Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Lambie, earlier in the debate—I don't think you were in the chamber at the time—we were talking about how this legislation interacts with mandatory reporting obligations. The bill does not place any reporting obligations on employers to report concerns around violence, but there are a range of reporting obligations that exist under state and territory laws and they are not prohibited by the bill.

For instance, state and territory laws, as you'd be aware, often require workers to mandatorily report suspected abuse of children, and those laws would not be affected. There's an exemption to the confidentiality obligation that normally would apply to an employer or someone else in that situation if a disclosure is necessary to protect the life, health or safety of an employee or another person. If there are confidentiality obligations in place for an employer to not disclose personal information of an employee, if we're talking about a situation where the life, health or safety of an employee is in danger, those confidentiality obligations would effectively be lifted. I think a situation involving domestic and family violence would surely fall under that category.