Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

  (i) on 25 November 2019, Mr Brad Duxbury was tragically killed at the Carborough Downs mine site at Coppabella, Queensland,

  (ii) Mr Duxbury's death is the fifth fatality on a Queensland mine site in the past 12 months,

  (iii) there have also been more than 100 confirmed cases of mine-dust–related diseases in Queensland, and

  (iv) nationally, Safe Work Australia's report, Work-related Traumatic Injury Fatalities, states that 9 mine fatalities were recorded in 2018; and

(b) calls on the Federal Government to:

  (i) recognise that people have the right to a safe workplace free from occupational hazards,

  (ii) implement the recommendations contained in the report of the Education and Employment References Committee, tabled on 17 October 2018, on its inquiry into industrial deaths in Australia entitled, They never came home – The framework surrounding the prevention, investigation and prosecution of industrial deaths in Australia, and

  (iii) work with Safe Work Australia and all state and territory governments to implement a nationally-consistent industrial manslaughter offence into the model workplace health and safety laws.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leave is granted for one minute.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government believes that everyone who goes to work should return home safely to their family each and every day. The Commonwealth is working with states and territories to explore how the preventative focus of existing workplace health and safety laws can be strengthened to prevent injuries and, more importantly, deaths in the workplace. State and Commonwealth ministers will soon meet to consider all recommendations from the 2018 review of the model laws, including the recommendations to introduce a specific industrial manslaughter offence. To ensure consistency and harmonisation, this is the appropriate forum to determine any changes to the model workplace health and safety laws and not this motion today in the Senate.

Question agreed to.