Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise this evening to speak on the Archives and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021. It's been an extraordinarily difficult few weeks in this House. I think that all of us here would share that view, and that the sooner the independent review of workplaces of parliamentarians and their staff gets underway the better.

But in all the conversations I've had with staff members in this building—Labor staff, mostly, given that I'm a Labor member—it was made abundantly clear from day one, even before this Jenkins review was announced, that we needed an independent and at-arm's-length review process and that nothing less would suffice. More importantly, staff had to be 100 per cent confident in the process of making a submission to the review that their privacy would be protected. They made very clear to me in all of the consultations I've had over many months now—and I was talking about these issues well before the review was announced—that they had zero trust in current reporting systems in this parliament.

It makes me incredibly sad that that's the case, that there's such a lack of confidence in the current systems and such a feeling of lack of protection. So it's absolutely vital that the Jenkins review provides assurances to staff, that they will have their privacy protected. That meant not being subject to freedom-of-information laws, as would ordinarily be the case at the Australian Human Rights Commission. It also meant amendments to the Archives Act to provide the kinds of protections that we've seen in royal commissions—certainly in royal commissions dealing with sensitive issues. This is now a gold standard, the 99-year suppression in the Archives Act. I welcome very much those changes.

There were concerns raised. It is a bizarre scenario that we would have to ask a government not to operate in bad faith but that is exactly what people were demanding—some assurances that there wouldn't be efforts made, for those people with existing complaints that predated this announcement of the review, by the government being sneaky and tricky and trying to bury what would have been otherwise discoverable documents and information in the process. I am not actually suggesting that that would have been on government's cards but, clearly, even having just that window of doubt in peoples' minds was enough to jeopardise this important independent review process. So being able to arrive at a place where we can provide that assurance to people that there will not be capacity to be dumping in documents, important evidence and information that would suddenly now be deemed non-discoverable for those people with existing complaints who understandably wish to pursue justice and seek redress. They should have absolutely every opportunity to do so.

It is critical that women in this place feel safe about coming to work. The Australian parliament, I have said this on many occasions now, must be a model employer. But it's not just Labor staff, Liberal staff, crossbench staff. We need to be providing safe workplaces for the cleaners who come into this building, for the men and women from nongovernment organisations who come to lobby for a better, fairer deal out of this place, all the contractors. Everybody should be guaranteed safety in this place. There are 5,000 people who work in this building and every one of them deserve to come to work every day feeling safe. If this review helps us get to that path—I agree with earlier comments—we should not be waiting 12 months for this review to be concluded in order to make changes.

I think the government need only pick up Ms Jenkins' earlier review, Respect@Work, and enact those 55 recommendations. We might be in a very different position today in 2021 had we insisted that the government enact those recommendations. I look forward to a great sense of urgency from this government in making sure that every one of those recommendations is enacted in full, adequately resourced and properly supported to do so.

I want to say thank you to the shadow Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, for his extraordinary and ongoing commitment to ensuring that this process was going to be survivor-focused, that it would be a practice that would be trauma-informed. He had the full support of the member for Sydney, the shadow minister for women, and Senator Katy Gallagher and Senator Don Farrell from the other place, who were part of an important negotiating team with the government to ensure that our staff are afforded every protection they deserve and so rightfully have fought very hard to ensure that they are received.

It is an important process and it is worth this parliament backing in. Indeed, the only regret is it will have to wait for May to get passed. But I understand we have every assurance from government and all members of this party that these provisions, these protections, these tight assurances, will be applied retrospectively to 5 March, when the government announced the appointment of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins for this review.

So, I want to say to all members of staff, to all people who interact with this building as a workplace and indeed our other Commonwealth and electorate offices beyond, that I encourage you to participate in this review. This review is an important historical moment, I believe, but that requires that people are able to make forthright contributions, free of any suggestion that there would be any kind of punishment or retribution or that they would have their names leaked in any way, shape or form. I think these amendments go to addressing those concerns, and that's why I'm very pleased to speak tonight in support of them and commend the bill to the House. Thank you very much.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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