Page 2244 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 31 October 1989
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they would have no more than five employees at the most working with them.
Have a look around any site in Canberra. When you add them all up you will see quite a lot of people do actually work there and they would be forced to form a designated work group. Let us take the case of the little subcontractor, say, the electrician. He has got his little business, he has got a fellow who has just finished an apprenticeship there and he is paying him his award rate. It is a one-man business which employs an employee. What if that subcontractor has to send off his employee as the safety rep for training? He has to bear all the cost of that. That might, with some businesses make a lot of difference as to whether the business continues or not. The job of a safety representative is a very important one. It is one that requires a lot of effort, and it requires training and it requires expense. Under this legislation that falls on the employer, and that could cause problems to the little subcontractor.
There is a further possibility under this suggestion by the Government, of which perhaps Mr Kaine has some personal experience - it relates to these definitions here - which could make small businesses out at Fyshwick come under the ambit of this particular section. The idea espoused by the Minister is fine. It was an idea which was mentioned among the committee members and was then asked of a number of people who appeared before the committee. The idea itself, in terms of large building sites, has a lot of merit.
However, I believe and my party believes that the way this legislation is drafted causes additional problems, some of which have serious potential to have completely different effects to what the Deputy Chief Minister says he is aiming at in relation to this legislation. Accordingly, we would urge the Assembly to vote against this particular clause and the clauses coming after it, and we would ask the Minister to have them redrafted so that the real effect can occur without the possible adverse side effects occurring as well.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (8.35): I would just like to take Mr Stefaniak's argument a little further. I am quite sure that the Minister for Industry, Employment and Education does not intend this definition to go as far as it really does go. If members were listening when Mr Stefaniak read the definition from the Long Service Leave Act, they would have noted that it says that construction work is work carried out by a number of people, and it includes, for example, an electrician, a gasfitter and a plumber. Then that definition that the Minister is trying to put into this legislation goes on and it says that a construction site is anywhere where this work is carried out. That means to me, Mr Speaker, that, if I am carrying on business as a plumber and I do not employ anybody - I am just a plumber by definition - when I go to your house to lay some plumbing lines I am on a construction site.
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