recommendations, which the committee believes will make workplaces across the country safer. As Senator Marshall said, the report was quite extensive, so today I'll only have the time to address a few of the issues raised. The committee held eight public hearings across Australia, including in Hobart in my home state of Tasmania. From evidence given by the ETU at the Tasmania hearing we know that Tasmania has the second highest fatality rate in the country, behind the Northern Territory, and nearly double the third highest jurisdictions of Queensland and Western Australia. We have to ask why the rates are so high in Tasmania. Tasmania has the highest rates of fatalities in agriculture, forestry and fishing as well as in the public sector. So I would urge the Commonwealth and the Tasmanian governments to work together in ending this human tragedy.

Nationwide in 2016 almost 70 per cent of worker fatalities occurred in just three industries: the transport, postal and warehousing industries, with 47 fatalities. There were 44 worker fatalities in the agricultural, forestry and fishing industries and 35 worker fatalities in the construction industry. Of course, some occupations, like truck driving, are particularly dangerous, and I spoke earlier today with regard to that.

In their submission to the committee, the Transport Workers' Union quoted Professor Ann Williamson as saying:

Heavy trucks are disproportionately involved in fatal crashes on our roads and the trucking industry represents the highest number of work related fatalities across all industries in Australia.

Their submission went on to say:

During the 12 months to the end of March 2008, 184 people were killed in 163 fatal crashes involving heavy trucks, with fatal crashes involving heavy rigid trucks increasing.

Any truck driver or TWU official knows of the high rate of industrial deaths in that industry. One of the truck drivers, John Waltis, told the committee in Sydney:

I've been in the industry for over 40 years and, yes, we had accidents back in the early days, 40-odd years ago, but nowhere near as many as what we're having now, and it is because of the undue pressure put on the drivers through the corporations or the companies they subcontract to do the work.

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I have known of over 50 deaths in the industry because I've been in it such a long time. I don't want to see one more.

I too share that belief about too many truck drivers dying on the road, and I don't think the government's done enough to reduce that tragic statistic. While some Safe Work Australia figures argue that the number of industrial deaths in Australia is declining, even one work related death is one too many, and these figures aren't declining fast enough.

We're also seeing many deaths occurring due to occupational exposure to substances that result in industrial diseases which ultimately lead to the workers' deaths, such as asbestosis, mesothelioma and black lung disease. A witness at the Hobart hearing, Trevor Gauld, from the Electrical Trades Union, outlined why he felt the Safe Work Australia figures were misleading. He said:

What we're seeing is latent illnesses; cancer clusters and these sorts of things—long-term exposures to chemicals. It's different industries. For whatever reason, as you're aware, Senator, your government did the things it did around manufacturing and we have less of that now. So it's a different risk profile. I think what the statistics show is that change; they don't show a decline.

He also said:

It's not that I don't accept the figures; I just think that they mischaracterise the circumstances. We have a significant increase in the change of the modes of employment, for example, and the way that that might get counted, as opposed to someone being deemed an employee or not deemed an employee. We also have issues around the way Safe Work Australia captures that data. All the jurisdictions don't feed the same data in. So what's classed as a workplace fatality in one jurisdiction isn't necessarily classed as a workplace fatality in the Safe Work Australia statistical data capture—the datasets that they gather.

Given that, the committee recommends that Safe Work Australia expand the work-related traumatic injury fatalities dataset to capture data on deaths resulting from industrial diseases.

One of the issues that challenge employers, employees and unions alike is that there are variances in work health and safety laws across jurisdictions. While Australia has a set of model work health and safety laws developed in 2011 by Safe Work Australia, they have not been implemented in Victoria and Western Australia. The aim of the work health and safety model laws is to provide all workers in Australia with the same standard of health and safety protection regardless of the work they do or where they work. The model work health and safety laws comprise the Model Work Health and Safety Act, the Model Work Health and Safety Regulations and the model codes of practice. In addition, a state or territory can also elect to amend the model laws as they apply in their own jurisdictions. Given this situation, the committee recommends that Safe Work Australia maintain a public list of amendments that jurisdictions make to the model work health and safety laws.

One of the first things you need to improve a situation is data that accurately reflects what is happening. The committee found that Safe Work Australia data in relation to compliance enforcement activity does not reflect the prosecution outcomes for industrial deaths, which are a smaller but unqualified subset of disaggregated work health and safety data. The committee is of the strong opinion that Safe Work Australia must work with each jurisdiction to collect and maintain a dataset with more detailed information on the prosecution processes and outcomes of industrial death incidents.

The changing nature of work is having a dramatic and negative impact on the safety of work. The committee heard that the rise of precarious employment practices had led to a corporate culture where there is a distinct lack of care for the safety of workers. Maurice Blackburn, in their submission, detailed the situation:

Over the past two decades, business operators have continued to find new ways to avoid their responsibilities under Fair Work legislation and other legal and regulatory structures, including WHS and workers’ compensation frameworks. ‘Gig economy’, sham contract and labour hire arrangements require the service provider to be a self-employed independent contractor, rather than an employee, thereby abrogating the business operators of employer responsibilities.

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By insisting that people who work for them be self-employed independent contractors, business operators avoid having to take responsibility for the provision of safety nets that Australians have come to expect, including the right to be safe at work.

The committee is persuaded by the evidence that there are negative safety implications relating to the increased use of temporary and labour hire workers and other forms of precarious work. Additionally, the committee agrees that the rise of such precarious employment practices has led in some instances to a corporate culture where there exists a distinct lack of care for the safety of the worker.

Although nothing will bring back those who have lost their lives or even ease the heartbreak, the committee made a number of recommendations to improve the use of compliance and enforcement tools and penalties for breaches of work health and safety laws, which can vary greatly from state to state. And we have to ask: why is a life in one state or territory worth more than in another state? As I mentioned at the beginning of my contribution, the report and the recommendations are too long to cover in their entirety in the short time allocated to me, but the gist of the report is this: too many Australians are dying at work. We can and we must do better as a nation.

As an aside, this morning I met a young lad whose name is Charlie. Charlie was up in the gallery a minute ago. Charlie is 16 months old, and I was devastated to hear, when I was talking to Charlie's mum, that Charlie's grandad died six months ago, as an industrial death. I have thought all afternoon about what Charlie will miss out on by not having his grandad around. He won't have his grandad at his birthday parties or at Christmas time. He won't have his grandad to share all those special moments that grandads share. I say to Charlie's family and to all the other witnesses up in the gallery: we can't quite feel your pain, of course, but we do really want to make a difference. I think that this committee has worked really hard to come up with recommendations that will make a difference.

We've got the report. It's now up to the Commonwealth government and governments around the nation to adopt its recommendations. It's the least that we can do and the least that we owe those hundreds of Australians who die at work unnecessarily each year.