Page 1999 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
I am pleased to be able to move this motion this morning about the importance of workplace safety in the ACT. Workplace safety is an issue that the Australian Labor Party and the union movement are proud to fight for day in and day out. It is a sad fact that a safe work environment is something that some take for granted until it is too late. Workplace injuries are sadly on the rise in the ACT. This can be shown through Safe Work Australia’s comparative performance monitoring report 2012, which reported that the ACT was the only jurisdiction which reported an increase in serious claims between 2000 to 2011. The ACT experienced a 5.3 per cent increase in serious injury claims while Australia experienced a decrease of 27.7 per cent.
In September 2012 the ACT government asked Lynelle Briggs and Mark McCabe to conduct an inquiry into compliance with and application of work health and safety laws in the ACT’s construction industry. The inquiry panel was established in the wake of three deaths in the construction industry throughout the last year and a high number of other serious safety incidents. No worker should have their life and wellbeing placed in jeopardy while at work. But, unfortunately, we still have workplace accidents occurring in the territory.
The Getting home safely report handed down 28 recommendations on how government, business and industry groups can play a role in creating a safer working environment to reduce the amount of incidents occurring in our workplaces. These recommendations vary greatly from a target for reducing workplace injuries to industry groups taking the lead on safety training.
The Getting home safely report is an important government initiative and demonstrates the ACT government’s support to ensure that the families and friends of construction workers will no longer live with the daily fear of their loved ones sustaining a serious injury in the workplace. One of the most confronting figures which arose from the Getting home safely report is the fact that, on average, every working day one ACT construction worker will be injured at work or that each year one in 40 employees in the building and construction industry will sustain a workplace injury, and this increases if they have been working in the industry for 10 years to one in 10. These are staggering figures which are just far too high. When we look at the long-term comparison of the ACT’s construction industry rate of serious injury it paints an even bleaker picture—it is 50 per cent worse than the national average.
I am pleased to be part of a government that has agreed to all of the recommendations within this report. The report went through and identified priorities for the individual areas which make up the industry, including that of the business, training and government sectors.
The report identified a large number of concerns for businesses. One of the overarching themes was the scary reality that some businesses will choose to reduce costs and time on projects through sacrificing safety. I would like to pull up one quote which I believe sums up the way I hope everybody in this chamber feels:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video