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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2409 ..

Then we have the occupational health and safety provisions in this bill with their draconian penalties that would make most people gasp at the enormity of what is in store for corporations. We do not make any distinction between a mum and dad company or a partnership and BHP. You are still up for the same sort of penalty. If you are a corporation, it is the big fine, it is the prison sentence, it is the whole lot, it is there with bells on, it is enormous and it puts one more nail in the coffin of people who want to do business in the ACT.

I am constantly dealing with people who say, “I have money in the bank that I would like to spend, but I can’t spend it in this town. I can’t get planning approval. Every time I want to buy something, someone comes along to mess it up. The processes of getting any approval in this town take forever.” I will dwell on that considerably tomorrow. On top of that, if you are a builder or developer and are spending money in this town, you run the risk of having this whole regime put on top of every other imposition that there is on the building industry in this town.

I suppose it is gall and wormwood to many on the other side, but the building industry is strangely de-unionised. I grew up with people in the building industry. My father worked in the building industry for many years. He was a union member, and most of the people who worked with him were union members at the time. Unless you work on large construction sites, it is less likely these days that you will be a union member. Many of the people working in the building industry are independent subcontractors. I know that the government has considerable concerns about that, but that is the reality of doing business in the building industry in the ACT and across this country today.

I fear that this bill, as Mr Smyth said, is a way of driving a wedge into and attempting to re-unionise an industry that has become largely de-unionised over the years. There are many reasons for that. Perhaps people today do not find unionism as relevant as they did 20, 50 or 80 years ago. The contribution unions have made to improving working conditions over the years is somewhat underestimated today. As things stand today, this is not a very unionised country and this city is particularly un-unionised. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments expressed by Mr Smyth: that this bill is aimed not so much at occupational health and safety as at allowing unions to go where they would normally not be able to go to recruit to their dwindling ranks.

This is not how you improve the status and the relationship of unions with employers, of workers with their employers or of contractors with people who take them on. This is not how you do business or occupational health and safety in the 21st century. This is 19^th century legislation, and this government should be condemned for its backward-looking approach.

MRS CROSS (11.25): I wish to say upfront that most of this bill considerably improves worker safety and as such should be commended for its general intent. It is, however, an attempt by the government to allow union entry to workplaces, which has made this bill unpalatable for the ACT business community in general and has turned many likely supporters away from it.

This has caused me considerable distress and has confirmed in the eyes of many businesses a feeling that the ACT is increasingly becoming an unfriendly business

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