Page 5441 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 8 December 2009
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health and safety, out of the industry. And members of this Assembly should want to do exactly the same thing, because it is those employers, those people who are doing the wrong thing, who will lose out through these amendments. Ironically, because of the actions of the Greens and the Liberals today, it is those employers who do the wrong thing who will be able to keep doing the wrong thing and take advantage of low-paid workers in the security industry.
I ask Mrs Dunne and Mr Rattenbury to reconsider their position. I ask them to recognise that this is not a major change; this is a minor change, a minor provision, that ensures that workers get the benefit of information so that they can be properly informed in their workplace. These are low-paid staff. They are transient. They work alone. Often, they do not even have access to a computer in the workplace. So let us think about them, let us think about what we are trying to achieve today, and let us not protect those employers who do the wrong thing. Let us make sure all workers get the support and the information that they deserve.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Detail stage
Bill, as a whole, by leave, taken together.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (12.11), by leave: I move amendments Nos 1 to 3 circulated in my name together [see schedule 3 at page 5487].
These amendments all go to the Security Industry Act and regulations. They remove parts 1.5 and 1.6 from schedule 1 of the bill, which are the offending parts. It is quite simple, Mr Assistant Speaker: these parts require that an employee must obtain from an employee organisation, a union—and have it certified that he has done so—certain information about his rights and responsibilities. He cannot obtain a position in the security industry without having obtained that certification. This is not a question about whether or not workers are entitled to appropriate information about their working conditions. Like Mr Rattenbury, we believe that members of the security industry, like other employees, are entitled to accurate and timely information about their working conditions.
What we object to in this legislation is that the only source of that information can be a union. That is the way it is described in the legislation and that is the thing that we object to. If it is such an important matter of principle, why has the Attorney-General not gone out to the industry and consulted them on this? If it is such an important matter, why did he not bring in here stand-alone amendments to the security act? The answer is that the minister wanted to sneak this matter through under the cover of an omnibus piece of legislation so that his colleagues in the unions could get an advantage.
It simply works like this: if I become a bouncer when I cease to be a member of the Legislative Assembly I will have to go to the miscellaneous workers union and ask them to provide me with certain information and the miscellaneous workers union
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