David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the Greens to indicate we will be supporting the Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2022 and to indicate the context in which this debate is happening. Last year, I think, 169 workplace fatalities occurred in the country—that is, 169 workers who went to work and didn't return. We should think of the collective trauma of their families and their co-workers and acknowledge from the outset why it is essential that this house gets work health safety right, this parliament gets work health safety right. That is why we look forward to reducing risk in the future and why that should be an essential part of the work of this chamber and this parliament.

This bill is, largely, a non-controversial bill that makes a number of changes to improve and streamline the operation of work health and safety laws in the country. In large part, it seeks to implement recommendations made by Ms Marie Boland as part of the review she did of the model work health and safety laws, and in particular her final report that she delivered in 2018. Just pausing there, it is somewhat frustrating that it has taken five years to actually implement these recommendations, and I do want to credit the minister for bringing this on, moving this through the parliament and putting it in place. Five years was too long to wait for the implementation of these reforms from the Boland review.

I won't go into detail for each of the amendments to the Work Health and Safety Act, but they include providing that negligence can be an alternative fault element for the most serious offences, for category 1 offences. Of course it should be, and the fact that it wasn't in the initial laws has led to a good many prosecutions not being put forward because, in the absence of that alternative basis for proving fault, it was next to impossible. It was next to impossible to meet the standard to hold employers and others to account for the most serious breaches of work health and safety laws.

The amendments also prohibit insurance for work health and safety fines. That's critical if we're going to have accountability in this space. If employers can insure away a potential cost to them, as corporations or individuals, if they can just insure the risk, then that creates a lack of personal incentive to ensure that the laws are complied with. If you can contract out your criminal risk, well obviously that makes workplaces less safe. Clearly prohibiting the insurance for work health and safety fines is essential.

It also clarifies that health and safety representatives are entitled to choose a course of training, that they don't have to take the training often offered by the employer. There are obvious reasons why you would want to empower health and safety representatives to be able to choose the training that is going to be best for them, rather than the training that their employer may want them to undertake.

It deals with some of the complications around processes for issuing and servicing of notice. It simplifies that, and I think that's a good thing for all involved. And it has a series of other modest technical and clarifying amendments.

It is clear, though, that, even with the passage of this bill, there is a vast amount more to do. After essentially a decade of the intentional erosion of workplace conditions and workers' pay and rights under the former coalition government there is a lot more to do than is contained in this bill. Workers have seen their wages and conditions eroded. Overwork and unsafe work in parts of our economy have become normalised. Precarious work is becoming a business model. And all of this is of deep concern for work health and safety in the increasingly diverse workplaces in this country, and the Greens will continue to push for comprehensive reforms that workers need going forward. In particular, Safe Work needs to be up to this reform task, and the evidence to date would suggest it isn't.

The Greens will be moving a second reading amendment to reflect one specific aspect of the future reform work that's needed, and that relates to the ongoing use of manufactured stone and the scourge of silicosis in the workers who work with it. We have known for years that Safe Work has recognised silica as a workplace hazard—indeed, a lethal workplace hazard—and has, at different times, recommended standards for treatment, recommended additional air filtering, made recommendations about wet or dry cutting and made recommendations about personal protective equipment. But they've known from the outset that those aren't working in place. They're not working in the diverse array of workplaces, often without much supervision, where manufactured stone is being cut, whether it's in small workshops in Western Sydney or onsite in the high-rises and commercial and residential buildings where this manufactured stone is being put in place. They know it doesn't work, and they've known it for years. They've known that every year they allowed high-silica manufactured stone to be put in workplaces, young workers and others are being exposed to early, awful, painful and in some cases utterly inevitable deaths as a result of their exposure to this dust. They've known it and they've failed to give the key advice about banning it. That has been put to them for years.

I know this for a fact because, in my former work as a state MP in New South Wales, we undertook in 2019 a review of the state's dust diseases scheme. The thoracic surgeons, the unions and the workers came to us in that inquiry and gave us some of the most heartbreaking evidence about young workers' lives being cut short by silicosis. I still remember the workers coming into the committee hearings and telling us about their diagnosis, telling us about the high likelihood of an early death in two or three years. Some of these workers were in their late 20s or early 30s. They spoke about their families. They spoke about how they had done the work because they were skilled in it and they needed the income for their families, and now it was killing them and leaving their families with nothing. I remember today just how absolutely heartbreaking it was. To then hear that Safe Work Australia wasn't moving to ban the product but was just putting yet more ineffectual measures in place was just so frustrating. Neither the state government nor the state Labor opposition at the time, let alone the federal coalition government or Safe Work Australia, were willing to make the hard call then and ban this stuff.

So, in a dissenting statement at the end of that inquiry, I said this, and I stand by it to this day:

Manufactured stone is a relatively new product, first being distributed in the NSW construction sector in or about 2001. There are numerous credible alternatives for it in all aspects of construction. Consistent with the hierarchy of control measures that forms the core of work health safety responses in Australia the first response to an identifiable hazard like manufactured stone is, where possible, to remove it from the workplace.

There is no doubt that manufactured stone has certain attributes that make it attractive to use; it is consistent, it is relatively cheap and it provides a relatively low cost high gloss finish that is attractive to certain consumers. In its time asbestos also had certain attributes that made it attractive. It was low cost, highly fire resistant and easily cut and affixed. However as the full medical and human cost of its use became apparent asbestos was nevertheless eventually banned. This was after initial attempts by the industry to seek safer handling procedures and more restricted uses.

I firmly believe we should learn from this history and based on the evidence available to date make the call to ban the use of manufactured stone in NSW. Of course a federal ban would be preferable and I acknowledge that NSW cannot ban its importation or availability in NSW, however we can regulate construction and work health safety matters and under those heads of power a ban is entirely possible.

Every month and year we delay, more workers will be exposed to the risk of deadly silicosis. No shiny benchtop is worth that.

That's what I said in 2020, and I said it with the support of thoracic surgeons, the CFMMEU and the workers. That was at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. What has Safe Work done to date? More of this tinkering around the edges. More of this: 'Oh, we can deal with it by greater regulations in the workplaces. We can put more filtering in the workplaces.' None of that will work. None of that will stop workers dying of silicosis. They've known that for years.

That's why, on behalf of the Greens, I move the second reading amendment that was circulated on sheet 1847, as revised:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) high silica manufactured stone is currently causing the painful death of many young workers who contract deadly silicosis,

(ii) the Federal Government and SafeWork have been on notice about the deadly health impacts posed by manufactured stone since at least 2019 when the matter was canvassed extensively in an inquiry by the New South Wales Legislative Council Standing Committee on Law and Justice and by the press,

(iii) high silica manufactured stone is the asbestos of our age, and the evidence shows it is not being used safely, with deadly results; and

(b) calls on the Government to work with all relevant authorities to consider an urgent ban on manufactured stone and to ensure medical and financial support for those workers who are suffering with silicosis".

And I want to put on the record my gratitude to the minister in working collaboratively to get agreement on that form of words and hopefully work to the truth of that.

But, I ask again: where was Safe Work? And why is Safe Work still not providing the unambiguous advice that all the evidence says they should be providing? They're the work safety regulator for the country. They're being told by unions, by workers, by thoracic surgeons—by everybody, apart from the companies themselves—that this stuff is deadly, and they can't bring themselves to give the obvious advice that it should be banned. Worse than that, many of the workers who have been exposed to this deadly dust in this country since September 2020 can't even rely on the fact that there's an insurance product from the manufacturers that will meet the costs of the claims that they have.

The biggest manufacturer in this space globally, Caesarstone, has been refused insurance for its manufactured stone product in Australia since September 2020. We know that not because of what Safe Work Australia has done but because Caesarstone has had to give the disclosure in their returns to US corporate authorities. What has Safe Work's response been? They know this stuff is deadly, they know workers are dying and they know the main distributor and manufacturer of the product in Australia, Caesarstone, hasn't even been able to get insurance for the costs since September 2020. They've done bugger all.

So yes, let's get this amendment through. And yes, I commend the work that the minister, the unions, the workers and others in this space have been doing to move towards a ban. But this can't wait another week. It can't wait another month. It can't wait another six months. Every day of delay sees more workers exposed to deadly silicosis. At the moment, any worker whose exposure came through Caesarstone faces the very real risk not only of having a deadly disease but also of having no insurance product to meet the claim, for themselves and their loved ones, their families. If Caesarstone, which is a foreign corporation, decides to just pack up in Australia and cease its business, there will be no assets, no insurance, nowhere to go. It's like James Hardy mark 2, and it's unfolding directly in front of us.

If there's one agency that's had the job of preventing this from happening and has failed to act, failed to live up to its duty of care, it's Safe Work Australia. We have a collective responsibility to do better, because, as I said before, and I'll say it again: no shiny benchtop is worth the death of a worker.