Page 2445 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 31 July 2018
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provision, an offence, and simply requiring all members of the community to take steps to prevent the transmission of these diseases. That is an expectation that, frankly, anybody in the community should have. If you know that you are a carrier of such a disease, you should take all the steps you can to make sure you do not pass it on.
As I said, the government and I will not be supporting the amendments that Mrs Dunne has tabled, because they go against the very intent and purpose of the bill, a bill that has been consulted on extensively. We have talked with people who have day-to-day knowledge of the realities of this industry, and we are committed to having a progressive and socially responsible approach to the regulation of the commercial sex industry. These reforms create more effective regulations that protect the rights of sex workers, their clients and the broader community, and they are informed by sex workers themselves, the very people who have the deepest understanding and knowledge of the issues.
Amendments negatived.
Bill, as a whole, agreed to.
Bill agreed to.
Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2018
Debate resumed from 7 June 2018, on motion by on motion by Ms Stephen-Smith:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR WALL (Brindabella) (4.50): As it is now, the opposition most definitely will not be supporting the Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2018 which is before us today. I will call this bill out for what it is: a gratuitous nod to the power and influence exerted over this town, through their connection to the ACT government, by the unions, most particularly in this case the ACT branch of the CFMEU.
This is a terrible piece of legislation that has been condemned by industry as being a burden on business, both financially and administratively, and touted as overreach. This legislation comes from a government that, as a jurisdiction, continues to try to bypass federal workplace laws in the pursuit of its own political agenda. Probably worst of all, this bill uses workplace safety as the premise to pursue the ideologically driven industrial relations agenda of the CFMEU and the union movement as a whole, with little regard to an individual’s rights of freedom of association. There is no evidence to support the assumptions made in this bill that a worksite will be any safer than it was prior to the introduction of these laws.
The minister has said herself that the changes presented in this legislation go “above and beyond” the bar set by national workplace health and safety laws. They certainly go above and beyond. They go above the federal government’s construction industry watchdog, which is tasked with reinstating law and order in the construction industry following the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and they go beyond the nationally
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