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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 6 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1599 ..

MS GALLAGHER (continuing):

When employers do not pay adequate attention to the occupational health and safety laws-leading to serious injury or death-then these penalties are an important penalty, an important enforcement of community standards and a recognition of the value of working Australians' lives.

Canberrans want and deserve safe and profitable workplaces. And every family in the territory has a right to expect that their loved ones will return from work safely at the end of the day or the end of a shift.

Again, employers have an interest in engaging with this issue. Safe workplaces are profitable workplaces, and employers who take OH&S seriously know that it is a sound investment. Any reforms in this area will recognise that reducing workplace accidents, diseases and deaths requires the coordination of individuals, unions, employers and government. We cannot make workplaces accident free, but we can provide an engaging framework which recognises potential workplace risks and minimises the potential impact on workers by apportioning responsibility.

Any changes towards a crime of industrial manslaughter should not introduce any new liability for corporations but should allow for prosecutions for breaches of accepted community standards by offending corporations to be brought more effectively.

Historically, workers or their families have rarely received adequate recompense or recognition for suffering caused by industrial accident or death. It has often been the labour movement that has sought for many years to bring those responsible for industrial deaths to justice. The common law and criminal codes formed before the rise and rise of corporate invisibility have been of little use to workers who have sought compensation for the bad or negligent practice of their employers. We must acknowledge here today that employers have in the past exploited the corporate structure for that very reason. It has made offenders untouchable and absolved them of any personal liability.

The law in Australia does not recognise vicarious liability for a criminal act. It allows argument to be mounted successfully that only the highest directors can be liable for the acts of the corporation, denying modern management structures and the realities of workplace relations. This motion, if we give it our support today, is an attempt at prompting law reform-that is, bringing the law up to date with modern relations in the modern world. Those in dangerous workplaces know these modern realities very well.

It is time for us to acknowledge that up until now unions, relatively unsupported, have been the only champion of workers rights when the issue of criminal liability over industrial manslaughter comes up. Unions have been instrumental in lobbying and implementing what occupational health and safety legislation we already have. They have provided support-legal, financial, and emotional-for the families of victims killed in negligent industrial accidents as they have fought to bring the corporations responsible for those poor conditions and practices to justice. And unions have tirelessly lobbied governments all over this country to highlight the issue of industrial manslaughter and to pave the way for me to put the motion here today.

There is continuing relevance and importance in protecting workers and their rights in this area. I would hope that we can all see the necessity to protect the lives of workers and prosecute those who treat those lives without the respect they deserve.

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