Page 5714 - Week 15 - Thursday, 10 December 2009
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A healthy and safe workforce is a productive workforce and that has spin-offs for our economy as well as spinoffs for the wellbeing of not just those people but their families and those associated with them. A safe workplace is productive and is a sensible investment for employers to ensure that they provide, as far as possible, the most up-to-date health and safety environment in which people can work for the good of their business.
It is not only important for the workplace but, as I said, it is important for the wider community. A healthy and safe workforce places less pressure on government services, including health care. The fewer industrial accidents we encounter, the less stress there is on families. Not only the victim of the industrial accident but those around them also have to recover from those.
As someone who has a long association with the building industry—my father worked for many years in the building industry; my son does at the moment—it is a matter of the utmost importance. I experienced, as a child—I went through the process as a child—my father having a number of falls on building sites and other accidents. And it is extraordinarily traumatic. As one gets a little older, it is a huge problem. My son is off work because he has got a broken leg. Until the time he broke his leg, he was working on industrial sites. His was not in an industrial accident. He has worked on large commercial sites around town.
The level of input that goes into occupational health and safety and safety around the sites is fairly praiseworthy, really. As a young apprentice, he came home on a number of occasions to tell me that he had been ticked off for not complying with safety things which seemed, on the surface, to be somewhat minor. But it shows how diligent people are on building sites, that they have, for the most part, learnt the message.
Some of that is because we have had some terrible accidents in the ACT. Some have unfortunately resulted in death. It does serve to bring home to us how potentially dangerous work sites, building sites, especially large building sites, are. And they are probably the area of greatest concern in the ACT because we do not have large-scale heavy industry where you would find a lot of accidents that you would find in other jurisdictions. We still have industries that do create crushing injuries and cutting injuries, which are of concern. We need to make sure that we work very hard to ensure that our workforce is as safe as possible.
It is especially important in small business because in the ACT most of our businesses are small business and that is why it is important that government support and easy access to information and reduced regulatory burden are the keys for small business.
In regard to the recent changes to occupational health and safety, I do not think that the ACT government really shone. There were changes that were foreshadowed for a very long time. We knew when the cut-off date was but the consultation was held quite late in the piece. I think that some of the changes to regulation in relation to occupational health and safety were not well known when they came into effect in October this year.
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