Page 651 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 February 2012
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I think that this is an attempt by the Greens to run an issue up the flag—“Look, we are interested in workplace bullying and the nasty old parties are going to thwart us here.” This will be grist for their electoral advertising during this election year. We need to see it for what it is. I predict that we will see the term “old parties ganging up against the Greens”. We need to actually call it for what it is. This is overly prescriptive. It is unnecessary. It is demeaning for the Workplace Safety Council and the officials to be directed in this way. The Canberra Liberals will not be supporting these measures.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (4.25): I am speaking this afternoon to support this excellent bill that would have gone, I think, a long way towards preventing bullying in the workplace and supporting those workers who had been bullied in the workplace. I find it extremely disappointing that we do not have other parties supporting this legislation this afternoon.
I find it particularly disappointing that we do not have Minister Bourke supporting this legislation. After all, it was only back in December of last year in the Canberra Times that the Chief Minister said that any action that reduced bullying in the workplace would be supported by Labor. She went on to say, “I think there is no doubt that bullying in the workplace is something the government and parliament need to continually improve in terms of our management.” So it is disappointing that we do not have that support from the minister.
The Work Safety Commissioner, Mark McCabe, was also quoted in that article. While he rightly said that he could not comment on the Greens’ legislation, he did talk generally about bullying. He said that it was getting close attention from WorkSafe, but he believed it was only a matter of time before the territory sees its first criminal prosecution for workplace harassment. He went on to say, “I am convinced it will.” He was referring to a case coming forward. “The only thing that inhibits this is the willingness of the witness to go on the record.”
That is what was really at the heart of this bill. The heart of this bill was to ensure that WorkSafe ACT had on their staff at least three inspectors who had specialised experience or expertise in workplace bullying and other workplace psychosocial matters. The reason for that was that that experience, that expertise, would be used to support those workers who step forward, those who had raised initially that they felt there was something wrong in their workplace, to resolve it, to nip it in the bud, to go for that early intervention prevention side of things or, where a worker did come forward, to be able to support them through the process to the end.
This is not new. This in fact has been put in place in other jurisdictions. Both Workplace Health and Safety Queensland and WorkSafe Victoria have decided that they need this expertise and this experience—these specialised roles. From what we can see there is strong evidence that this approach is working.
I believe that this was a really good step forward for us to go with in the ACT. We know the incidence of workplace bullying is not dropping. Unfortunately, it is not dropping. We continue to get report after report after report. In fact the ACT government gave us some data only last year. That was in response to a Greens
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