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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2923 ..

guidelines and none of the $42,000 anyway would have been required to have gone on the web. So let us not have this furphy.

The collapse of HIH occurred early in 2001. Some spending occurred and some legal advice was sought in the latter half of 2001. But, quite clearly, the breaches that have potentially occurred took place when $600,000 was spent without contracts and $900,000 was spent without contracts under and in the life of this government. Mr Speaker, where I can I will keep members informed of the progress of the audit and I am sure that, at the conclusion of her performance audit, the Auditor-General will, through you, be reporting to the Assembly on what she finds.

There are some other WorkCover issues that need addressing. I am particularly concerned, for instance, that the education unit of WorkCover has been disbanded under this government and I think that is a retrograde step. The excuse given is that all of the inspectors and all of the staff are now educators. But that sort of model does not work. The inspectors have way too much work as it is. I suspect that recent amendments to the Occupational Health and Safety Act will give them a whole stack of work. Nobody has accounted for how the staff will cope with that work or where the additional funding will come from to keep the staff out in the field to deal with the problems that the government maintains exist.

Stand-alone education units have proven to be effective where you can take the data and run targeted courses, education programs and television programs to educate employers and employees and the general public about their responsibility in workplace safety. I do not believe that you can do that effectively without the education unit. It defies logic to simply say, “We got rid of the unit and everybody is doing it.” Who will now do the research? Who will go into the databases and pull out the data? Who will develop the specific programs against the specific injury, against the specific industry? Who will make sure that the programs are targeted and then that they are delivered? Who will be responsible for all that and who will do the satisfaction surveys and the effectiveness surveys afterwards to make sure that they work?

These are jobs you just cannot lump on to the inspectors or the office staff. Without casting any sort of aspersion on the staff, this needs to be done in the most professional manner possible and I do not believe that that will be done if we lose the education unit.

Mr Speaker, I will take my second 10 minutes.

MR SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Smyth.

MR SMYTH: Another issue I want to address is the hangar collapse. An amount of $250,000 has been allocated for additional work in regard to the hangar collapse. My understanding is the maximum fine that will be imposed is something like $50,000. I know we have to prosecute those who break the law and those who put workers at risk but I think, where something like WorkCover is stretched, we need to be realistic about how we go about these processes in making sure that we are getting a good return in safety for the community and, in particular, workers in their workplaces. I raise that as an issue. It is important and I do not think it is being addressed appropriately.

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