Page 2227 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 31 October 1989
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The Rally supports 20 at this stage as a salutary measure to see just how the legislation will be phased in by, specifically, the building unions. If the legislation works and is harmoniously phased in, then the Rally is here and the Rally makes a commitment to support an amendment to reduce it to an agreed figure compatible with the earlier debate in this house. At this stage the Rally is not confident of the reaction to this legislation by a narrow group in the union movement.
MR WHALAN (Minister for Industry, Employment and Education) (4.46): This is an absolutely outrageous proposal and it strikes at the very heart of the legislation. It is clearly an expected position from the Liberal Party, which is essentially a party driven by its sympathies for the employer class and its opposition to the trade union movement. They can be forgiven for the position that they have taken on this legislation but, as for the Residents Rally party, it is clear that as a result of the disruptions within the Residents Rally party there has been a dramatic swing to the right. They have gone over the edge, their pendulum has swung past the Liberal Party and they have adopted a position that was previously occupied by only one other member of this Assembly to the right of the Liberal Party. Now they are sitting there with Genghis Khan.
This deplorable situation has been provoked, I think, by the bitterness and hatred felt by certain members of the Residents Rally party towards the Building Workers Industrial Union. We know that there has been ongoing rancour. We know that this has been reflected in other actions outside this place by the Residents Rally party. We know that this is the motivation for this extreme right wing, anti-union, anti-worker position which has been taken by the Residents Rally party.
Mr Speaker, the consequences of this particular amendment, if carried, will be several. It will require a greater number of government inspectors to enforce and police the occupational health and safety legislation, because the work of ensuring that occupational health and safety is observed will fall to two groups of people - either the occupational health and safety representative in the workplace or the government inspector.
It clearly follows that, if you have fewer occupational health and safety representatives at the workplace level, then you must have more government appointed inspectors - and that is what the consequence of this legislation will be. It is going to increase the cost of the administration of the legislation.
Under the legislation as it stands without the amendment, every employer who has more than 10 employees will be required to convene a workplace committee and that committee will appoint a workplace representative. That
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