Page 1315 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 June 2020
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comply with conditions of a licence, and the regulatory tools necessary to respond to a breach of those conditions.
In relation to self-insurers, they will no longer be able to be treated as exempt employers. An exemption usually describes someone who does not have to comply with the obligations created under law. This is simply not the case. Self-insurers must also respond to and assist their injured workers to return to health and return to work. For this reason, a licensing framework for self-insurers will reflect the obligations that the workers compensation expects of self-insurers.
Other technical amendments will ensure that the regulatory functions under the Workers Compensation Act are appropriately legislated to be the function of the new Work Health and Safety Commissioner. This will include the licensing of insurers and self-insurers, a role currently performed by the commissioner and her office.
I now move to the amendments in this bill to the Dangerous Goods (Road Transport) Act 2009. In the ACT dangerous goods are regulated by several statutory instruments. The dangerous goods road transport legislation regulates the transport of dangerous goods in the territory. This legislation is based on the nationally agreed model act for the transport of dangerous goods by road or rail and is implemented in the territory pursuant to the intergovernmental agreement for regulatory and operational reform in road, rail and intermodal transport, signed in October 2003.
This bill will ensure that the territory is better aligned with the model dangerous goods road transport laws. Specifically, the bill will make a number of structural changes that will allow the ACT to continue to update the associated regulations, as required from time to time, to maintain consistency with revisions to edition 7 of the Australian Code for the Transport of Dangerous Goods by Road and Rail—ADG code—as adopted automatically in the ACT. These changes will have a positive impact and reduce the administrative burden on businesses that transport dangerous goods in the territory, often travelling through the surrounding New South Wales region before entering the ACT.
Amendments within this bill to the Work Health and Safety Act will explicitly provide for work health and safety right-of-entry permit holders to take photos and otherwise document breaches of work safety legislation that they see while conducting inspections, and make technical amendments to clearly give the work health and safety regulator powers to issue a compliance notice for the removal of illegally installed asbestos.
Workplace safety is everyone’s responsibility and it requires the government to ensure that appropriate mechanisms are in place to keep every worker safe—something that the Canberra community rightly expects. In light of recent workplace injuries and fatalities, we acknowledge our ongoing responsibility to ensure that our work health and safety laws reflect this expectation.
In introducing this legislation, the government is delivering on its longstanding commitment to protect working people. The changes within this bill will support the role of the work health and safety regulator by better promoting compliance with work health and safety obligations and duties. The role and expertise of unions in
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