Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I do not intend to withdraw. I am making some general comments about people's backgrounds. It was a general comment about the police force under the Bjelke-Petersen government. We know what they were like. We know what happened then. So, if people are a bit offended by that they should just go back and read history, and look at what happened in Queensland.

I am always happy for interjections from Senator O'Sullivan on any issue, because the Nationals should really stop being the doormat of the Liberal Party. We have seen in this budget—we are really talking here about legislation on safety—the Nationals again making false claims about being worried about what is going to happen. The reality is that the doormats called the Nationals will just roll over and concede, and do what they are told by the Liberal Party, as they always do.

On workers compensation and on people's rights to get decently compensated if they are hurt at work, we do not trust this government. Labor's mistrust of this government is exactly the same as the mistrust that the community has—that the whole population has—of a government that has lied to the community on more than one occasion. They have lied to the community on many occasions, so we want to be sure that when we are dealing with workers compensation, that any changes proposed in this bill that directly or indirectly risk workplace health and safety of Australian workers, are dealt with.

My big problem with this government—amongst many problems—is that they have this rhetoric about red tape. As a union official for many years, I understand the importance of having a proper legislative process to ensure that workers can go to work, work safely, and go home to their families that night. According to this government, this is red tape. There should not be red tape to make employers operate in a safe manner. Governments should just butt out and employers should be able to get on with the job, because it is a cost to the employer, it is red tape, and it is an intervention in the market.

All of the nonsense and ideology we hear from this government always leads us to be very concerned about any changes to legislation that this government proposes when it comes to health and safety, when it comes to workers compensation and when it comes to workers' rights. We know, the whole community knows, citizens of this country know, this government's form when it comes to workers' rights. We are worried that this legislation could remove the rights of workers to fair and reasonable cover when they suffer the misfortune of a work-related illness or injury.

We strongly oppose the bill. In the bill the government has included provisions, in an effort to hollow out state workers compensation schemes, to open up the Comcare scheme to private sector companies. The government has sought to do this by applying a very liberal definition of what constitutes a national employer. Yet in this bill, if it is constructed incorrectly, there may be leverage for the federal government to force entities to stay in the Comcare scheme. Why is this particularly important? It is important because there is yet another Comcare bill that has recently been introduced by the Abbott government. That bill makes cuts to lump-sum compensation payable for permanent impairment to the vast majority of injured workers and removes the already modest pain and suffering payment. A modest payment would be removed. Changes to eligibility requirements will mean injured workers are locked out of the scheme altogether, incapacity payments are reduced and sanctions are expanded against workers, including removal of medical support if a worker fails to attend a medical appointment, plus more, all of which are totally opposed by the opposition.

The Abbott government is asking the parliament to make a determination on a matter when it has, very recently, introduced a substantial bill which potentially contains crucial information about future changes it proposes to make to the very same act. Given the introduction of the third substantive Comcare bill, Labor does not believe that the Senate committee inquiry into this bill was afforded a reasonable opportunity to thoroughly investigate the interaction of this bill with the third Comcare bill. As I referred to earlier, the ACT government has not made a determination on the make-up of any new scheme and, thus, to support this legislation before that has occurred is to put the cart before the horse.

Labor has to be sure there is nothing questionable about this bill, and the best way to do that is to take the necessary time to further consult stakeholders. Labor's first priority is to ensure that no worker will be made worse off under this bill. We need to ensure that this bill will not create perverse incentives for employers to make their employees worse off. The opposition are not convinced that the government has taken all the steps it should to consult with all the stakeholders over this bill. There is a clear need to investigate the interaction between this bill and the other Comcare care bills introduced by the government, one of which will make changes to Comcare that will adversely affect workers.

For these reasons we do not support this bill. We do not trust what the government is really up to in relation to this bill. We want a further consultation process. We want to ensure that the workers who are covered by Comcare, or the workers who may move into another system, are not worse off and that their rights to fair compensation, if they are injured or suffer a very severe disease arising out of their work capacity, are looked after.

This is an important bill before the Senate. That is why we need to make sure that everything is done that can possibly be done to maximise the consultation that needs to take place. But the arrogance of this government, the arrogance that they know what is right, is driving this bill. Underpinning that arrogance is the ideology to cut costs in the Commonwealth area, to run an argument that it is red tape, to run an argument that they should simply shift the costs of a worker being hurt at work back onto the family that needs support, and that is a real problem.

Senator O'Sullivan interjecting—