Page 1316 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 June 2020
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advocating for worker health and safety is one that is already recognised and established in our WHS laws. Under part 7 of the Work Health and Safety Act, work health and safety right-of-entry permit holders, who must be a member of a union, are able to inquire into suspected work health and safety breaches at workplaces. This is a critical role in assisting with the prevention and rectification of work health and safety breaches by persons conducting a business or undertaking, known as PCBUs. The amendments will ensure that permit holders can, in addition to their existing powers of entry, document work health and safety breaches more effectively through photographic and audiovisual means.
The changes being introduced were, in fact, explicitly included in the ACT’s work health and safety laws before the 2011 model work health and safety laws were adopted. The 2011 model laws are silent on the matter of taking photographs or videos of safety conditions, and this amendment will clarify the powers available under that legislation, with the aim of keeping local workplaces safe. This is a specific response to recommendations by the ACT Work Safety Council for ensuring better safety across the ACT. Allowing WHS entry permit holders to document any suspected work health and safety breach observed at the workplace under a right of entry will ensure that all breaches can be documented.
It is my priority that we improve the safety culture on worksites across the ACT, and this important change will go a long way towards holding people to account. The amendments in this bill will keep the ACT in step with modern, effective and robust regulatory frameworks that are able to deliver better outcomes for our workers.
In addition to these amendments, the bill will also make one minor amendment to section 27 of the Public Sector Management Act 1994. This amendment will correct a misalignment between that act and the ACT public sector enterprise agreements to ensure that there is no confusion about the application of the merit and selection principles for temporary transfers to higher offices of six months or more, not three months or more.
This bill will deliver better protections for working Canberrans and ensure that the work health and safety regulator has the necessary powers available to conduct compliance activity. The government will always stand up for working people, and we will do everything we can to ensure that no worker is injured or killed at work. I commend the bill to the Assembly.
Debate (on motion by Mr Wall) adjourned to the next sitting.
COVID-19 pandemic response—Select Committee
Reporting date
MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra) (11.31): I move:
That the resolution of the Assembly of 2 April 2020, as amended 7 May 2020, which established the Select Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic Response be amended by adding the following paragraph:
“(6) the Committee deliver its final report no later than 27 August 2020.”.
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