Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I draw the minister's attention to a comment made by Senator McAllister about the work capacity of the agencies that are supposed to be creating safe workplaces. Senator Pratt and I sit for many, many hours in estimates with Safe Work Australia, asking questions about what's going on. We hear particularly from culturally and linguistically diverse communities and their representatives, predominantly unions, who come forward to say that people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are not getting information, they are not being supported, they are often in insecure and vulnerable work and they are not getting the support that they need to understand what a safe workplace in Australia looks like. They are particularly subject to cultural intimidation when they shift from another context to Australia and they don't understand what's going on in their workplaces. In terms of financial support for the agencies to do the kind of work that you say is somewhere in a work plan that we need to trust, what increases to capacity can Australians be confident will occur to back up the claims that you're making here today with regard to this piece of legislation?