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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (27 November) . . Page.. 4862 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

enhanced occupational health and safety laws-yes, sometimes with jail penalties. The Queensland laws have three-year jail terms for some serious offences. They are looking to add a penalty of seven years for a negligent act in the workplace causing death, along exactly the same legal lines as we have for culpable driving. But they are not going down this path.

New South Wales is enhancing its occupational health and safety laws, and it was put to my committee that that is something the ACT needs to do. That is an area where we can lift our game-which will help workers-and at the same time not introduce a separate, unnecessary law of industrial manslaughter when we have a tried and true, time-proven law of manslaughter that covers all situations, including manslaughter in the workplace. There are some very big problems here.

That leads me to the next point: if this is in fact a different law from normal manslaughter, is that good? I do not think it is. I think it is very bad law. It is like an apartheid system of law: a first-class law and a second-class law. Our laws are meant to cover all scenarios. To split the law is a worrying aspect. If this is going to be somewhat easier to prove than normal manslaughter, it is bad law. In fact, in itself it is a form of discrimination.

One has to ask the question: why on earth do we want to go down this path? That is a very worrying aspect. The way around it is enhanced occupational health and safety laws and consistency with proper legal principles, such as what Queensland is looking at, which I submit would be a far better path for the Labor government to go down than the one it is actually taking.

Another problem, which we address in our amendments, is the fact that this law will have a maximum term of imprisonment of 25 years, as opposed to 20 years, under section 12 of the Crimes Act, for normal manslaughter. If this is passed today unamended, it will be discriminatory in terms of the existing law of manslaughter. I hope members will at least see fit to fix that up today. That can always be adjusted later, when the government brings in another series of amendments to the Criminal Code- stage 4, I think.

Those are some of the problems I have with this piece of legislation. On my point that maybe this is a different type of manslaughter law-whilst the standard of proof is beyond reasonable doubt, which is the same-it is of concern that maybe there is something in the elements that are a bit different. It was put to me in a committee hearing that someone could be convicted under this and not convicted under normal manslaughter simply because of their status.

The example was as follows: an employer has a faulty electrical plug and socket, which is behind the counter of a shopfront. This employer knows the plug is faulty and has taken absolutely no steps to repair it. An employee drops a coin, which rolls behind the counter, and attempts to retrieve the coin. The coin somehow gets stuck, and the employee electrocutes himself or herself. It was put to me that the employer would be liable under this bill.

It was then suggested that we consider the situation of an ordinary citizen who comes to the shopfront, drops a $2 coin, which rolls behind the counter and gets stuck, tries to

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