Page 791 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 29 March 2006
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MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.33): Members will recall that when Mr Gentleman introduced this motion last year he spoke very little about safety and instead gave the Assembly his predictable diatribe on the federal government’s work choices legislation. And on the television on the weekend we had the ACTU’s Greg Combet out enjoining Liberal governments and Liberal oppositions everywhere to go on the warpath about work choices. So it is quite predictable that, following the litany of dorothy dixers to Mr Stanhope, which were probably out of order, and to Ms Gallagher, we would have this motion as a reprise, as an opportunity to have yet another slam about work choices.
Safety in the construction industry is a very important issue and one with which I have close affiliations. I grew up in a household where my father was a carpenter, and my son is now apprenticed to be a carpenter. So the issues here are deeply important and personally important to me. I have on a number of occasions attended hospital when my father has had falls on building sites—and they are terrible things. The changes between the sixties and seventies and what we see today in terms of safety on building sites are things that should be welcomed, and they have been brought about by the cooperation of governments, employers, employees and unions. It is not just one of those organisations that has brought about the changes that we have seen.
For the record, the federal government brought in the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act, which seems to Mr Gentleman to be the anathema of acts—
Mr Seselja: So you do not get beaten up on a work site any more.
MRS DUNNE: in response to the findings of the Cole Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry. As Mr Seselja rightly says, part of that was so that people do not get beaten up on building sites for daring to disagree with someone. Commissioner Cole noted that it was universally accepted by governments, by employers and by unions that OH&S is of fundamental importance to the building and construction industry. Statistics show that people working in this industry are more than twice as likely to be killed at work than the Australian all-industries average, and that the economic cost of workplace accidents to workers, employers and the community is estimated to be more than $30 billion a year—and that $30 billion is passed on in building costs to people who are building homes. Every time you build a road or you build a building, the insurance costs for industrial safety issues are built into that, and that builds into the cost to the community, as well as the personal cost and the loss of income for the people who suffer these injuries.
It was for this reason that the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act was introduced. The act picks up key elements of the Cole royal commission’s report. The main features include establishing an office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner who is authorised to deal with unlawful industrial action. But the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act also establishes the Federal Safety Commissioner to oversee an accreditation scheme, which sets standards that contractors undertaking Australian government funded work are required to meet.
The federal government’s approach reflects the fact that industrial safety is of paramount concern. But that does not stop Mr Gentleman or Dr Foskey rubbishing the measures that address, in practical terms, the very issues that they claim that they are concerned about.
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