Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Industrial Relations. Today I met with—and I understand the minister also met with—Linda, Pam and Kay. They're in the gallery. They lost their husbands and a son in horrific workplace accidents and received no answers about the deaths of their loved ones. The government's now had the Boland report into workplace health and safety for nearly two years. It recommends changes to make workplaces safer, including an offence of industrial manslaughter. When will the government make these changes, and when will the delay end?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, that meeting did occur. I thank all of those present for their time at that meeting and for telling me and sharing their stories. The issue of industrial manslaughter is not an uncomplicated one, as the member would know. As a minister, I'm not closed-minded to the concept of an industrial manslaughter offence, and I think that those offences have been adopted in the Northern Territory, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland, and New South Wales has now added gross negligence to its category 1 offences. All of those offences and changes have been quite different, and there is obviously an issue here of harmonisation as well. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, that has not been a focus of the relevant ministerial meeting this year, but we are convening in early 2021 to consider this issue.

My view is that some of the offences that have been instituted by states are better than others. I think that the offence structure in Western Australia is not a good option or model and that there are better options and models there, but this is a matter that we would hope to resolve in terms of both harmonisation and the Commonwealth position in early 2021.