Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition will be supporting the Employment and Workplace Relations Amendment Bill 2008. This bill is designed to increase the benefits payable to dependants of an employee in a workplace covered by the Australian government workers compensation system, in the event of a work related death, through amendments to the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988.

The bill will ultimately ensure that those employees who are engaged by an employer who is in the Australian government system will receive payments that are in line with state workers compensation systems. This will deliver better outcomes for the families of employees who work for an employer which has joined the government system from a previous state system which may have paid differing compensation benefits.

One-off lump sum compensation payments following a work related death will increase from $225,594 to $400,000—an increase of some 77 per cent. Weekly benefit payments for each prescribed child of a Comcare covered employee who has suffered a work related death will be increased from $75.10 to $110 per week, an increase of some 46 per cent. Future increases to these benefit payments will be defined by increases in the prescribed wage price index as issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Using the wage price index means the death benefits provide compensation having regard to losses suffered by dependants as a result of the cessation of the employee’s earnings.

Various amendments are also being made under this bill to social security laws, to amend incorrect references and to clarify the operation of certain provisions in the Social Security Act 1991. The bill clarifies the method of calculating the amount of youth disability supplement that is to be added to a person’s rate of youth allowance and the definition of a partner with a rent increased benefit. The bill amends the Social Security Act 1991 to extend to sickness allowance and parenting payment (single) the provisions which prevent a person from receiving payment while there is an assurance of support in force. As members of the House will know, an assurance of support is a commitment to the government to repay certain welfare payments paid to migrants during their first two years after arriving in Australia.

The amendment will mean that a person who is subject to an assurance of support will not qualify for sickness allowance or parenting payment (single) where their assurer is willing and able to provide them with an adequate level of support and where it would be reasonable for them to accept that support. I note it is anticipated that there will be nil financial impact resulting from these amendments and that the estimated cost of death benefits over the next four years of $6.1 million will be met from the existing premium pool of Comcare.

The coalition continues to stand strongly supportive of safety in the workplace. An employee is fundamentally entitled to go to work and conduct their work feeling safe and in the knowledge that appropriate procedures and measures are in place to protect them from hazards to their health and hazardous situations. All stakeholders working together have a duty of care for safety. Employers have a duty of care for the safety and wellbeing of their employees who, in turn, should recognise and work according to the occupational health and safety practices implemented at their workplace.

Sadly, unforeseen circumstances and unexpected events are a part of life, and from time to time an unanticipated incident or work related sickness will occur. We need look no further than the tragic events of this past week, which remind us of how quickly a terrible event can unexpectedly arise and put lives at serious risk and tragically result in serious injuries and death. At such times, the financial implications are often unanticipated and significant, especially if only one member of the family was in employment. All employees and their dependants are entitled to be covered by appropriate measures and financial assistance to ensure their ongoing wellbeing in the aftermath of a tragic event, such as workplace injury or death.

Nobody wants to see the occurrence of injuries or illnesses to people whilst they go about their duties, with a work-related death being the worst possible thing that could happen for an employee and their family. It is therefore right that appropriate compensation be paid to those who were immediately dependent upon the deceased. Just as important though is the need to ensure that Commonwealth related workplaces—or, indeed, any workplaces, are safe places to work and have appropriate safety measures in place to protect employees working in potentially hazardous environments. Safe workplace environments and practices to guard against injury, sickness or death are the best measures that can be offered to employees and their dependants.

The coalition has a strong record of workplace health and safety policy and compensation measures to assist people who have unfortunately been injured whilst undertaking duties of the Commonwealth. The Compensation (Commonwealth Employees) Act was introduced by a Liberal government in 1971 and subsequent coalition and Labor governments have updated and improved this legislation, including the Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Act 1991. The Howard government made further reforms which increased flexibility in workplace safety arrangements and aligned the Commonwealth more closely with the states and territories and most international jurisdictions.

The Liberal-National Party coalition will continue to maintain dialogue with government to make these further improvements to compensation laws, as it is only fair that dependants are appropriately and adequately assisted in the immediate time after and into the future, following a death in a work related event. We can all only hope that these occurrences never happen; but, sadly, there will occasionally be unfortunate circumstances in the workplace resulting in a death. We all have a duty to care for those dependants who are left behind and to make sure that they are well looked after. The coalition is therefore very happy to support these measures of appropriate, increased compensation. I commend the bill to the House.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise in support of the Employment and Workplace Relations Amendment Bill 2008 and thank the member for Stirling for his contribution. I am not sure how many people listen to parliament outside question time, but hopefully there are not too many Victorians listening at this time, while we basically talk about death, who are connected with the horror which began on Saturday and which will continue for some forever. I apologise to those who are listening for the insensitivities of this legislation, but the reality is that it is the work of the House and it must continue. As a solicitor in a former life, I worked in estate and succession law, so death and its ramifications were something I had to deal with and talk about with families all the time. Normally that was when someone died in hospital under supervision and not via the horror that has occurred in Victoria. Even with the little that I have had to do with death, I cannot imagine what the people of Victoria are going through.

The first and most significant measure in this bill is an amendment to the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1998 to increase the amount of death benefits payable under the Australian government’s workers compensation scheme. The one-off lump sum death benefits will increase from $225,594 to $400,000. Similarly, weekly periodic payments for dependent children will increase from $75.10 to $110. This will bring death benefits under the Australian government scheme more closely in line with death benefits under the state workers compensations schemes and should ensure some greater peace of mind for Commonwealth employees and their families.

As a result of union activism and greater community awareness, we have seen great improvements to workplace health and safety practices in recent decades. Tragically, despite these improvements, there are still some workers who go to work one day but never come home. Having been a lawyer and a teacher, I do not think it is something that happens particularly in those white collar jobs. But, having brothers in the building and construction industry—unfortunately, it happened to one of my brothers when the two guys standing right beside him were killed—and having worked in the mining sector, I am all too aware of how it does happen to too many people. So it does occur, and I think it is entirely appropriate that our hardworking Commonwealth public servants be entitled to the same benefits as their state counterparts should such an unfortunate tragedy occur at work. These benefits will also cover those employed by corporations who have joined Comcare.

This bill also amends Centrelink’s Assurance of Support Scheme. This is about tightening up the way the Rudd government deals with people who come to our shores. This scheme allows migrants who do not meet certain financial conditions to have a visa granted if an Australian resident or organisation agrees to provide support so they do not need to rely on Centrelink payments. An assurance of support is the legally binding agreement between the Australian government and the assurer. If the migrant or their dependants receive one of the social security payments recoverable under the scheme while an assurance of support is in place, the assurer must repay the amount to the government—that is, the migrant is not a drain on the public purse.

This bill amends the qualification criteria for payments that are recoverable under the scheme. It will address an inconsistency and align the qualification provisions for sickness allowance and parenting payment with the qualifications for other income support payments. These changes will help ensure that sickness allowance and parenting payments are not made unnecessarily. It will also help avoid assurers accumulating debts with the Commonwealth. If the changes are not made, migrants may qualify for sickness allowance or parenting payment even though their assurer is willing and able to support them. However, migrants will still be able to receive sickness allowance or parenting payment if their assurer is unwilling or unable to provide them with an adequate level of support. This may apply in a small number of cases, such as those involving domestic violence where the relationship has broken down.

This bill also makes some minor changes to rent assistance. It amends the Social Security Act 1991 to rectify a loophole for the calculation of rent assistance for Austudy and Abstudy recipients who are partnered. It will ensure that rent assistance received by the partner of the Austudy and Abstudy recipient is taken into account in calculating the recipient’s own rent assistance. This change brings it into line with rent assistance for other income support recipients.

While this bill is mostly technical, the measures to increase death benefits are particularly important as they will make it fairer for families of deceased workers. As I said at the outset, it is a difficult week to talk about legislation that deals primarily with death. Much has been written about death, loss and grief, probably ever since writing began. The human condition will always draw artists and authors to explore the deadly dance we are all engaged in. So, in light of the fire horror in Victoria and the floods in Queensland, I sought some words that might be of assistance to those coming to terms with recent loss.

I turned at first to Australian poets, looking to our own backyard first. Obviously I could have turned to Dorothea Mackellar’s My CountryI know it is a favourite poem of the member for Forde—where she talks about flood and fire and famine. However, I rejected that poem. Most people know it inside out anyway. I taught it for too many years to embrace it lovingly. I thought too about a poem by Christopher Brennan called The Quest of Silence, which talks about:

Fire in the heavens, and fire along the hills,

and fire made solid in the flinty stone …

But I rejected that one as well. Unfortunately I did not have with me the collected works of Les Murray—my favourite Australian poet—so I was not able to choose one of his appropriate works. I turned to another one that is a bit of a favourite of mine, and of many Australians, which is John O’Brien’s Said Hanrahan. That poem is quite humorous in its way—

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘We’ll all be rooned’!

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘ “We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan’—that is right. The reason why it is funny and is such a favourite poem of so many Australians, I think, is because it touches on that essential Australian characteristic of enduring. It is an Australian characteristic that started with the First Australians, the Aborigines, I would suggest, and then the settlers. It is a tough land, a very tough land, a land of flood and fire and famine, and that idea of enduring is something I wanted to touch on in the poem. But I am not going to read Said Hanrahan by John O’Brien. I will leave that to the speakers following me, perhaps.

Instead, the poem I am going to read is called The Dead Woman, or ‘La Muerta’, by Pablo Neruda, who is not Australian. I went offshore to a Chilean poet, writer and socialist politician, who won the 1971 Nobel prize in literature—quite an epitaph to have on your gravestone. I am no Alan Rickman, for those who know the movie Truly, Madly, Deeply, but I will do my best:

If you are not alive; if you, beloved, my love, if you have died,

All the leaves will fall on my breast, my darling;

It will rain upon my soul night and day and the snow will burn my heart,

I shall walk through cold, and fire, and death, and snow;

My feet will want to march toward where you are sleeping,

but I must go on, because you wanted me to be, above all things, indomitable,

and, my love, because you know that I am not just one man but all men.

I commend the bill to the House.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whilst most of us making a contribution to this debate on the Employment and Workplace Relations Amendment Bill 2008 will be reasonably brief, due to the nature of the legislation, there are issues that I think are of importance. I am grateful, therefore, to be able to make some comment. I support entirely the amendment’s increasing of the lump sum compensation for work related death to $400,000, the increasing of the benefits paid for each prescribed child to $110 and the conversion of the indexing of that amount to the wage price index instead of CPI.

The consumer price index has become a very difficult index to utilise in many respects. It refers to a basket of items that people buy regularly. It has certainly proved to be very difficult to adjust pensions for the aged by that system, partly because of their consumer habits—what they buy as compared to what is in the CPI basket. Much the same applies to various families. If, as has been proposed, one uses a wage escalation index, it is quite clear it will be fairer, just as—you would remember, Mr Deputy Speaker Secker—the Howard government made an alternative index for age pensions by using male total average weekly earnings, or MTAWE, as it became known. So I think that is a good idea.

This gives me the opportunity to talk a little bit about compensation. Here we talk about prescribed children. Where there is a death related to the workplace and the person was supporting children, I believe the maximum amount of assistance should be available relative to the needs of raising those children as they would have been raised had the sole breadwinner—maybe—been still living. That is a good idea.

Nevertheless, I have never, ever been able to understand the campaigns so bitterly fought where 70-year-old and 75-year-old persons with no dependants seek huge compensation payments for past work related injury, which may cause death, when they have passed the three score and 10. They have nobody to support—sometimes a wife but certainly no children as dependants. I just wonder why, as so frequently occurs in these cases, the general community has to pay compensation in those circumstances. In other words, surely the courts or the legislation should take account of the age of a person seeking compensation for some work related injury or disease causing death. The public emotion goes high.

I find that there are so many aspects of this that we deal with in our common life. All of us are probably eventually going to be afflicted by some aspect of the life we live. I am not sure that I, for instance, should be able to claim compensation if I have been breathing too much air-conditioning in this place over 28 years. I find that ridiculous. Furthermore, having been fortunate in the past three score and 10, I am not sure that my workplace should have to fork out for me, whatever the circumstances. I do not have to worry too much, Mr Deputy Speaker—as you know, we politicians do not get workers compensation.

I just wanted to make those points. They are only slightly relevant to the legislation, but it is a point of principle with me that, as the sometimes criticised worldwide economist Friedman once said, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Whatever we do in this place and whatever we do elsewhere—whatever our decisions, whatever money we borrow et cetera—someone has to pay for it. There is no such thing as a free lunch. That is probably the greatest economic statement ever made, but it is ignored by so many.

There are other measures in this bill. It makes various changes to the social security law to amend incorrect references and clarify the operation of certain provisions in the Social Security Act. The bill clarifies the method of calculating the amount of youth disability supplement that is to be added to a person’s rate of youth allowance and the definition of a partner with rent-increased benefit. I gather that this is to say that you cannot have your cake and eat it too; you cannot seek a double payment. If your partner has certain levels of government assistance by way of rent assistance and you are the subject of youth allowance, you should not also be able to receive rent allowance—in other words, the benefit should not be paid twice. It certainly has my support.

That raises another matter of interest to me and, I am sure, to you and the shadow minister for immigration and citizenship, who is at the table and maybe even the Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services, who is at the table. It raises the issue that, where youth allowance operates in the Abstudy and the Austudy area—and Abstudy, I think, is a bit more generous than Austudy—in terms of access to tertiary education, there is still a distinctly unfair difference between people residing in metropolitan areas and those residing outside them. As is usually the case, the richer the parents, the closer they live to a leafy tertiary institution, a university. However, when people live at a distance from that available resource, the cost far outweighs any assistance available. We still have the arrangement, which concerns me, that young people living in rural areas wishing to get rent assistance through the youth allowance must go away and take a job, must virtually divorce themselves from their parents and their family home, to demonstrate that they are a sort of freewheeling person under the law so that, in the following year, they can qualify for these allowances. I find that totally illogical, and I am not sure that it is a benefit to society.

But even that assistance, if it can be obtained in that fashion, is far removed from the total cost, usually to parents, of people living in rural areas remote from a university—and that probably starts at 50 kilometres—where they have to relocate their children or their entire family to allow these young people to attend a university. To me, that is unfair and warrants the consideration of government. The ICPA, the Isolated Children’s Parents Association, have campaigned for an access grant. That may be the solution, but there has to be some balancing.

I have made speeches in this House in the past and pointed out—as I recollect, quite some years ago—that we had an amazing situation, which I do not think has materially changed except for the dollar figures that I will mention. If someone living in my electorate at the time with a basic salary of $20,000 a year had wished to send one of their children to university, the cost at that time would have been $10,000 a year in rent and other support that the child or the young person would need. Of course, that was obviously not affordable on $20,000 a year. If it was a single-income family and the wife then said, ‘Look, I used to be a nurse’—or a schoolteacher or otherwise—’and I will go back to work part time so I can earn the $10,000, sufficient to send Junior to university,’ the extra $10,000 of family income made that family at that time ineligible for other support, because the $30,000 was then a measure of your being rich. But you certainly were not rich in a rural environment if you had children who had to go to a tertiary institution.

The benefits available in secondary school are more generous and probably adequate, but we seem as a parliament to be unable to address in an appropriate fashion the huge disparity between the access to tertiary education available to a person from a rural area compared to one who probably lives a pushbike ride away from a university, resides in the family home, eats meals prepared and paid for by their family et cetera. It is quite a serious matter. So, while we are putting some clamps on youth allowance which seem quite proper, I think it is time we revisited that entire issue, and I would encourage people to do so.

There is another amendment to the Social Security Act. This will mean that a person who is subject to an assurance of support—in other words, they are covered by a private assurer—will not be qualified for sickness allowance or parenting payment single where their assurer is willing and able to provide them with an adequate level of support and it would be reasonable for them to accept it. I think that, again, is another double-counting measure—although, in some cases, particularly in small business, it is virtually saying that, if you privately insure, your insurer will pay, but if you do not bother the government will. That has always been an area of concern for me, depending, of course, on the ability of a person to do so.

This bill is referred to as the Employment and Workplace Relations Amendment Bill and as such I think it gives me the opportunity to comment briefly on the issue of the workplace that faces us today. I have read through the Australian newspaper and the Financial Review, as I always do, and the recurrence of articles about people losing their jobs is now quite significant. It is going to go on, and I am not sure what the Senate will do by tomorrow, but let me tell you that that is not the solution. We now have a situation where we have a huge expense quite properly accepted by government in the restructuring, if only of the public services, of this massive area of Victoria which these nuclear-type fires have swept through. That is going to soak up a lot of resources, maybe fortunately so. I do not want to be accused of being flippant, but we have a disaster led recovery of sorts.

As I said, I do not want to be flippant about that in any manner; what I am saying is that all of a sudden and out of the blue in an economic sense the construction industry will have the opportunity to create a lot of employment, and rightly so, as governments fund the reconstruction of that area. Does that then mean it is appropriate to go elsewhere and build a heap of other houses and consequently create a degree of competition for building construction workers that starts to escalate the price to first home buyers and negate the assistance the government has offered them? I put this purely as a question. I do not really want to say I have an opinion about that, but as times change and circumstances change should we be proceeding in exactly the same way as last week when some of these circumstances had not confronted us?

Might I say that it is a lesson in budgeting that when you start to get into debt you never know where the next big heap of expenditure is coming from and you can only fund it with further debt, and that is why cautious households try and keep some surplus in their bank account. But this is an issue of employment. Prosperity says we want everybody employed and for there to be demand for their services, but the minute it got to the stage of, say, 18 months ago there were cost implications and price escalation that made it very hard for young people to buy a house. Maybe the market was starting to correct that somewhat and then all of a sudden, in what might be argued is an otherwise fair response, maybe the government is going to overheat that sector.

Obviously, in my view, the reconstruction of Victoria takes precedence. That goes one step further because it is in the papers, and I believe the Senate inquiry is getting significant representations from business and employers as to issues of the fair work legislation that probably go beyond what the government promised and that also, in a time of difficulty economically, are probably unwise. I will put myself in the position of sitting in the business section of a major business, a major employer, looking at all the current problems facing my business. I have to start looking at my workforce and my legal advisers have told me that I am going to be severely disadvantaged under this law and that I could, as I expect in the north and in the Pilbara, be the subject of demarcation disputes between unions fighting each other for members and destroying the workplace in the process.

I saw plenty of that when I lived in the north of Western Australia. We nearly saw the iron ore industry collapse, and it was only when the Court government had the courage to write some rules of substance that that practice ceased. When the world has currently got a supply of more minerals than it can afford to buy and the potential exists for a single shipload of minerals to be delayed exiting Australia because of, say, a demarcation dispute, where does the purchaser place their next order? It is well known to persons like me—I saw the industry develop while I lived in the north—that so bad was Australia’s delivery reputation that the Japanese went and started iron ore mines in Brazil. Brazil is not a really good place for the Japanese to buy iron ore because the freight rates are a multiple of those from the Pilbara in Western Australia. They did it because they did not want their blast furnaces to run out of iron ore. And that was a common practice. People used to drive south and stop at my hotel and I would say, ‘What are you blokes doing?’ ‘Ah well, they have just called another strike up there over the colour of the tablecloth in the mess hall or something’—usually quite irrelevant things but frequently based around demarcation disputes. ‘It is going to last six weeks, Wilson, we may as well go to Perth.’ And that is what they did.

In the present international environment and in the workplace, is that a good idea? Not in my mind. It is not the time to be empowering trade unions, who often have agendas that do not make much sense. We read that the airlines are experiencing reduced business and that that will mean reduced employment, yet the air traffic controllers are trying to make up their mind as to whether we can go home tomorrow. Is this a good time to be having those sorts of disputes? Not in my opinion, because we do not want any further disruption. As I said, when you confront these issues—increasing costs through an emissions trading scheme and all of these negatives to business—do you do it in an international economic crisis? My view is no. (Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Employment and Workplace Relations Amendment Bill 2008 and all its contents, but I particularly want to talk about the workers compensation provisions in the bill. Those provisions reflect this government’s priorities, and those are primarily the protection of the most vulnerable in our community and our society. There are few people more vulnerable than families after the death of a loved one at work. The primary victims of workplace death are, of course, the deceased, but it also affects workers’ families, who suffer great emotional turmoil as well as having to deal at the same time with the dramatic loss of income.

Financial compensation at the time of workplace death is important because most workers, no matter what their age, have financial obligations—mortgages, car loans, school fees and a myriad of other costs and living expenses—and most families are reliant on either a single income or a dual income to pay those costs. So the death of a worker can have a devastating economic impact on a family, on top of the emotional cost that such a death brings.

This bill increases the lump sum payments for victims’ dependants in the event of a workplace death under the Australian government’s Comcare scheme from $225,000 to $400,000, and it also increases the weekly benefits for dependent children from $75.10 to $110 a week. This brings the Commonwealth scheme into line with comparable state schemes. In particular, it brings the scheme into line with the WorkCover scheme in South Australia, which in 2008 brought its own death benefits into line with other state jurisdictions. The lump sum payable under section 45A of the WorkCover scheme in South Australia is about $420,500, so it is a touch more generous than the proposed bill but it is in the same ballpark. Having a parallel sort of figure is very important because more and more national private sector employers are seeking to leave state workers compensation schemes and enter Comcare, primarily because of the efficiencies—they do not have to comply with seven different state jurisdictions—but also because there is a difference in benefits in some instances. So this relatively minor amendment to the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act will have a massive impact on the lives of those who are compensated, and it acknowledges something of the lost earnings and financial dislocation that a death at work visits on a family.

It is important to remember, particularly given the member for O’Connor’s contributions, the reason these provisions exist in the first place, and it is an opportunity to reflect on the hidden tragedy of workplace death and injury. It has been estimated that the toll from workplace deaths exceeds the national road toll. It is very difficult to quantify the exact number of people who die nationally as a result of work related causes, because at the moment there is no single national data collection system for such statistics, but those statistics that are compiled are pretty sobering. The Australian Safety and Compensation Council conclude that, in 2005-06, 434 people died either at work or commuting to work. That is identified deaths, and as I said the statistics are somewhat uncertain, so the real toll is likely to be higher.

It is really as a result of these fatalities that governments, under pressure from unions, victims’ families and the community, have steadily improved their health and safety laws and their fines and that companies have been obliged to adopt safer practices and better training regimes. I have seen that firsthand in the retail industry; I was a safety officer for the SDA—the shop assistants union—in South Australia, and I worked with a great many companies, many of whom did the right thing. Many of them, when you brought a risk to their attention, did their very best to rectify it, and many of them put in place risk identification schemes to prevent workplace injury or death. But it is still far too often in the news. We know that so many deaths could be avoided if there were adequate training or more stringent safety practices and that, sadly, there are many examples in South Australia of companies who were prosecuted for not doing that. I will give the House a few examples

In 2005 a carpenter was fatally injured in South Australia when he was caught in a travelator which was being tested at a suburban shopping centre. He was engaged in work on the travelator. Unfortunately someone turned it on and he fell into the machine’s moving parts. The companies involved in that case were found to have breached the South Australian Occupational Health, Safety and Welfare Act and were fined a total of $180,000. The Executive Director of SafeWork South Australia, Michele Patterson, said following the prosecution that the event was a ‘tragic example of the consequences of poor safety planning and poor communication’. If there had been a bit more thinking, that carpenter might not have died.

In the same year a 34-year-old father of three was electrocuted and died while working on an advertising sign. SafeWork SA launched a prosecution and the industrial magistrate Stephen Lieschke found that:

Relying on the experience and competence of employees to work out safety for themselves in unusual but not unforeseen circumstances is not a sufficient safeguard.

Basically it was, again, a death that may have been prevented if there had been training, if the risks had been identified and if there had been some forethought about what could happen. In 2006 a South Australian bus company was successfully prosecuted when a driver was crushed under a coach as he changed a flat tyre. Again, the prosecution found clear failures both in the training of the victim and in the work environment itself. I note that Comcare has recently initiated proceedings in the Federal Court over the death of a construction worker in Queensland. Those deaths indicate that while the toll is very high and while there might be circumstances where people are injured or die at work, we can prevent many of them.

It is young workers who are particularly vulnerable to risks at work. In 2003 there was the tragic case of Joel Exner, a 16-year-old construction worker who was killed when he fell 12 metres through the roof of a storage shed. He was not wearing safety gear; he was not given safety gear. His was a death that was preventable. That case attracted a lot of attention in New South Wales, and justifiably so. In 1996 a 13-year-old shopping trolley collector died when an octopus strap that was used to connect the trolleys he was pushing into a shopping centre came off and hit him in the throat. He died because his larynx collapsed. Young workers, we know, are particularly vulnerable at work. They are inexperienced and they rely on their workmates and their employers to show them about work safety. We know that if they are not looked after then, sadly, deaths occur.

Those are just some examples of recent workplace fatalities. Behind every one of them is a grieving family, grieving friends and grieving workmates. As I said before, they are preventable. Most deaths at work are preventable and are often the result of poor planning, lack of training, lack of attention to the risks involved with work and a lack of attention to near misses at work. Often there is a near miss at work and people say, ‘Aren’t I lucky,’ but they do not take action to mitigate that risk.

I spoke before about some of the statistics put out by the Australian Safety and Compensation Council and how it is very hard to quantify the number of people who die every year in work related deaths. That is because one of the biggest killers of workers, asbestos, is often not included in these figures. Asbestos makes the news and is a horrendous product if not handled properly and carefully. It causes asbestosis, mesothelioma and lung cancer. It is estimated that around 600 people every year are diagnosed with an asbestos related disease. Most of these people are innocent victims. At the opening of the Bernie Banton Centre in January, the Prime Minister said:

These were just working Australians, supporting their families, supporting themselves. Doing no harm to anybody but great harm was done to them. Working Australians whose lives and whose families’ lives were changed forever because of a few tiny fibres breathed in some 20 or 30 years ago.

It was interesting to hear the member for O’Connor talk about why people should be compensated when they are in the last years of their life when perhaps they have no dependents. That ignores the fact that the dangers of asbestos were well known to James Hardie in particular and to other companies a long time before they took any action to stop its use or safely remove it. Many of these workers do have dependants—they have wives; they have children; they have grandchildren. Often there are massive medical expenses and great economic and emotional dislocation when people contract mesothelioma or asbestosis.

I want to pay particular tribute to a constituent of mine, Mr Terry Miller of Salisbury, and the Asbestos Victims Association which Terry helped form. Terry was really the driving force behind that organisation. The Asbestos Victims Association does such good work for the victims of this killer in my community and right across South Australia to assist families and those who contract this terrible disease. The association offers them support and advocacy—indeed, they are great advocates to those of us in positions of power to make sure that the victims of this disease do get some sort of justice. It is a terrific organisation. It does not get much help from government; it relies on its membership subscriptions and on volunteers to get the job done.

In conclusion, workplace death affects more than just the victim. It takes an enormous toll on families. It can traumatise communities. They need our help and our practical and emotional support. There is a very good guideline on the SafeWork SA website about dealing with workplace death. I notice that that is not on the Comcare website. It is something that I hope appears there at some point. Families do need our practical and emotional support. They also, of course, need our financial support. The passage of this bill will mean that the families of workers who pass away under the Comcare scheme will have the burden of financial stress reduced and hopefully it will make a terrible event a little easier on them. I commend the bill to the House.

Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is significant that we have just had the 20-year celebrations of the building of this parliament. As a new member I enjoyed looking at some of the photos of the original building works here. There was one photo of particular relevance to the Employment and Workplace Relations Amendment Bill 2008 which stood out to me. It showed two fellows on the building site, high up—I think they were working on putting in the flagpole. They were in their crane boxes, leaning across to each other and I think they were handing a spanner across. They had no harnesses on, I think only one had a hard hat on and one had a cigarette in his mouth. It was a stark reminder for me and, I hope, everyone in this chamber that the positive in all this is that workplace standards and occupational health and safety generally have come a long way in 20 years. It would certainly be a completely different way that tools would be passed above us if this building were being built today.

The figures that were just mentioned by the previous speaker highlight to me the importance of this bill: 434 is a figure I have not heard before and the figures from the Australian Safety and Compensation Council are certainly stark. The comparison with road tolls is relevant to communities such as mine—we are pretty well Pacific Highway towns on the North Coast of New South Wales and therefore the comparison is a very real one. Many deaths that occur in the workplace are also on the highway for communities such as mine, whether through the movement of products or people travelling to work. I was once told that in raw economic terms—removing family and emotional impacts and the financial impacts with regard to long-term compensation—the cost to government of a death on the highway is over $1 million. That is for all that has to go on for one single accident on the highway.

In purely economic terms, if we can do more to reduce and minimise workplace deaths then we are doing good economic work as a group of parliamentarians. Of course, there are also the financial and personal economic circumstances that we need to consider. This is the unsexy work of government, dealing with death in the workplace, but in so many ways it is vitally important work as well. Without being too clichéd, we are judged by how we look after the less fortunate. Death in the workplace is obviously an unfortunate and unwelcome situation. All death is shocking; however, I think we would all agree that death in the workplace is particularly shocking in that someone leaves in the morning and is expected to come home at night, but they do not. That has long-term ramifications for those left behind, whether in a family context or a community context.

This is therefore an important bill and I am pleased that once again it is a win for the good guys on the side of trying to get national consistency and trying to break down these state-by-state changes in the technical details of various pieces of legislation. National consistency should be a broad goal in as much legislation as possible and I am really pleased to see Comcare recognising that and this bill recognising it as well.

I appreciate and endorse comments on the youth allowance and the need for government to consider a revisit of access to youth allowance generally. I also make the associated point that I hope government considers visiting strenuously, on a state-by-state basis, the issues of OH&S laws across this country—the differences in those state laws, return to work, rehabilitation and compensation generally. It is incredibly frustrating to see the differences. I hope that whilst we see some national work with regard to industrial relations laws—which I hope as a general principle are welcomed by this House—sitting side-by-side with it should be national consistency with regard to occupational health and safety standards and workplace standards, return to work and rehabilitation. It is a frustration in communities such as mine. We had some proposed changes in New South Wales which were incredibly confronting for the private sector in communities of the mid-North Coast. The changes had very strict legal definitions and very punitive laws proposed under the guise of the good work of protecting workers in the workplace. However, trying to make sure genuine injuries are genuinely compensated is a balancing act. From the private sector’s point of view, over the last couple of years the state of New South Wales was pushing too hard.

On the flip side, in the public sector, there are frustrations that genuine injuries are not necessarily always the ones that are getting genuinely compensated. A former New South Wales Minister for Police once made the comment that he did not know what to do about what he termed ‘Newcastle disease’: a very large number of people in the police force on the coast north of Newcastle were, whilst on the books of the police, out of the workforce on a day-to-day basis for one reason or another. It was a dilemma that even government had to grapple with.

In conclusion, I certainly support this legislation. It is long overdue and national standards and consistency are certainly welcome. I hope that this is a general direction, to engender national consistency in industrial relations laws and occupational health and safety standards. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate interrupted.