Page 3958 - Week 10 - Thursday, 28 August 2008
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local business, but it imposes additional unnecessary costs on those businesses, as well as reducing their capacity to compete with businesses from other jurisdictions.
What makes this strategy of the Stanhope government even more disturbing is that the ACT is so small that every time we become out of step with other jurisdictions, particularly New South Wales, we simply penalise those businesses, organisations and people who have to work across the boundaries.
The Stanhope government, and the Chief Minister in particular, would not appear to have any idea about the differential adverse impact of this proposal on ACT businesses. I wonder whether there was any attempt to prepare a business impact assessment of the proposals in this bill. If there was no such assessment then that is a tragedy for local business. And if there was an assessment, what were the outcomes of that assessment? Perhaps the minister could table the business impact statement before he concludes his speech in reply.
The reality of the Stanhope government’s approach to the ACT business sector continues to be most disappointing. The proposal in this bill that is of most concern to business is clause 218, which provides for employee organisations and employer organisations to have the capacity to initiate prosecutions. It is absolutely fascinating to observe the internal inconsistencies and hypocrisy that the Stanhope government has built in to this bill. On the one hand, the bill sets out, as one of a number of objectives for the new legislative regime, the following in clause 6 (1) (e):
foster cooperation and consultation between employers and workers, and organisations representing employers and workers;
That is an admirable objective. But on the other hand, admitting failure and that they have no intention of making that happen, the provisions in clause 218 provide for private prosecutions. This is the provision under which unions and employers can initiate a prosecution for an offence that is alleged to have taken place. If there is one environment in which there is generally anything but cooperation and consultation, it is in the adversarial environment of the court system. More importantly, this provision enables people who do not necessarily have the expertise to actually initiate prosecutions. The realm of initiating a prosecution should remain the responsibility of people who have the appropriate training in legal maters.
Consultation that we have undertaken reveals an expected dichotomy of views. The representative business organisations expressed general concern about this provision, while UnionsACT supported this provision. While there is much merit in updating the existing OH&S regime, the extension of that regime into a new area, as with the provision for private prosecutions, is not a reasonable proposal.
This government has no idea about the reality of how to make the ACT a business-friendly location, as evidenced by this proposal. We would suggest that the Stanhope government withdraw this bill and rework it to make it more appropriate to contemporary business conditions rather than tabling it last week and ramming it through this week, in the very last week of the government’s life. Until that is done, we will oppose the legislation.
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