Page 1988 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 24 October 1989
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I would reiterate some of the Deputy Chief Minister's comments on the hard work done by the committee staff in relation to that report.
This legislation is long in coming, Mr Speaker, and I think it behoves this house to get it right. In a number of States there have been problems, and I think we have to look at this. The Deputy Chief Minister indicated that, except in Queensland, unions were not mentioned in legislation. In the New South Wales legislation, in the Occupational Health and Safety Act, unions are not mentioned. They are mentioned in the Occupational Health and Safety (Committees in Workplaces) Regulations, but they are not actually mentioned in the Act. I point that out to him.
There have been problems, which were placed before our committee when we investigated this, in Victoria where the occupational health and safety legislation had a definite union bias and a union slant. It had been used not for legitimate occupational health and safety issues but for industrial issues, pushing issues that were not related to safety but really flexing union muscle. That really is not what this legislation should be used for and I think it behoves this house to ensure that does not occur. Indeed, some of the problems in Victoria should be a salient lesson to us when we come to consider the detail stage of this Bill.
Let us look at some of the other States as well. Let us look at New South Wales. We are an island surrounded by New South Wales. In that State the designated work group is 20, not 10 and not 12 as has been suggested by the majority report of the committee. I would have you note on page 16, in my dissenting report, that on that question we as a party and I as an individual felt that the designated work group should have 20 members.
The number of 12 was arrived at as a compromise, as a result of matters put forward by my colleague Mr Moore, now an independent NIMBY in this Assembly. That number was indeed a compromise; perhaps there is not too much logic in that. Thirteen, I think, is somewhat unlucky, so we probably ended up with 12, but we certainly would prefer 20 and, indeed, I will put forward an amendment to that effect, which will no doubt be dealt with on Thursday.
Twenty was put to us as a figure by virtually every private sector employer group that came before us. I will say more on that later. I would also point out to members that Queensland has a designated work group of 30. So in talking about figures as low as 10 or 12 we are perhaps being somewhat remiss. Remember that we have to deal with New South Wales because we are surrounded by it, and there is a strong argument for some type of commonality in our legislation.
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