Page 1086 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2012
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The review will examine and make recommendations on:
the identified need for the liaison officer
the role of the liaison officer
the objectives of the liaison officer position and outcomes expected from that position
the contribution that the liaison officer—
not the individual but the position, and I think that needs to be emphasised—
makes in meeting the objectives of the outcome
the effectiveness of the role.
It is interesting that the terms of reference and the outputs and actions do not address the issue of whether the funding should continue or whether there should be alternative sources of funding.
The review is brief, but there are some things in it which are quite startling. There seems to have been no acquittal over the period for this funding and there has been no reporting. There are extensive recommendations in relation to reporting and the need, if this position continues, to have better quantitative data and information that could be usefully provided by the liaison officer on a regular basis. This could include the number of HSRs and WSRs trained by the OH&S liaison officer each year and the number of phone calls and emails that the OH&S officer typically receives on either an annual or monthly basis. I did notice in here that it seems that he receives about 20 phone calls and emails a month, so I think that his workload is not extensive. And there is the number of visits by the OH&S liaison officer to workplaces over the year and the number of days of training, amongst other things.
I think it is quite interesting, and we should contemplate why the government thought that this was a good idea; why it was open ended without review until the PAC decided that perhaps this should be reviewed; and why, in the course of the review, no-one thought to ask the reviewer to consider whether it was an appropriate spending of ACT taxpayers’ money or whether the funding could be sourced from elsewhere. I would welcome some feedback from the Minister for Industrial Relations as to why the review was so narrow in its scope and terms and what he is going to do to ensure that there are better governance and reporting arrangements in the coming years for the OH&S liaison officer.
It is interesting that the recommendations suggest that there should be a performance review in the final quarter of 2014, and after that there should be ongoing reviews every three years for the OH&S liaison officer. That seems to indicate that this is a $96,000 and counting annual donation to UnionsACT from the ACT taxpayer. This is a matter I will be looking into quite closely.
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