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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 1107 ..
MR BERRY (continuing):
1996, schedule 1. Section 15 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act in New South Wales reads as follows:
15 Employers to ensure health, safety and welfare of their employees
(1) Every employer shall ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of all the employer's employees.
That is a similar message to what we see in the occupational health and safety legislation in the Australian Capital Territory. Let me give you the corresponding reference in the Australian Capital Territory legislation.
An employer shall take all reasonably practicable steps to protect the health, safety and welfare at work of the employer's employees.
It has a familiar ring to it, hasn't it? The New South Wales act goes on to say:
(2) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1), an employer
contravenes that subsection if the employer fails:
(a) to provide or maintain plant and systems of work that are safe and without risks to health ...
That provides a lot of discretion for inspectors. They have to assess whether or not plant and systems of work are safe and without risk to health. A lot of discretion has to be exercised by expert inspectors. These inspectors are not the same as parking inspectors, as an advice which was referred to me seemed to try to indicate. These people are highly trained occupational health and safety inspectors.
Under the New South Wales legislation employers are required to make arrangements for ensuring safety and absence of risks to health in connection with the use, handling, storage or transport of plant and substances. That requires a significant exercise of discretion by the occupational health and safety inspectors when it comes to issuing a breach.
Employers are required to provide such information, instruction, training and supervision as may be necessary to ensure the health and safety at work of the employer's employees. That requires discretion from the occupational health and safety inspectors.
The claims that Mr Smyth makes are mythical when it comes to occupational health and safety. It may be the case when it comes to parking inspectors, when all a parking inspector has to do is see whether a parking meter has expired or not. But it is significantly different when it comes to the issue of occupational health and safety.
Mr Smyth correctly said that it is my intention to ensure that codes of practice become evidentiary in offences under sections 27, 28 and 29. That is completely true. It was intended that way. It was intended in the first legislation to have it that way, but it was withdrawn at an early moment. I know about that early legislation, because it was the first piece of legislation approved by this Assembly. I know about that. I was in the cabinet. Mr Wood was cabinet secretary, as I recall.
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