Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Honourable members may be aware that a young 16-year-old, Joel Exner, who lived in my electorate was killed on a building site last year. Sadly, not in my electorate but in the city of Blacktown, Paul Hughes, 41, a father of a young family of three, died falling from a building site. I congratulate Andrew Ferguson, the secretary of the relevant union; the board of management; and all the members of that union for the way they supported the family in such a tragedy and brought down Paul’s mum and dad from Queensland so that they could visit the site of his death and be at his funeral. You would expect nothing less, I guess, of the union, but again I record my appreciation for it.

I thought I should quote to the House some of the thoughts of Paul’s father. He said:

Every man’s birthright is to come home from his job.

and, I might add, to his family—

Paul did not deserve to die like this, and there is nothing worse for us than knowing we outlived our son because our government has not made workplace safety enough of a priority.

I agree with that very much. I say to all honourable members that it is an issue that we need to take up. People should have the right to go to work and earn a fair day’s pay but, most importantly, come home to their families of an evening.

The issue of criminal negligence in relation to workplace sites has been frustrating in the sense that there has been so little progress, in my mind, about protecting workers from unfortunate death during work. I disagree with Louise Markus when she says that occupational health and safety is a state matter. In fact it is very hard, with the new industrial legislation that has passed through the House, to work out just what role the Commonwealth now plays—it did not play a very big part previously, I must admit—in occupational health and safety matters. But we must have a system, and we must allow trade unions to inspect sites—as they have so rigorously done previously—to oversee those sites and to ensure proper safety measures are taken with no short cuts and no money saved at the cost of the lives of workers. Tragically, under the new industrial legislation this is not possible. (Time expired)