Page 2011 - Week 07 - Thursday, 24 June 2021
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the safety of children and their families but improves relationships with friends and neighbours and creates safer, happier environments in our neighbourhoods, schools and our community.
Most importantly, though, supporting young people and addressing the social determinants of offending behaviour are an act of kindness that all young people deserve. After all we have learned about coming together as a community to solve difficult problems over the past 18 months, I think we can agree that kindness is at the core of a healthy, safe community.
I heard Hugh Mackay say recently that if just a small room of people could be just a little bit more radical in their kindness over the next week there would be ripples across the whole ACT. Providing the supports for raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility is an act of radical revolutionary kindness that will have ripples across future generations and throughout our community. We do not practise kindness because we expect it to be returned to us; we do it because every young person is worthy of kindness. I look forward to working across each of these portfolios and with my ACT government colleagues to respond to these whole-of-government needs.
Debate (on motion by Ms Lee) adjourned to the next sitting.
Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2021
Mr Gentleman, pursuant to notice, presented the bill, its explanatory statement and a Human Rights Act compatibility statement.
Title read by Clerk.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Manager of Government Business, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Industrial Relations and Workplace Safety, Minister for Planning and Land Management and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11.05): I move:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
I am very proud of this legislation and I am proud this government has always stood on the side of workers. This bill amends the Work Health and Safety Act to include industrial manslaughter as an offence. This is a key legislative commitment of this government and we are delivering it today. At the centre of this commitment is the protection and creation of secure jobs. A job that is not safe cannot be secure.
It is a lamentable fact that every second day an Australian worker dies from traumatic injury sustained while at work. While appalling in its own right, this figure does not include worker deaths from occupational diseases like silicosis or deaths of bystanders from traumatic incidents at worksites. The rate of workplace deaths in Australia has not changed over the past five years despite public awareness campaigns and technological advancements in the fields of safety and emergency medicine. Stronger
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