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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2313 ..

MR STEFANIAK

I was impressed to hear the commissioner, Jocelyn Plovits, indicate that, in only about 5 per cent of instances in respect of businesses, does WorkCover have any great non-compliance problems. My colleague Mr Smyth says that we have a pretty good record compared with other states, and those sorts of figures bear that out. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement.

One aspect of a general nature that a couple of people mentioned in the committee inquiry is the effect-not only here but interstate-of a partnership between the business and the workers. In that situation, the groups, rather than getting into an us-and-them type of position or an adversarial situation, look constructively at ways in which the business and work safety on the shop floor can be improved.

Some of the figures I have seen recently bear out the success of that approach. That may well be an interesting consideration, when you look at what other legislative changes may be necessary, including matters such as industrial manslaughter. Those are important factors.

Like my colleague Mr Smyth, I was born in Canberra and grew up here. Because I am a little older than Mr Smyth, I remember things that you, Mr Speaker, might also remember about cracker night. I thoroughly enjoyed the cracker night period and probably did a few wrongful things myself. We lost our own letterbox on three occasions. I must confess that I might have blown one up myself at some stage. As Mr Smyth says, even though the fireworks then seemed big-the tuppeny bunger was a big bunger-they are nothing like those available now.

I have always enjoyed fireworks, Mr Speaker. As chair of the committee looking at the issue of fireworks, I feel that what we came up with in June last year was a pretty good solution. We reported well and truly on time on that one. It was presupposed by the fact that we recommended that certain things happen.

Initially, the government did not follow that completely. I think some of the training aspects there might have been followed but they were not. The government went on a slightly different path. One of the clear recommendations was to monitor the situation. The first opportunity to monitor it was the recent Queen's Birthday long weekend.

The report was done in time to ensure that, whatever happened, people would be able to order their fireworks for the recent June long weekend. It gave the fireworks industry time to order stocks of fireworks, had the committee recommended that fireworks should continue-and the government accepted that. It also gave the industry time to refrain from ordering fireworks, had the committee said that fireworks should not continue to be sold as over the counter shopgood fireworks. The government accepted that, so fireworks continued, with the restrictions imposed by the government in response to the committee's report.

I must say, even from the point of view of someone who thoroughly enjoys fireworks, that I can understand the exasperation of the events over the recent June long weekend. Both my colleagues have mentioned it. I was away for part of that weekend but I recall coming back on the Monday and hearing, in my suburb of Macgregor-in

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