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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2925 ..

audit, inspect and provide consultative and training services for WorkCover inspectors, or does the government think inspectors can be relieved now that their union initiative for right of entry is going to bite and come into play? I will come back to that in a minute.

On the industrial manslaughter issue, again we do not see sufficient funding appropriated for an education and information program to ensure that government organisations as well as small business organisations are kept abreast of what the new requirements mean and what obligations are placed on employers and senior managers. I take the opportunity to point out that the introduction of the industrial manslaughter initiative to the ACT was unnecessary. The OH&S legislation and the mechanism that we have in place could have been better developed. Indeed, the OH&S legislation introduced by the government largely contained some very good instruments.

Ms Gallagher: You voted against it.

MR PRATT: Which I had to seek to amend. But there were some very good provisions in that legislation. Because we were so concerned about the quite evil element of union right of entry, we had no choice but to vote the whole damned thing down. So we lost the opportunity to pick up on those parts of the legislation that contained some very necessary instruments.

OH&S has needed to be upgraded for quite some time, and I commend the government for coming forward with some new initiatives. But, of course, they had to whack on top of it this quite insidious component, the union right of entry. If they had in fact further developed OH&S, they could have done away with the need to change the regulations to introduce a new industrial manslaughter component. I would have thought that an up-graded piece of OH&S legislation, along with the manslaughter provisions that currently exist in ACT law, would have covered all eventualities.

There are renegade employers out there and there are some cases of reckless behaviour, and we need to make sure we have protections in place to protect workers. But it was quite unnecessary to have gone to the extent of introducing that regulation. In fact, it has frightened the horses. It certainly has not done business confidence any good in the ACT. I would simply add that the government did not present any evidence in this place to show that there was a compelling case for the introduction of industrial manslaughter. In fact, it introduced regulations which are extremely unfair on employers and which have negated the responsibility of all people in an organisation, down the chain of command, to supervise and check safety and carry out their own internal audits to make sure that their workers are protected. The legislation did not do that, so what was the use of it?

As Mr Smyth just pointed out, the disbanding of the education unit was probably not a smart move. It was quite a capable unit and it had a very important role to play. In addition to that, we see that at least funding will continue for the 43 WorkCover inspectors who cover a variety of technical areas. But how can 43 inspectors cope with making sure that the thousands of businesses, public organisations and government organisations in the ACT understand their obligations under the industrial manslaughter regulations and the new OH&S provisions? How can 43 inspectors cope? There will need to be an increased capability if we to see these new industrial initiatives put in place.

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