Page 3887 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 29 October 2013
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their unanimous support of this bill. This morning I would like to start by reflecting on why we are moving this legislation today and why the government has taken such a range of steps to try and improve workplace safety so that people at work can get home to their family and friends at the end of a working day.
The reason we have done so, of course, is because of, in particular, four very tragic deaths. These four deaths, three of which involved relatively young men at the beginning of their working lives, with their full lives in front of them, have spurred the government to take action to try and improve the culture of workplace safety here in the ACT. It is worth reflecting on the nature of these deaths, not in any morbid way but as a reminder of the seriousness of when safety goes wrong.
We can recall, of course, the death of one young man struck by the boom from a concrete pumping truck. Another young man was crushed through the use of a mechanical arm on a rubbish truck. Another man was run over by a grader on a new work site building a new suburb here in the west of our city. Another man was electrocuted when his truck struck overhead power lines. These are tragic and distressing deaths. They are violent deaths and they are deaths that should not be forgotten. Our obligation is not only to honour their memories but to do everything we humanly can to improve safety on work sites so that others do not face the same fate.
The Getting home safely report was designed to respond not just to these deaths but to a broader pattern of serious misses and poor safety culture in so many parts of the civil construction sector across our city. I have been greatly encouraged by the response from all parts of the industry and, importantly, from the union movement, who have been a consistent and strong voice for safety, even when it has often been to their detriment politically. I thank them for their support of the government and of me as the minister as we have sought to pursue these reforms. I acknowledge their presence here today. Their support has been critical.
I also acknowledge the support of others, including industry bodies such as the MBA and the HIA, who have acknowledged that there is work to be done to improve safety and that employers have obligations that must be met.
Today we are talking about the passage of the new industrial court, a court designed to specifically and expertly hear and determine work safety matter applications and workers compensation claims. It is a centrepiece policy of the Labor government promised at the last ACT election and delivered on today.
The Magistrates Court (Industrial Proceedings) Amendment Bill fulfils our election commitments and also addresses a key recommendation of the Getting home safely report. The bill will strengthen the capacity of our courts to focus on industrial and workplace health and safety issues. It will establish for the first time an industrial court in this jurisdiction. Whilst industrial courts are not new in almost all other jurisdictions around the country—indeed, some date back nearly a century—it is the first time that there has been a dedicated allocation of a magistrate to promote judicial specialisation and expertise in industrial laws in this jurisdiction.
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