Mr BEVIS (9:44 AM) —The Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Amendment Bill 2000 is one of two bills the government introduced late in the previous session and deals with changes to the operation of occupational health and safety for those engaged under the auspices of the Commonwealth. There are a number of aspects of the bill in which the opposition sees merit, and I would like at the outset to thank the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business and his departmental officers for their briefing and assistance during the lead-up to its introduction into the parliament. Unfortunately, the bill is tainted, as are so many of the government's pieces of legislation in this area, by an unfounded obsession with wanting to remove the role of unions from processes irrespective of the merits of the case, and I will say something about that shortly.

I turn first to those issues on which I think the bill has merit, and I hope that the government gives some consideration to allowing the passage of those aspects of the bill. I think its chances in the Senate, as it stands at the moment, are not so great, and the government may like to give some thought to pursuing those aspects of the bill which the parliament will clearly support and jettison their ideological baggage.

The bill does make changes to the operation of offences under the act. Currently, all offences under the act are criminal offences. Largely as a result of that, there have been only eight successful prosecutions since 1992, with 28,000 incidents reported. The bill proposes to amend this enforcement regime to one based on both civil and criminal penalties for contravention of the act, with many of those matters currently dealt with as criminal offences becoming civil actions instead. We view that as a sensible adjustment which will enhance compliance and the operation of the legislation. Criminal penalties are to be retained in the act for contraventions which result in death or serious bodily harm or if the contravention is intentional or reckless. For offences which are more appropriately dealt with in a criminal justice system, the courts are also going to be given the power to grant injunctions to prevent the occurrence or recurrence of a breach of the act and to make remedial orders. These are also provisions supported by the opposition.

We will be moving amendments to the bill, one of which deals with this situation of offences. One area that has been omitted from the legislation which we think is important to be included as a criminal offence is where employers expose employees to a risk of death or serious bodily harm in a careless manner. It may be appropriate at this stage to foreshadow that I will move amendments Nos 1 to 14 standing in my name. Amendment No. 13 deals directly with the question of offences where an employer exposes an employee to a risk of death or serious bodily harm as distinct from death actually occurring. We do not want to have a circumstance where someone, as an employer, could recklessly behave in a way that exposes someone to death or serious bodily harm and quite possibly—more through good fortune than good management—the employee is not in the end seriously hurt. If employers behave in that way, there does need to be some serious penalty imposed. Those provisions, we think, are quite sensible and enhance the operation of the legislation.

I am concerned, though, that much of the bill is preoccupied with removing unions from a role in the occupational health and safety framework of the Commonwealth. I do not propose to go through all the information that was put on the record. Excuse me—the problem with Melbourne is that I picked up the flu while I was down there.

Mr BEVIS —I wish.

Mr McGauran —You can sit down.

Mr BEVIS —I do not propose to go through all the statistics—

Mr McGauran —Save your voice.

Mr SPEAKER —The member for Brisbane has the call and, in deference to the state of his voice, he ought to be heard in silence.

Mr BEVIS —I am indebted to the minister for his deep concern for my welfare. I do not propose to go through all the statistics—

Mr SPEAKER —While I have a vested interest in this, I might advise a hefty dose of orange juice, to boot, member for Brisbane.

Mr BEVIS —Thank you. In Queensland it is rum and orange juice, actually. The fact is that the Commonwealth scheme, as was acknowledged by both sides of the parliament during the debate on a similar bill before these sittings, is the best functioning scheme in the nation. Not only does it have the lowest premiums; it has a declining claim rate, both in aggregate terms and in terms of the percentage of the work force lodging claims. These are very impressive outcomes for any occupational health and safety system and are the envy of state schemes.

One of the reasons for the success of that occupational health and safety structure is that earlier in the 1990s—in 1992—the then government put in place a process whereby unions were directly involved in workplace occupational health and safety committees. It is no coincidence that, since that time, the performance of the Commonwealth scheme has improved and has continued to improve. There is overseas research that will also validate the view that occupational health and safety programs function better where organised labour is involved in their administration. The reasons for that, of course, are that organised labour—unions—have people who are more skilled in these matters and are able to ensure, along with management, that the joint goal of having safe workplaces is best applied.

The government has not advanced one argument for removing unions from this process. I will be interested to hear the views of government members in this debate to sustain the argument that unions should be removed and how they believe removing the unions will actually improve the outcome for occupational health and safety for Commonwealth public servants. Clearly, the record tells us that is not the case. The opposite is the case. But a great portion of this bill is devoted to removing unions from that structure. We will not support that, and any fair-minded analysis of the occupational health and safety system within the Commonwealth will lead you to the conclusion that there is no purpose to be served by going down that path.

Our own experience in Australia tells us how important union involvement is in occupational health and safety matters. The Australian workplace industrial relations surveys in 1990 and 1995 showed that, if there was no union, only 19 per cent of workplaces had an OH&S committee. In most unionised workplaces—59 per cent— there is a union involvement in an occupational health and safety committee. Research that has been funded by Worksafe Australia shows that workplaces with effective health and safety committees have fewer workers compensation claims. It does beggar belief that the government would want to throw that aside and expose its own employees to what, according to the statistics, will be a greater risk of harm and injury—and for no reason other than an ideological obsession about removing the unions from all walks of life as far as they can. We have seen that in the workplace relations bills that have been introduced again this morning. We will therefore be opposing those provisions of the bill, and many of the amendments that I will move go to those matters.

I want to give an example of how things operate at the moment in a real life case in Telstra where a union occupational health and safety officer who is an employee of Telstra—he does normal work along with all of his colleagues but, in addition, assumes responsibilities for monitoring and assisting with occupational health and safety matters—has provided a statutory declaration about his behaviour because he has been subjected to disciplinary action by Telstra, who clearly have tried to cover up the issues which he has raised. I want to read briefly from his statutory declaration. He says:

That is a quite proper thing for an occupational health and safety representative to do. We are talking here about workers being exposed to a lethal environment. Working with asbestos, as we all know, is a threat to life, and there are high standards for involvement of workers with that substance. This person had been contacted and told that, in an exchange with asbestos, work was being conducted, including drilling through walls and other things that would disturb the asbestos. The asbestos was to be removed, but the contractor removing it had not been complying with the normal requirements to seal the area off and to ensure that the airconditioning ducts had been closed. Those members who have had any experience with this matter know that they literally seal an area in what amounts to a large plastic bag so that the contaminants are not removed from the site. As a result of quite diligent work by this person, he has now been subjected to disciplinary action from within Telstra. I will read an internal memo that he received dated 21 August last year:

This is a matter which is actually being pursued by the union in seeking to protect that member and to ensure that that member's proper activities are not going to be used as an excuse by management to cover up their own incompetence. It is interesting that Comcare entered the debate in relation to this fellow and wrote to Telstra as well. They referred to the gentleman by name and said that he:

This is Comcare investigating it. The letter continued:

It was provided. The letter continued:

that is the one I just read—

So Comcare have investigated the circumstances surrounding this incident and have written to Telstra and said that, in their view, the warning should be withdrawn; that is, that the occupational health and safety representative acted totally appropriately. Not to be outdone, Comcare having made those representations to Telstra on 30 January this year, Telstra then wrote another letter on 9 February to this occupational health and safety person who was a union member and said to him again:

This person has done absolutely nothing wrong; in fact, he should be commended for doing what management had failed to do. They exposed workers to a potentially life threatening situation. He did his job properly, he reported to his team leader and no argument could be had about the way he conducted himself, but, because, I suspect, he embarrassed more senior people in the organisation of Telstra, they decided to come the heavy with him. The only reason he has been able to withstand that is that he is there as part of a collective representation; he is there on behalf of all the workers as a union member and representing the union. The union has made representations to ensure he is not victimised. Comcare have investigated it and have agreed with the union and with the individual, but Telstra, not deterred, as recently as February this year persisted in seeking to intimidate him and warned him that there was a formal complaint on his record. Imagine what would have transpired if that person had not been able to avail themselves of the support of a union. We know what would happen in that situation. A person standing alone as an individual, confronted by senior management in Telstra to that effect, would have had little or no hope of rectifying the situation, yet the government want to remove unions and organised labour from this process of occupational health and safety.

OH&S should not be the subject of bitter, partisan division. I am sure that everyone in this parliament, if asked, would say they believed all workers in Australia were entitled to work in a safe and healthy environment, that no worker should be knowingly exposed to unacceptable risk. Everyone in this parliament would hold that view. The evidence from research in Australia and abroad tells us you have a better chance of producing that outcome where there are union representatives on occupational health and safety committees. In the face of that, the government want to remove unions from the process altogether. There can be no justification for that other than the ideological baggage that this government bring to all of these debates. I hope that the government do not sink this bill because of their intransigence on the issue of union involvement in these committees. I hope they do not, but I make this clear: we in the Labor Party will not support this legislation while it contains those provisions.

One other aspect of the bill that gives me serious concern is the change in the requirement for establishment of workplace committees. We have a system that is working well. The Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, who is at the table, during a debate on the referendum about whether we should have a republic, was often heard to say, `If it ain't broke, why fix it? Why change the system?' That was the cry of the minister. He had another cry at the time, which was `Don't trust a politician'—and in his case one could understand that—although it did cause him some concern among his own backbench. But, to coin the phrase that the minister at the table liked reciting when the nation was voting on whether we should be a republic, if it ain't broke, why change it? We know this system works. So not only are the government proposing to remove the very core of the system, the role of organised labour, but they want to change how committees are set up.

We have at the moment a committee structure that effectively provides an occupational health and safety committee in all workplaces. The government want to change that. They want to change that to a system that, for example, would allow—although they tell us this is not what they want to do— a department to have one occupational health and safety committee for the entire state of New South Wales. So Telstra might decide they want to have one committee for all of Queensland. I ask you: how on earth could one committee—and you can have it wherever you like; I do not care whether you put it in Townsville or Rockhampton or Cunnamulla or Brisbane—know that the practices being adopted in the hundreds of workplaces spread across the state meet the necessary standard? The obvious answer is it could not. The government would say that is not the intention of the legislation, but that is in fact what the legislation allows. If it is not the intention of the legislation, the government should introduce amendments to rule that out, but they have not. This bill will enable any of the government departments that are subject to this to have one committee for an entire state. That will totally undermine the foundations of what has been an outstanding success. So I think the onus in this debate is very much on the government: if they want to destroy the committee system that exists, they have to put up the arguments to justify it. If they want to destroy the involvement of unions in the occupational health and safety committee structure, whatever it may be, they have to put up the evidence and arguments to support it. They have not.

We will support the other provisions of the bill that I have mentioned. The amendments that I will move deal principally with removing from the bill those things that seek to remove unions from the organisation of occupational health and safety committees and also seek to remove the problem associated with setting up one committee for an entire state. I would commend to the government close scrutiny of our amendment No. 13, which deals with establishing an additional offence that would be dealt with by criminal activity. I think that has sound merit in it. I would also suggest to the government that they might look at our amendment No. 14, which is largely technical but which they might find is necessary for their purposes as well as for ours.

That said, I look forward to government members endeavouring to defend the indefensible. I want to hear the government members tell the parliament and the people and, more importantly, those workers who are affected by this legislation why the best system operating in Australia should have its entire structure redesigned and the core of its essence taken away from it. There has not been a shred of evidence advanced for that, so let us get rid of the ideological baggage. Let us make the improvements that are in this bill and do something to actually enhance the position of the work force employed by the Commonwealth rather than once again, as this government have done on so many occasions, put in the knife and twist it.