Page 3423 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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things. First, it enables transition inspectoral functions, delegations and work safety council appointments under the Work Safety Act 2008 to be effective for the purpose of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011. Secondly, it provides for retrospectivity of those arrangements from 1 January 2012. This retrospectivity covers more than six months.
The Work Health and Safety Bill 2011 was brought before the Assembly last year. It was a regurgitation of a national model code, but the responsible minister, Dr Bourke, did not have the nous to apply his mind to local implications. These regulations should have been incorporated in the transition provisions of the bill when it was presented to the Assembly in 2011. That these provisions were not, and given the number of investigations, notices and prosecutions that potentially fall into this transitional category and no doubt are on foot, this omission by an incompetent minister could have put the territory on very shaky legal ground.
There is potential for the ACT taxpayer to have to foot the bill for legal actions that should never have been on the radar. Indeed the scrutiny committee noted:
Whether or not retrospective operation is prejudicial may not be a simple thing to determine.
The committee went on to say:
It is not necessarily clear that what this legislation does is non-prejudicial to everyone who may be affected.
This is yet another example of this government’s propensity to look at the headline and not the story, to fail to plan, to fail to play the tape through to the end.
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Corrections) (4.42): I rise to speak to my industrial relations portfolio, which is in the Chief Minister and Cabinet Directorate. As the Assembly is well aware, this government is committed to ensuring safety and fairness for all workers, ensuring that the private sector workers compensation scheme operates efficiently and effectively now and into the future. Ensuring safety and fairness for all workers is an ongoing process, and the budget papers reflect a number of projects and ongoing work that will be undertaken over the next 12 months.
Similarly, the budget papers signal a number of areas of ongoing work that will be undertaken to improve the performance of the private sector workers compensation scheme. Over the next 12 months this government will continue the ongoing development and adoption of the national Work Health and Safety Act and associated regulations, codes and industry guidance; undertake an inquiry into work safety compliance in the ACT’s construction industry, including a review of our own procurement practices, with a view to improving safety outcomes in that industry; rewrite the territory’s dangerous substances legislation, taking into account the model regulations on asbestos, hazardous chemicals and major hazard facilities, as well as the unique requirements of the territory, with a particular emphasis on retaining our
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