Senator MURRAY (8:38 PM) —I have listened to this exchange with some interest. Before I make points which I hope are pertinent to the exchange, I would say to the minister through the chair that I think you should be careful about pointing fingers at the Democrats and a prescriptive approach, because out there in what is known as voter land, when I get people reacting to the approximately 1,800 bills that have been passed under your government and complaining about the Financial Services Reform Act, the tax act, the GST, BAS, superannuation returns or anything else—in which, at times, I have had a part to play because I have voted with the government on them—the finger tends to be pointed at the government, not at the Democrats, for making regulations, laws and so on—

Senator Abetz interjecting—

Senator MURRAY —highly prescriptive and very annoying. So whilst I certainly would not claim clean hands on this matter, I do suggest you avoid pointing fingers at me or the Democrats for being of a prescriptive frame of mind.

Returning to the discussion, it seems to me that the government may have built an unnecessary cross for it to carry, because if you look at section 16(3)(c) the substantive clause has got the subordinate clauses attached to it, and it refers to safety management arrangements. That sounds like a slippery way of trying to infer informality. But that can never get you away from the duties which have well-established jurisprudence with respect to employer-employee obligations. However, if you look at subordinate clauses (a), (b), (c), (c)(i), (c)(ii) and (d), you will see that a number of words appear there for which the arrangements may provide—in (a), for a policy; in (b), for arrangements; in (c), for agreements; in (d), for training; and in (c)(i) and (c)(ii), for consultation and such other matters. It seems to me that in any situation where these matters are taken to a court—and the Lord forbid that occurs, but these things do occur—a judge would look at this in totality and would aggregate those and say they have a commonality or congruence.

As you know, I am not a lawyer, but through my various business arrangements over the years I have probably spent millions on those, so I have learnt some of their tricks, much to the collective cost of the businesses I have been involved with. It seems to me that you cannot escape the inference that an arrangement is a formal obligation in law. Therefore, I am surprised you have used different language throughout and that a definition was not simply established up-front that an agreement can be an arrangement, policy, this, that or the other. However, I am surprised at the range of legislative language used. Perhaps there is a good reason for it which I have not had my attention drawn to.

Returning to the object of the amendments, they are to provide some clarity with respect to these issues—to make the obligations and responsibilities clear. That is all. The government and its officers might well have been able to design them better, but in my view they improve what you have before us.

Question negatived.