Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I've listened carefully to your answer. If I understand it, your argument about why you're not implementing positive duty today goes something like this: 'We don't need to, because really it's already a workplace health and safety obligation. And, even if we did do it, it would be very complicated and it would take a lot of time.' I want to make a few comments about both of those arguments because I don't think either of them stand up.

In Commissioner Jenkins's report she talks about her attempts and the commission's attempts to engage with the workplace health and safety regulators, and she says this:

The Commission sought to engage with all Commonwealth, state and territory WHS regulators within the WHS Framework, both individually and together as part of the Heads of the Workplace Safety Authorities.

And get this—this is a direct quote from the report:

The Heads of the Workplace Safety Authorities informed the Commission that it would not provide a joint a submission to the Inquiry, and that Heads of the Workplace Safety Authorities Members would provide any submissions they have through other government agencies in their jurisdiction or directly to the Commission.

What happened then? Were there any direct submissions to the commission? Just one, from WA. The only workplace health and safety regulator to make a submission was WorkSafe WA. And what did they say in their submission? They said:

In Western Australia, the EOC has specific legislation to address complaints of sexual harassment matters. As a safety regulator, WorkSafe is not sufficiently resourced and does not have the expertise to adequately address sexual harassment matters.

And the thing is that that is the experience of everyone who works at the coalface of representing women in workplaces who experience harassment.

Here's another quote from the report, from one of the submitters:

Australian WHS agencies have shown remarkable blindness or reluctance to acknowledge harassment as a workplace hazard that warrants their attention. Unless and until WHS agencies acknowledge and address this gap, this whole system that is explicitly designed to protect workers from harm will continue to fail to protect workers from sexual harassment.

It's a pretty clear warning, but there's no indication in this bill that it's a warning that's been heeded by the government.

So I do have some questions for you, Minister. Do you consider that the workplace health and safety arrangements at the moment are adequate and are being used appropriately to protect women in Australian workplaces from harassment? In your response to the report, you indicated that the government will assess whether the amendments would create further complexity, uncertainty or duplication in the overarching legal framework. How long do you expect this assessment to take? Will you be assessing whether such amendments would increase the level of protection for Australian women, or are you just assessing whether or not it's too much of a burden for employers? Who is undertaking this assessment, and when will it be made public?