Page 3887 - Week 10 - Thursday, 27 August 2009
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what they really are—an anti-worker party, a profit at all costs party, opposed for opposition’s sake, deprived of relevance and one that is completely out of step with contemporary Australian workplace standards. After Mr Coe’s sycophantic adulation of John Howard, that comes as no surprise.
I would like to thank and congratulate the people who have been instrumental in bringing this forward: Robert Gotts and the work safety policy team; Louise Gilding, who is sitting in the gallery at the moment; Katherine Jones and John Rees. I thank them very much for their contributions to bringing this bill forward. I commend the bill to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Detail stage
Clauses 1 to 4, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Schedule 1, amendments Nos 1.1 to 1.8, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Schedule 1, amendment No 1.9.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.44): I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name on the primrose paper [see schedule 1 at page 3906].
This is a simple and straightforward amendment. It goes to the heart of proposed new section 55A.
As I said in my opening remarks, proposed new section 55A allows the chief executive to declare an entire industry essentially an unsafe industry and require every employer in that industry to have a work safety committee, irrespective of its size. At the moment, as it stands, it is a power which is reflected in the previous section 55, which allows the chief executive to declare an unsafe workplace.
We do not have a problem with the notion of declaring an unsafe workplace, as much as Mr Hargreaves would like to put together this old, classic Labor class warfare argument that would contend that we do. But the notion of declaring an entire industry essentially unsafe and requiring everyone in that industry, regardless of size and regardless of their record, to behave in a particular way is unreasonable. It is a matter of considerable concern to us and to people who are employees in this industry.
We do not know where this will fall. It would be better if, for instance, this was a power that best rested with the minister. The minister could at least account to the Assembly for why he was proposing to do this. But, as it currently stands, the chief executive can make this determination. He does not have to account to anyone for why this happens and it is done by a notifiable instrument. The Assembly gets no say in something that could have wide-scale ramifications for employment in the ACT. It is a bad piece of legislation and it should be opposed.
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