Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday I raised matters concerning the Australian government’s supervision of Commonwealth subsidies of young workers under the New Apprenticeships scheme. I raised matters concerning the death of a meatworker, Aaron Willis, on 25 May 2006 and his preceding treatment at the hands of Midfield Meat of Warrnambool. I asked questions of DEST with regard to its supervision of the 100 trainees per year that have been employed at Midfield Meat in a workforce, I might add, of only 500. I also asked questions with regard to DIMA’s use of 457 visas at the same meatworks.

Today I received a threatening letter from the Midfield Group’s operations manager at the meatworks, and a statement headed ‘Midfield Meat International’s response to politician’s blunder’ was distributed to the press and forwarded to me. The company has been seeking to deny liability and to repudiate the evidence that was presented to my office by Mr Aaron Willis’s mother, by her solicitors, Stringer Clark, and by Aaron’s union, the AMIEU.

Midfield Meat, in its statement to the press and to me directly, is relying on the fact that young Aaron Willis is dead and cannot speak for himself. It is the job of this Senate to speak for workers like Aaron and to speak for their families. There is no fundamental dispute between me and Midfield Meat with regard to the fact that an incident occurred—what Midfield Meat calls an ‘incident’ or an ‘episode’ and what I call an ‘accident’. The company relies on a superseded legal nicety—the distinction between ‘accident’, ‘incident’, ‘episode’ or whatever you like—to claim that it is not legally required to report upon an accident at work. The law has now been changed in Victoria, and the obligation to report such an event is very clear.

There is no dispute that something took place at the meatworks on 31 May 2005 and that Mr Willis was unconscious and was taken by ambulance to hospital as a result of this event. There is no dispute that Mr Willis fell into some equipment—WorkSafe Victoria said ‘a bin’; Mr Willis said ‘a mincer’. Since the equipment was not operating at the time, it is neither here nor there. There is no dispute that the training contract was cancelled and that Mr Willis’s employment was terminated, effective the day after his accident. There is no dispute that Midfield Meat failed to report this incident. There is no dispute that they failed to pay for the ambulance that took Mr Willis to hospital. The only thing in dispute is whether or not Mr Willis hit his head.

The statement presented to the press today by the company suggested that I was seeking to ‘sensationalise’ this young man’s death. What I am doing is drawing attention to the treatment of Aaron Willis, a young trainee meatworker whose employer failed to exercise its duty of care for his welfare and safety. Midfield Meat claims that Aaron had a pre-existing medical condition—epilepsy, controlled by medication. If the company believed this, why did it sign off on Mr Willis’s training contract, forms of which I have, which states specifically that he had no pre-existing medical condition? This is a standard provision of all training contracts. Why did the company sign off that there was no pre-existing medical condition?

I am in possession of a letter from the hospital, dated some two months after the incident, where the doctor says they were still examining Aaron to see if he did or did not have epilepsy. If he already had it and was on medication for it, why would they be examining him to find out? How do we know that Aaron did not suffer any head or body injuries, as claimed by the company? Was it the supervisor who examined him, and what medical qualifications does this supervisor have? What expertise was relied upon? If it was the ambulance staff, what medical expertise do they have in neurology? Why doesn’t the company tell us who made the assessment and the qualifications of the people it relied upon so that it was able to make the statement to the press today?

The company refers to a ‘treating doctor’. It does not tell us when this doctor examined and treated Aaron. Was it immediately after the accident? Was it some time in the ensuing year? What kind of doctor was it? Was it a specialist or a hospital resident? The company relies on the word of a single supervisor who claims to have seen the incident. What about other workers? The supervisor cannot have been the only person to see what actually happened on the work floor that particular day. Other workers were working on the line.

In any case, we have the statement by Mr Willis’s mother to her lawyers in which she reports that Aaron phoned her from the hospital when he came around from being unconscious for 18 hours and told her that he had fallen into a mincer. Why would he have fabricated such a story? Midfield Meat claims that they ‘kept a position open’ for Aaron after the incident. Aaron’s mother states that he went back twice to seek re-employment and was refused on both occasions.

Furthermore, Aaron never had a permanent full-time position. Contrary to the rules covering a traineeship, Midfield was employing him and paying him as a casual. There was no position to be kept open for him. As it is claimed, Aaron’s traineeship ‘would have continued had he been fit enough to work’. Why did the company so promptly cancel his contractor training? And why are they trying to present this as an action of the Victorian government when everyone understands it is the company that makes those decisions? Finally I make these two points. Why is it that there are 100 trainees every year in this plant? What has DIMA been doing to provide approval for 100 section 457 visas for the same company? (Time expired)