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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1855 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

That sort of protection would be guaranteed to a departmental head as it applies to all departmental heads. The proposal which will be put forward when this bill fails, which it should, is for the provision of a departmental head, which was suggested by the coroner. He said:

We have in front of us an opportunity to set the pace for the future of occupational health and safety in the Australian Capital Territory. We have in front of us the choice of adopting a model which is based on an arm of government or of adopting something which is based on scrutiny, that is, the model for the Auditor-General.

When the debate started years ago about the independence of the Occupational Health and Safety Commissioner, it started on a downer. It started because of interference on a work site by a minister-not one of the present ministers, I concede; a minister of a former government. In many other places around the country that would have led to the sacking of the minister, but not here because that was not the way this place operated at the time.

Subsequent to that, we had the tragic hospital implosion and the criticism of various people in evidence at the coronial inquiry. The early signs were that something had to be done. I took the decision and the Labor Party took the decision that we had to move quickly, principally because the office of the Occupational Health and Safety Commissioner had to be protected in the interests, as I have said time and time again, of the safety of workers.

I do not know how many members opposite have had the experience of witnessing a worker or family member coming home badly injured as a result of a workplace injury. (Further extension of time granted.) I suspect all of us have suffered some sort of injury at work. Happily for some of us it has been small. Unhappily, it has not been so small for others. At all times in the course of our convalescence we would have wondered why we suffered that sort of injury and how we might well have escaped it in the first place. The only way that you can escape these sorts of things is if you are covered by an authority which is managed by a government sympathetic to workplace safety.

One of our obligations as Assembly members and more so as members of a government is to regulate our society to ensure that our community is kept safe. Our community deserves the protection of government. It has not got it to this point in a complete and utter way because of the threat to the independence of the commissioner which was identified by the coroner. When Labor first came to office in 1989 it introduced occupational health and safety legislation. It was, I think, the first piece of legislation to pass through this place. We retain that as an enduring commitment.

We do not profess it to be our own idea. We have done it with the support of other members of this place. To one degree or another the conservatives opposite have supported us from time to time. To this point, I would say that there has been an absence of commitment to that model. If anything good has come out of the dreadful Canberra

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