Page 317 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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MR SPEAKER: You will need leave to move them together.
MR STEFANIAK: I seek leave to move amendments Nos 1 and 2 circulated in my name together.
Leave granted.
MR STEFANIAK: I move:
“(1) in paragraph (1), insert, after the words ‘notes the’, the word ‘positive’;
(2) omit paragraph (3), substitute:
‘(3) recommends to any aggrieved party that they write to the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner to investigate possible breaches of the building and construction national code in the ACT.’.”.
Given that this debate has been truncated because of the sub judice rule—and the sub judice rule affects a particular worker and a company—my second amendment is quite appropriate, although it is probably not remotely appropriate for the Chief Minister to write because he actually has not got much to write about. Clearly, the people who should be concerned and who need to write to the commissioner are, in fact, people who are aggrieved. We should encourage them to do that. Some may have already done so in relation to the matter Mr Gentleman tried to bring before the Assembly. There may be other aggrieved people who need to have possible breaches of the building and construction code addressed. I think that is proper, but I do not think what Mr Gentleman has moved is particularly proper.
The government should look seriously at WorkCover. It seems to allow the ACT to be plastered, quite illegally, with Labor union signs such as “your rights at work” as part of a campaign against the federal government, yet at the same time its penny pinching has left WorkCover ill-equipped to monitor safety compliance at workplaces in the ACT. The government needs to lift its game.
I am sure we will divide on ideological grounds on the motion, but really I do not think the federal workplace laws are anything new. In fact, they have been in the pipeline for some 10 years. As a result of efforts in this area, since March 1996, more than two million jobs have been created, and more than 1.1 million are full-time jobs. Since WorkChoices was introduced in March 2006, more than 240,000 additional jobs have been created. Of those, 206,600, or 85.6 per cent, have been full-time jobs. We now have 10.3 million Australians in employment, with 7.4 million being in full-time employment.
Our unemployment rate has fallen to 4.5 per cent. Even our Chief Minister is particularly proud of the low ACT employment rate, and well he should be. It has occurred right across the country. But that is largely thanks to very sensible industrial relations policies of the federal government. The male unemployment rate is 4.3 per cent; for females it is 4.9 per cent. In January 2007 the teenage unemployment rate stood at 20.7 per cent, in stark contrast to a peak of 34.5 reported in July 1992.
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