Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister explain to the House how the government is protecting workers’ occupational health and safety? Is the minister aware of any alternative views?

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Cowper for his question. I indicate to him and the House that this government is committed to occupational health and safety, but those opposite continue to make false claims about the availability of occupational health and safety training after Work Choices. For the record: can unions conduct occupational health and safety training since the introduction of Work Choices? The answer is yes. Will occupational health and safety training continue after the introduction of Work Choices? The answer is yes.

Yesterday we had the AWU boss, Bill Shorten, on Sky News. He was repeatedly making misleading claims about occupational health and safety. He had a question from David Speers, who asked Mr Shorten, ‘Do you accept that workers at this mine or any other workplace will still be able to receive union provided safety training under the laws?’ to which Mr Shorten replied, ‘No, I don’t accept that.’ This is simply wrong. What Mr Shorten says is simply not true. He is wrong about that—that is, either he is totally ignorant of the laws that operate in Australia or he is being deliberately misleading about the effect of those laws.

How can the unions and the Labor Party possibly object to us saying that occupational health and safety clauses must be about occupational health and safety? How can they object to that? We are saying that those clauses should not be about other union training which has nothing to do with occupational health and safety. Take this example of union training which is being promoted by the union movement at the present time, by the ACTU, with a flyer around to workplaces in Australia encouraging members to take three days off work in order to attend an activists course in Sydney. This is the sort of thing which does not pertain to the employment relationship. We are simply saying that occupational health and safety clauses ought to be about occupational health and safety, not a range of other things like this and the sort of abuse that has occurred in the past.

The reality is this: over the last couple of months, nearly eight weeks, of operation of the Work Choices legislation, the Employment Advocate has had lodged with him agreements—collective agreements and others—which provide for occupational health and safety training, and those agreements have been vetted as being okay by the Employment Advocate.

That is the reality. Clauses relating to occupational health and safety have been contained in agreements that have been lodged with the Office of the Employment Advocate. So workers like the miners in Beaconsfield, who went off to a training course at an operation in Lithgow in New South Wales, partly owned by the CFMEU, are able to continue to do that. Nothing whatsoever in Work Choices changes that. That is what the member for Perth conceded in his doorstop yesterday. That indeed is the advice that came from the office of the member for Lilley, having consulted with the member for Perth about whether or not employers could continue to send employees off to training courses. I will repeat this once again: the answer that came, via the member for Lilley from the member for Perth, was yes, an employer can send employees to union training.