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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 12 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 3621 ..
MR BERRY (continuing):
Mr Walker was questioned on these issues, as members who read the report will recall, and Mr Walker did not clearly deny that he had spoken to Ms Ford in relation to this matter, and that matter remains unresolved. We in the Assembly know what is going on here only too well. As early as 1995, the first year of the Carnell Government, there was evidence of political interference in WorkCover. The agency has been working in an environment of spasmodic political interference since Kate Carnell became Chief Minister. Regrettably, it appears that the coroner was not aware of that political interference in WorkCover. Otherwise he may have thought differently about some of the things he said in relation to the matter.
There was public evidence of the then Minister sending his staff to interfere with WorkCover inspectors, and on at least two separate occasions interference was demonstrated in this Assembly, with the then Minister launching into attacks on WorkCover inspectors and making political accusations against them - not this Minister, not Trevor Kaine but the then Minister - his own workers, mind you. These people were working in an atmosphere of political interference, and it is regrettable that that evidence did not find its way to the coroner.
It was political interference which led the Select Committee on Workers' Compensation to recommend that WorkCover be established as an independent statutory authority. Today that seems a very reasonable recommendation, but in 1995 the Carnell Government rejected the recommendation outright. The Government said in response to that recommendation:
The Government does not agree and did not agree with the recommendation of the select committee that a statutory authority should be set up to take over the employer responsibilities for occupational health and safety and rehabilitation. To set up an authority would be a move in exactly the opposite direction to where we need to go.
Isn't it amazing? It refused to ensure the independence of WorkCover then, but I am gratified that the Government has now accepted the recommendation of the coroner - but it was not until it was forced to do so in the wake of a tragedy of the Government's making. It leads me to the conclusion that the Chief Minister should accept responsibility for the failure of the Government which she fully endorsed. Firstly, if the coroner had known about the history of political interference and about the attitude of the Government to WorkCover, he might have accepted the advice of counsel assisting. Would his criticism of WorkCover have been softened by the knowledge of the difficulties under which inspectors operated? Maybe he might have placed more weight on the threat to inspectors by the Chief Minister's Department. He may have interpreted the evidence differently.
What if the Government had accepted the recommendations of the workers compensation committee, which I chaired? It may be that WorkCover inspectors would have had a better role at an earlier stage in the demolition project. What we know, though, that the coroner did not know is that WorkCover inspectors have not been able to do their job free of political interference in years. Political interference in the Public
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