Page 4102 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2019
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MR RAMSAY (Ginninderra—Attorney-General, Minister for the Arts, Creative Industries and Cultural Events, Minister for Building Quality Improvement, Minister for Business and Regulatory Services and Minister for Seniors and Veterans) (11.21): Madam Assistant Speaker Lee, in a show of tripartisan agreement, can I also welcome you back to the chamber. I am pleased to be able to speak in support of the Work Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2019 and its amendments to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011.
The bill clearly demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that our health and safety rules are effective and work to achieve improved safety for our workers. While the bill is directly responsive to recommendation 21 of the independent review of the ACT’s work health and safety compliance infrastructure, it is also going to achieve a number of other recommendations made in the review report that was tabled in the Assembly last year.
Indeed, a critical aspect of the bill is the mechanism that it establishes for effective transparency, accountability and scrutiny of the territory’s work health and safety regulator. Key to this will be the requirements around four key and publicly visible documents: a compliance and enforcement policy, a strategic plan, a ministerial statement of expectations and a statement of operational intent.
The compliance and enforcement policy must be developed by the Work Health and Safety Commissioner every four years, in consultation with the minister and the Work Health and Safety Council. Importantly, the council will include members representing the interests of both workers and employers. While this policy must be reviewed every four years, it will also be possible to update the document earlier than every four years, should the circumstances or the health and safety environment require that to be the case.
The compliance and enforcement policy will clearly articulate the way in which the office of the Work Health and Safety Commissioner will carry out its regulatory activities. Specifically, it must include the aims, approach and key principles underpinning how it regulates. Policy must also outline the compliance and enforcement tools to be used by the office and the enforcement, investigation and prosecution criteria to be applied by the office.
Consistent with the cornerstone of transparency that is established under this bill, the compliance and enforcement policy will be a notifiable instrument and it will also be published on the office’s website. It will serve both as a guide to the office and guidance to all stakeholders, including employers, workers and the broader community, on what to expect from the regulator.
Like the compliance and enforcement policy, the strategic plan must also be developed by the Work Health and Safety Commissioner every four years, in consultation with the minister and the Work Health and Safety Council. That strategic plan must include the purpose and objectives of the office; the outcomes to be achieved by the office; strategies to be used by the office to achieve its purpose, objectives and outcomes; the strategic enforcement priorities of the office; a
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