Page 5862 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 7 December 2011
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In the context of preventing assaults on workers, the starting point must be the statistics and data on the assaults that are currently occurring. Only once we have the data can targeted strategies be implemented. Once we know things such as which industries are experiencing assault, where those assaults are occurring, what times they are occurring and even which events triggered the assault, the government can begin to put together prevention strategies.
One key aspect of my motion is that it essentially requests an inventory of what the current level of data is and what strategies have been put in place in light of that evidence. Each industry, of course, will be different, and because of this the preventative strategies will need to differ. For taxidrivers the strategy may involve protective screens between drivers and passengers; for nurses it may be silent alarms. The crucial point is that they must be targeted to the needs of the industry and based on discussions with the workers.
Once the inventory of data and strategies is released early next year, if the motion is supported, the Assembly will be well placed to see gaps in coverage and where action needs to be targeted. The motion that the Greens are putting forward today also seeks to get clarity about current government strategies that exist and to therefore get an insight into what is already being done and again highlight where the gaps may be.
The motion essentially calls on the government to perform a stocktake of what data it currently collects for assaults and bullying at an industry by industry level and what strategies are in place at an industry by industry level. We know already, from questions Ms Bresnan has asked, that there are likely to be some significant gaps. I would emphasise that support for Ms Bresnan’s bill, in combination with support of my motion, will go a long way to addressing serious workplace issues in the ACT.
Let me conclude by saying that the Greens believe that we need to protect front-line staff, whether they be in the private sector or the public sector. Nobody deserves to be assaulted or bullied while they are out doing their job. We do believe that there is a responsibility on government to partner with industry and to do everything reasonably possible to prevent these incidents before they occur. That role of government partnership is an important one, because many of the examples I have touched on today involve small businesses or single operators. Their individual capability to respond to what might be a systemic pattern or an issue across the board in a particular field, profession or industry is limited for those small or individual enterprises, whereas the role government can play is to facilitate across a grouping and provide, in some ways, critical mass.
We believe it is important to take a clear and cool-headed approach to this issue rather than cast blame. Casting blame and promising to get tougher and tougher on offenders really does risk being nothing more than an empty gesture for those people who need assistance. And casting blame risks being an empty gesture because it does nothing to prevent assaults in the future and better protect workers.
The discussion that we hope to provoke out of moving this motion is about what more government can do to prevent assaults against workers, where the gaps in our current
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