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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2412 ..

of all sectors of the community and will be moving amendments to these provisions that take into account many of the issues raised in the consultations.

The compliance and enforcement provisions include higher penalties in terms of imprisonment for serious harm offences; improved compliance measures, such as voluntary compliance agreements; enforceable undertakings; court issued injunctions and improvements to existing prohibition and improvement notice provisions; and new inspector powers necessary to ensure that inspectors are able to effectively investigate compliance and adverse publicity measures.

The bill also repeals the infringement notice scheme established in the act to enable infringement notices to be issued under the Magistrates Court Act. New regulations are being prepared under the Magistrates Court Act, which will commence in conjunction with the OH&S Amendment Act. A parallel infringement notice scheme has been established under the Magistrates Court Act for offences under the Dangerous Substances Act.

The ACT currently has the lowest penalties in Australia for OH&S breaches. The council recommended that the penalties for OH&S breaches should be increased, and the bill implements this recommendation. In relation to the government’s moves to increase penalties under the act, I remind you that Mr Stefaniak has already given public support to such a move. In his dissenting statement to the Standing Committee on Legal Affairs on industrial manslaughter, he stated that Queensland had gone about increasing penalties in its OH&S Act. I quote:

I think the maximum penalty for offences under that Act has been increased to 3 years imprisonment plus fairly substantial fines. New South Wales also has very substantial fines in its Occupational Health and Safety Act. …

I would also recommend a toughening up of Occupational Health and Safety laws in other areas. I think the Queensland model is a reasonable one and also I would suggest the Government should look at what is occurring in New South Wales.

In addition to this, Mr Pratt gave his support for increasing penalties under the OH&S Act. He stated:

There are strong arguments for strengthening the existing OH&S legislation to deal with possible reckless behaviour of CEOs and boards, business owners and their subordinate supervisors with respect to workplace safety, injury and death.

We support that, and we want to see it in place, but this is not the way to do it. We know that major business groups in the ACT support changes to the OH&S Act in regard to tougher penalties. We know that because we have been talking to them. Under right of entry provisions, consultation and participation are essential to achieving good health and safety outcomes. The Occupational Health and Safety Act is built on the premise that safety in the workplace is enhanced by the involvement of workers and their representative organisations.

Conferring statutory entitlements on representatives and employee organisations to enter workplace premises is recognised in the laws of the Commonwealth under the

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