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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2924 ..

The other issue that came up was the level of training. I have some disquiet over how training is being conducted, what training is available and who ends up paying for training. I understand that some of the staff, some of the inspectors themselves, will be paying to upgrade their own skills. That is not unreasonable in some cases but when it is a work requirement I think the government needs to give consideration to putting in place a program to make sure that the people they are sending out armed with the law are qualified and able to do their job. It seems that a category 4 certificate is now required.

The commissioner has the aspiration to get all the inspectors up to speed. It would be interesting to see some more support from the government for that objective. Again, what we are seeing just points to the lack of real commitment from this government and this minister to WorkCover.

MS DUNDAS (5.55): I wish briefly to put some words on the record in relation to WorkCover. When you take out the extraordinary items in the budget of WorkCover, it appears that their funding is remaining fairly static. I am keenly aware that we could achieve better workplace safety if we put more resources into workplace education and inspections. We would like to see more money being spent in workplaces, working with employers and employees, and less money spent in court on prosecutions.

I will continue to monitor the budget of WorkCover. I hope that with the change of management and all the discussions that have taken place over the last number of months about workplace safety, there will be a greater focus on education and working collaboratively in workplaces to improve work safety.

I will also continue to talk with employers, unions and workers about how they feel workplace safety is going. This will be an ongoing issue and debate. If we keep the core focus on ensuring that, as much as we possibly can, our workers are safe and are being treated fairly then, hopefully, this objective will become a reality.

MR PRATT (5.57): Mr Speaker, I would like to refer to a couple of specific issues relating to the WorkCover area and then I will talk about some dangerous substances issues. We know from information in budget paper 4 that ACT WorkCover has a 5 per cent decrease in funding from last year. This has resulted, as far as I can determine, in a 62.5 per cent decrease in services through reduced client visits—160,000 down to 60,000—and the deletion of small business OH&S toolkits, and I think that is a concern.

The government claims that the reduction in services is due to the removal of a hardcopy newsletter and the addition of an electronic newsletter. Does this affect the number of client visits or contacts made? That is a good question. If the electronic newsletter is going to fewer workplaces or clients than the hardcopy newsletter did, what does that in fact reflect? Are we getting a degrading of the service in an area where we need to have even more education as regulations and legislation are changing? There have been some quite significant changes and I hope, for the sake of ACT WorkCover, that that is not the case.

We see little effective increase in the WorkCover inspectorate that is required to match the extra demands placed on business and government organisations as a result of new OH&S legislation. How will the new legislation be effective if there are no means to

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