Page 655 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 February 2012
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psychologists and specialists with backgrounds in fields such as social work and human resources management from high risk industries.
If you look at what experts are saying about the approaches in different jurisdictions, they are saying that the specialist approach is working. It is increasing the regulator’s ability to intervene early and to help address the systemic factors that contribute to workplace bullying and other psychosocial hazards. For example, an evaluation of Queensland’s psychosocial program in 2009 found that the program had secured substantial achievements, such as an increased awareness in organisations in effectively managing psychosocial issues and risks in the work environment.
I am very surprised by the response of the Liberal Party who have raised bullying as an important issue on numerous occasions. Here we have an opportunity to make a real difference, a change that we know would work and is supported by experts, and it is rejected. Instead, they vote to achieve nothing. I will go to some of Mrs Dunne’s comments later. The only time anything has been done, in particular by Mr Hanson, is when there is some political mileage in it. The approach taken then was to set up an inquiry and drag people before a hearing—an approach to bullying that shows to me no understanding of the extremely sensitive matter that bullying is. The position also says that the government’s current approach on bullying in the ACT is appropriate and that nothing needs to be done or nothing needs to change. In fact, I think that is actually a statement essentially made by the Liberals in a briefing.
I want to reiterate the point I raised earlier in response to the claim that the Greens’ bill would require segmentation of WorkSafe’s workforce. The government says that feedback from the Work Safety Council, who were shown the bill and the amendments, is that there is a concern about this. Since hearing this feedback, I have made it clear to the government that the interpretation generating the concern is incorrect. The plain words of the amendment do not require segmentation of the inspectorate. In fact, the explanatory statement says explicitly the following words:
The section does not restrict the matters on which specialist inspectors can work, ensuring that WorkSafe ACT has flexibility in how it uses its resources.
I asked the government to pass this feedback on to the Work Safety Council. My understanding is that the government did not pass that information on. Of course, I cannot contact the council, although this request was made to the minister’s office. We have, essentially, had to rely on second-hand information about this. It seems this concern, which is actually not correct and is shown as such in the explanatory statement, is being used as a reason to not support the key measure in the bill. I am extremely disappointed not only for this reason but also because this was one of the points which involved a huge amount of discussion with the minister’s office and the directorate.
The proposals in our legislation have support from experts in the field, from other jurisdictions and from the community. For example, I received a letter, unprompted, from Toni Mellington, who is a well-respected Australian expert on workplace bullying. She has undertaken research on bullying for the Victorian government and, in fact, it is her definition of workplace bullying that is used by WorkSafe Victoria.
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