Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table a revised explanatory memorandum relating to the bill and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Comcare scheme provides all scheme employers with an integrated safety, rehabilitation and compensation system, no matter what Australian state or territory an employer operates in or where its employees are located.

Comcare works in partnership with employers and their employees to prevent workplace injuries and appropriately uses regulatory sanctions if there has been any demonstrable failure of the employer's duty of care. Over the five years to 30 June 2013, the Comcare scheme experienced a 23 per cent reduction in the incidence of accepted claims.

The scheme empowers premium payers to work with their employees to maintain an injured employee at work to achieve an early, safe and long lasting return to work. Injured employees covered by the Comcare scheme benefit from a high standard of income support as well as medical and other assistance where necessary.

The Comcare workers' compensation scheme's outstanding claims liabilities exceed the funds available to meet these liabilities. Since 2013-14, Comcare has been progressively restoring the funding position of the scheme. The bill will support current measures that Comcare has put in place to restore funds to adequate levels.

The purpose of this bill is to provide a framework to manage the exit of Commonwealth authorities and to ensure that Comcare's liabilities under the scheme are fully funded by premiums. The proposed framework also enables Comcare to determine and collect ongoing regulatory contributions from exited employers or successor bodies.

This bill ensures that employers exiting the scheme cover the costs of the claims liability for their employees and former employees who have work-related injuries or illnesses. Where this liability exceeds the amount of scheme available funds that are attributable to the premium payer, Comcare will be able to recover the shortfall from the employer up to a period of seven years after the employer has exited the scheme.

Comcare applies regulatory contribution charges on all entities in the scheme to cover the costs of regulating the entities' obligations under the SRC Act. When an employer exits the Comcare scheme, some regulatory costs may remain and are ongoing. The Bill will enable Comcare to determine and collect these ongoing regulatory contributions from premium payers exiting the scheme.

Through these amendments the Bill will ensure that employers remaining in the scheme are not penalised with higher costs to meet the liabilities attributed to exited employers and that the scheme can offer employers sustainable premium rates.

The SRC Act provides for the rehabilitation of injured employees by providing for rehabilitation programmes, alteration of residences or workplaces, and a duty to provide suitable employment.

There are currently no provisions in the SRC Actrequiring exiting premium payers to meet rehabilitation responsibilities to their injured employees.

While the majority of former Commonwealth employers which have ceased to exist have been absorbed into other agencies, there have been cases of injured former employees where there is lack of clarity about the rehabilitation authority, thereby resulting in minimal rehabilitation activities.

The bill provides that premium payers that exit the Comcare scheme would continue to perform the role of rehabilitation authority for employees whose work-related injury or illness occurred while the premium payer was in the Comcare scheme. Having the current employer as the rehabilitation authority leads to better return to work outcomes for injured workers because employers are well placed to rehabilitate them to work readiness and providing suitable work.

This bill includes minor amendments to the appointment process and composition of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission.

Conclusion

In summary, this bill will ensure that unfunded liabilities and ongoing regulatory contribution charges of a premium payer exiting the Comcare scheme are met by that premium payer; it will ensure that Comcare is able to set sustainable premiums, and that injured employees of exiting premium-payer entities will continue to receive appropriate rehabilitation treatment facilitating their early return to work.

I commend the bill to the Senate.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Exit Arrangements) Bill 2015. The purpose of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Exit Arrangements) Bill 2015 is to amend the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988. That bill provides for financial and other arrangements for a Commonwealth authority to exit the Comcare scheme, clarifies that premiums should be calculated so that current and prospective liabilities are fully funded, changes the appointment process and membership of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission and makes consequential and technical amendments.

The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 provides for the rehabilitation and compensation of injured employees of the Commonwealth and its agencies and statutory authorities, and of eligible corporations. To do this it establishes the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission. This commission makes policy and oversees the operation of Comcare. It also establishes Comcare, which operates the scheme. Most of the Commonwealth agencies and statutory authorities pay premiums to Comcare and are referred to as 'premium payers', but some Commonwealth authorities have been granted self-insurance licences. Eligible corporations which join the scheme are also granted self-insurance licences. On 25 February this year the ACT government announced its intention to leave Comcare. It was also announced that the territory government would conduct a six-week consultation period before taking a decision about designing a new scheme. That consultation only ended on Friday, 8 May. Of course, the design of any new scheme will take a significant period of time, and the ACT government has made a commitment to work with stakeholders. So there is no need to rush this legislation, as the Abbott government seems to be doing.

Labor's first priority is to ensure that no workers will be worse off under the government's proposed bill. Unfortunately, what we have seen from this government ever since it has been in power is a shift of responsibility back to the states, a shift of responsibility back to local governments and a shift of responsibility back to individual citizens of this country. This is not about simply shifting responsibilities; this is about cost-shifting—cost-shifting from the Commonwealth government back to the states, back to local governments and back to individuals. This is all in the ideological approach from this Commonwealth government that the individuals should look after themselves.

When it comes to workers compensation, when it comes to the rights of individuals to be to properly compensated for an injury at work, Labor is uncompromising. Workers need to be looked after and workers need to have benefits to ensure that they can look after their families or their individual needs if and when a workplace accident takes place. We are not sure that the same concern for workers rights in this country is underpinning this government's approach—and this is workers rights that do not just go to industrial rights but also to their rights to be properly compensated if they are injured at work. As a former union official I have seen too many people's lives destroyed because of injuries, accidents or chemical exposure at work. We are very concerned that, if we have a system at the Commonwealth level, that system is a sustainable system, it is a system that looks after workers rights and it is a system that the Commonwealth employees and other corporations who are a party to it can understand will provide decent compensation for workers if and when they are injured at work.

We have to be certain that this bill will not provide an incentive for others to make workers worse off. We do not want this bill—this legislation, if it is passed—to be used as a cost-cutting exercise by some of the most profitable and biggest corporations in this country. That is an unacceptable proposition for us. The opposition wants to ensure that workers who are covered by the Comcare scheme are covered appropriately, and we want to ensure that if we then allow people to move out of the scheme they are not moving to inferior schemes simply based on cost-cutting or simply based on reducing workers rights to compensable claims. That is why we took the responsible decision to refer this bill to a Senate committee for a thorough investigation. That Senate committee will consider the bill.

The opposition is concerned that the government has not undertaken a proper consultation with all stakeholders in constructing this bill. I would have thought that the coalition would have learnt a lesson, over the last 18 months, about ensuring proper consultation on legislation that comes to this parliament. The fiasco of the last budget demonstrates that not consulting properly with the community and not consulting properly with people who have an interest in a range of issues, is a recipe for legislative failure.

And we have a government that has had more than its fair share, in such a short time, of legislative failure. The lack of consultation that we are worried about in terms of this bill has led, in other areas of the budget, to pensioners having 18 months of uncertainty in terms of how their pensions will fare in the future. They were simply advised in the first budget that they would be $80 a week worse off, over a 10-year period. Families on $65,000 a year were $6,000 a year worse off. And all this was done without proper consultation. All this was done with an arrogance from this government that beggars belief. That arrogance and lack of consultation, and the ideological focus of this government, came home to roost when they could not get their budget through this Senate.

So my message to the government is that if you are going to make changes you should make them after proper consultation, and you should not hide what you are about to do, as this government did. No-one knew this government's agenda until the first budget. The community was told that there would be no cuts to health, no cuts to education and no cuts to the ABC. And people voted on the basis of promises that were never real promises. That is why, when we are dealing with legislation by this government, we need to be absolutely certain that what they are saying and what they are proposing is what they really mean. They have, now, a reputation in the broader community, of not being trustworthy and not being in a position to—

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Fancy being lectured by you on that! Seriously!

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here comes Senator O'Sullivan. We are talking about processes of government. What would an ex Bjelke-Petersen Queensland copper know about processes of government? There were abuses of government processes for a lot of your working life.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order. By inference, I am going to take that as a personal reflection on me. I ask the senator to withdraw it.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure Senator Cameron has heard you. I will only ask him to withdraw it if he has said unparliamentary words or made unparliamentary reflections. I do not think he has, but it is a matter for Senator Cameron. If he wants to withdraw it he has heard your request.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not intend to withdraw. I am making some general comments about people's backgrounds. It was a general comment about the police force under the Bjelke-Petersen government. We know what they were like. We know what happened then. So, if people are a bit offended by that they should just go back and read history, and look at what happened in Queensland.

I am always happy for interjections from Senator O'Sullivan on any issue, because the Nationals should really stop being the doormat of the Liberal Party. We have seen in this budget—we are really talking here about legislation on safety—the Nationals again making false claims about being worried about what is going to happen. The reality is that the doormats called the Nationals will just roll over and concede, and do what they are told by the Liberal Party, as they always do.

On workers compensation and on people's rights to get decently compensated if they are hurt at work, we do not trust this government. Labor's mistrust of this government is exactly the same as the mistrust that the community has—that the whole population has—of a government that has lied to the community on more than one occasion. They have lied to the community on many occasions, so we want to be sure that when we are dealing with workers compensation, that any changes proposed in this bill that directly or indirectly risk workplace health and safety of Australian workers, are dealt with.

My big problem with this government—amongst many problems—is that they have this rhetoric about red tape. As a union official for many years, I understand the importance of having a proper legislative process to ensure that workers can go to work, work safely, and go home to their families that night. According to this government, this is red tape. There should not be red tape to make employers operate in a safe manner. Governments should just butt out and employers should be able to get on with the job, because it is a cost to the employer, it is red tape, and it is an intervention in the market.

All of the nonsense and ideology we hear from this government always leads us to be very concerned about any changes to legislation that this government proposes when it comes to health and safety, when it comes to workers compensation and when it comes to workers' rights. We know, the whole community knows, citizens of this country know, this government's form when it comes to workers' rights. We are worried that this legislation could remove the rights of workers to fair and reasonable cover when they suffer the misfortune of a work-related illness or injury.

We strongly oppose the bill. In the bill the government has included provisions, in an effort to hollow out state workers compensation schemes, to open up the Comcare scheme to private sector companies. The government has sought to do this by applying a very liberal definition of what constitutes a national employer. Yet in this bill, if it is constructed incorrectly, there may be leverage for the federal government to force entities to stay in the Comcare scheme. Why is this particularly important? It is important because there is yet another Comcare bill that has recently been introduced by the Abbott government. That bill makes cuts to lump-sum compensation payable for permanent impairment to the vast majority of injured workers and removes the already modest pain and suffering payment. A modest payment would be removed. Changes to eligibility requirements will mean injured workers are locked out of the scheme altogether, incapacity payments are reduced and sanctions are expanded against workers, including removal of medical support if a worker fails to attend a medical appointment, plus more, all of which are totally opposed by the opposition.

The Abbott government is asking the parliament to make a determination on a matter when it has, very recently, introduced a substantial bill which potentially contains crucial information about future changes it proposes to make to the very same act. Given the introduction of the third substantive Comcare bill, Labor does not believe that the Senate committee inquiry into this bill was afforded a reasonable opportunity to thoroughly investigate the interaction of this bill with the third Comcare bill. As I referred to earlier, the ACT government has not made a determination on the make-up of any new scheme and, thus, to support this legislation before that has occurred is to put the cart before the horse.

Labor has to be sure there is nothing questionable about this bill, and the best way to do that is to take the necessary time to further consult stakeholders. Labor's first priority is to ensure that no worker will be made worse off under this bill. We need to ensure that this bill will not create perverse incentives for employers to make their employees worse off. The opposition are not convinced that the government has taken all the steps it should to consult with all the stakeholders over this bill. There is a clear need to investigate the interaction between this bill and the other Comcare care bills introduced by the government, one of which will make changes to Comcare that will adversely affect workers.

For these reasons we do not support this bill. We do not trust what the government is really up to in relation to this bill. We want a further consultation process. We want to ensure that the workers who are covered by Comcare, or the workers who may move into another system, are not worse off and that their rights to fair compensation, if they are injured or suffer a very severe disease arising out of their work capacity, are looked after.

This is an important bill before the Senate. That is why we need to make sure that everything is done that can possibly be done to maximise the consultation that needs to take place. But the arrogance of this government, the arrogance that they know what is right, is driving this bill. Underpinning that arrogance is the ideology to cut costs in the Commonwealth area, to run an argument that it is red tape, to run an argument that they should simply shift the costs of a worker being hurt at work back onto the family that needs support, and that is a real problem.

Senator O'Sullivan interjecting—

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

Senator O'Sullivan, order!

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just wish—as Senator O'Sullivan continues to interject in a very stupid manner, as is normally his way—that he actually does think about what this government is doing. Actually, as someone who has many people employed in many companies and with a myriad of trusts that he operates, he should think about workers now and again instead of his own back pocket, his own wallet. He should actually think about his workers and he should think about decent health and safety when it comes to workers instead of his profit. He should think about ensuring that workers can come to work and go home safely.

We do not trust this government. We certainly do not trust the doormats of the National Party to do anything to support the working people in this country or to support regional people. On that basis we oppose this bill. (Time expired)

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Exit Arrangements) Bill 2015. Taking this bill at face value, the measures in it may seem reasonable. According to the government summary of the bill, it amends the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 to:    provide for financial and other arrangements for a Commonwealth authority to exit the Comcare scheme; clarify that premiums for current Commonwealth authorities and entities should be calculated having regard to the principle that current and prospective liabilities should be fully funded by Comcare-retained funds and so much of the consolidated revenue fund as would be available; change the appointment process and membership of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission; and make consequential and technical amendments.

However, this bill cannot be considered in isolation. It needs to be considered in the context of two other bills which are currently before the parliament and with which the government is seeking to attack workers' access to workers compensation. On an initial reading of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Exit Arrangements) Bill 2015, the bill is going to strip away compensation from Commonwealth workers. It seems we need to learn a lot more about this bill, but from what we know about it already the Australian Greens have some very deep concerns. The Australian Lawyers Alliance is reported to have described the proposed changes as harsh, unfair and an attack on the rights of injured workers. The ACT government, currently one of the biggest participants in Comcare, is intending to exit the scheme, affecting many workers. Concerns have been raised by unions, the Victorian government and others about how this bill is going to impact on workers, and in particular how it is going to interact with other legislation that the government has brought forward.

It is unacceptable that there are so many outstanding concerns and uncertainties, and given these concerns—and given that the Senate committee that inquired into this bill only finished its deliberations last week and was not able to deal with all these matters—it is the view of the Australian Greens that this bill should not proceed at this time. These uncertainties are unacceptable. It is not just a bit of theoretical legislation we are dealing with here—it is people's lives and it is people's wellbeing that we are legislating for; it is people's ability to have proper compensation if they suffer at work injuries which are likely to affect their wellbeing in the immediate future and often for the rest of their lives. These are serious matters. The parliament owes it to every individual that will potentially be affected by this bill to make sure that this legislation is right and is going to give people the opportunity to continue to live their lives with the care and the compensation that they require.

It is our view that the bill needs to be further examined before it proceeds to make sure that there are no unintended consequences, particularly as the legislation relates to other bills and issues. Given these factors, and given that we have a government that really does seem to have a clear intention to undermine workers compensation and to not give workers the rights that they deserve, the Australian Greens are not prepared to support this bill at this time. (Time expired)

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I first saw Senator Cameron get to his feet I thought, 'Gracious me, there is a time when he and I are going to be in agreement.' Indeed, I had a similar thought when Senator Rice rose to her feet. Let us be very clear on what this legislation is about—it is about protecting the rights of workers and employees in general who may be employed by the ACT government. That is what the bill is all about. Why we heard a rant from Senator Cameron for the length of time we did over issues so totally irrelevant to the matter before the chamber is beyond me. It makes me perhaps a little less wondering why the Scottish Nationalist Party did as well in Scotland as they did last Thursday, but it does cause me to question why Senator Cameron would have personally attacked Senator O'Sullivan in the way he did—what relevance does that have to the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Exit Arrangements) Bill?

This bill is all about making sure the interests of workers covered under ACT workers compensation legislation are protected should the ACT government decide to leave the protection of Comcare. I applaud Senator Rice because in her opening comments she completely focused on that point, and that is what the coalition is focusing on. Why does this matter need to be addressed now? Simply because of the timing of it. We know that on 26 February this year the ACT government announced that it was consulting its workforce on plans to leave the Comcare scheme, and that those consultations were completed on 8 May—only a week ago. If the ACT government were to leave the scheme, where are their current and past employees to be dealt with? We know that those people need to be protected—Senator Rice eloquently said this, as did Senator Cameron when he first kicked off, before he went off on a rant. The coalition believes these people need to be protected.

The question of whether the ACT government does leave the scheme is for another time. Imagine if we were not trying to deal with this issue now—Senator Cameron would be leaping up and carrying on a treat, saying that workers are not being protected and asking what the Commonwealth government is doing to fix it. In fact that is what we are doing with this bill

We are seeking to ensure that, in the event that the ACT government does leave the scheme, there are sufficient funds in the scheme so that the Commonwealth can ensure that those employees, present and past, are actually fully protected under this legislation. Had we failed to move on this, they would be screaming from the rafters on the other side.

Debate interrupted.