Page 2004 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 May 2013
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on work sites in the construction industry. You can talk to anyone in the industry and have stories about how unions bully them right around the country. I think it is important that we make sure that we deal with safety issues properly, that we have the right settings in place, that we allow our inspectors to do their jobs, but that we do not have a situation where we use safety as a proxy for unions to bully employers, as we see on so many occasions.
I think that that Building and Construction Commission is something that does need to come back. It does need to come back, and if there is a change of government federally, we look forward to that coming back, as was recently announced. I think that is a positive. That prevents the misuse of power by any group. What we want to see on our construction sites and in other areas of the workplace is a balanced approach in respect of the rights of employees. On safety issues, we are agreed. We want to see everything done to make our workplaces safe. But in the broader context, we do not want to see an imbalance. We do not want to see too much of a shift towards union power, as we have seen in recent times.
I think the ABCC is important. It is important to ensure that the rule of law exists in our workplaces. It is up to this government here in the ACT to get those laws right. But then we need to make sure that those laws are enforced and that we do not allow the unions simply to run amok.
I turn to the parts of the motion. It acknowledges the atrocious safety record over recent years but it fails to take any responsibility. I look forward to the government, when Mr Corbell gets up and speaks, explaining why this has been allowed to occur over the last 11 years of this government. This is a Labor government that claims to be about workers. It claims to be about workplace safety. Yet it has the worst record of any jurisdiction in the country. How do we explain that? How do we explain that under ACT Labor we have seen the worst safety record on work sites in the country?
What is it about this government’s mismanagement? There are a number of things that have led to it. There have been times where they have underfunded the number of inspectors. We have seen that. It is clear that there have not been enough inspectors. But perhaps it has been because they have not built a positive working relationship with parts of industry. Industry needs to take responsibility and they are taking responsibility. Governments need to take responsibility and this government, of course, has failed to do that over the last 11 years.
Individuals need to take responsibility on work sites. It is important. Training takes people so far. Individual decisions have a part to play in whether or not safety protocols are followed, in whether or not good decisions are made. Of course, in some of these tragedies we know that there is sometimes no explanation. Unfortunately, sometimes tragedies occur. Sometimes errors occur. With the best will in the world, we will never be able to take away any risk on all of our work sites. All we can do is try to have the right settings in place that make them as safe as possible, that lower the risk and make the risk absolutely as low as possible for there to be any serious injuries or deaths on our work sites.
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