Page 3905 - Week 10 - Thursday, 28 August 2008
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either and will have to rely on crossbench members for determining what legislation goes through. And, of course, while the radical perspective of the Greens might be appealing to some, the fact of the matter is that there are others, such as myself, who believe that legislation of this nature is undesirable and would not be supporting it. For that reason, I will be opposing this particular legislation.
If this bill passes, employers will need to adjust their business practices to a scheme, which, as I said, will operate for around a year or two before being modified again under the national scheme. I will be very surprised if the federal government rubber stamp what Mr Barr has put forward today, and there are good reasons why they will not do that. Of course, we have not seen a regulatory impact statement for these proposed changes. I do not think we will see one, since it is likely that it would be very unflattering to the proposed bill. Especially given that the national scheme has already been discussed, a regulatory impact statement would likely highlight the extreme waste of time and resources that this bill will impose on employers and others. It seems that the language of workplace safety laws is becoming more and more onerous, in this case to the point of absolute absurdity. Definitions are expanding and duties are enlarging to the point where an employer is no longer just an employer but a guidance counsellor, a therapist and a protector of their helpless workers.
We can see this when we look at section 21 of this bill, which imposes a duty on any person conducting a business or undertaking to ensure work safety by managing risk. This sounds reasonable on the surface, but when you look at this further, you see that “work safety” is defined in section 7 to include not only actual health and safety, with which I have no issue, but also the wellbeing of a person. “Wellbeing” is left undefined in the bill, meaning, I presume—I am happy to be contradicted by the minister—that it is to take its ordinary meaning. According to the explanatory statement—and I quote:
… it includes the physical and psychological wellbeing of workers. This allows for the bill to provide coverage for new and emerging risks, such as occupational violence and bullying, stress and fatigue.
When we put them together, the literal meaning of these sections is that any person conducting an undertaking must ensure the wellbeing of those they work with, ensuring they are not stressed or fatigued. Employers are not merely required to provide a safe working environment, which is a reasonable and favourable expectation; they will be required to actually guarantee the wellbeing of their workers. If I am at work and I feel that my wellbeing is not adequate, if I am stressed or fatigued, then, according to this bill, my employer must have broken their legal duty to me because they have a legal duty to ensure it. So, every time we sit here until 11 or 12 o’clock at night, as we have this week—well, some of us do and some take an early mark—we are putting people under stress or fatigue, and the law will have been broken. These are the sorts of silly interpretations that cannot be avoided when you look at this legislation that has been hastily cobbled together and rushed through.
I accept there was a long period of consultation, but the emails have been going flat out from people in Canberra who are disturbed by this. Mr Stefaniak has spoken of his friends who have written to him, and I have had others who have also expressed
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