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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1763 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

schemes and ensuring that workers are fairly treated at the end. If you do not take this matter seriously, and I suspect that you have not over the last five years-

Mr Moore: That is a strange definition of "social capital", Wayne.

MR BERRY: I hear Mr Moore butt in. You can always tell the billygoats by the way they butt in. If he wants to contribute to the debate, he will get his turn later. The provision of a database on workers compensation is something that the government has to take seriously. You cannot move effectively on workers compensation without a proper database, but there are issues that have to be dealt with notwithstanding that and this is one of them, that is, employer contributions to the pool.

The committee has recommended that people employed by labour hire companies should be deemed as employees of the host employer, not the labour hire company, as it is the host employer that has responsibility for maintaining a safe workplace. Labour hire companies have virtually no control over that. An example brought to our attention was that the labour hire company might not even see the employee; rather, it might contact him over the phone and inform him that it has a job for him at a certain place and he just turns up at the job. The labour hire company has the responsibility for workers compensation contributions, the premium, and the employer has none. The employer has all of the obligations under the Occupational Health and Safety Act to provide a safe workplace, but can ignore that given that the workers compensation payments are being paid somewhere else.

In the course of the inquiry we were reminded of a serious accident in, I think, New South Wales on a civil construction site when an employee from a labour hire company was seriously injured working with heavy equipment. The employee had had no training and I think the accident occurred in the first week or so of employment, which is the most hazardous for employees. The labour hire company has no control over what goes on in the workplace as far as that is concerned.

The committee was informed that the issue of employers classifying their employees into lower risk occupational categories is no longer a problem since the adoption of the ANZSIC industry rating system, that is, the categorisation of them, but the reporting still becomes an issue. The committee has recommended that the legislation be amended so that employers are required to provide insurers with quarterly wage and salary declarations.

The committee believes that by increasing reporting frequency employers will have the opportunity to monitor their wage and salary costs to ensure that the appropriate premiums are paid on the go, that is, that there be more frequent declarations of employee numbers in order that better surveillance of employer contributions can be made. There will be an argument from the government and, I suspect, from some employers that this would increase red tape and bureaucracy, as they always do argue, but we have to control this issue.

Mr Speaker, when you and I want to change our insurance on, say, our house or motor car, we can do it on the Internet or over the phone. If we sell our motor car or buy a new one, we have to have up-to-date insurance, otherwise we are not covered for that individual item. That is not so under the workers compensation scheme in the ACT.

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