Page 235 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 December 2016
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organisations, their staff and volunteers, as well as community members to finalise and implement the action plan. In doing so, we acknowledge that many in the sector do not think of themselves as an industry and that change has happened fast on a number of fronts. The last thing we want to do is lose the very essence of the sector and its workers—their commitment to improving people’s lives.
An ongoing priority in partnership with the WorkSafe commissioner is to raise employers’ ethical standards and commitment to workplace safety. The government will work collaboratively with unions, employers and other stakeholders, including the Work Safety Council, to reduce the health, social and economic consequences of work injury. This includes measuring and improving the territory’s safety culture, strengthening the territory’s work safety laws as required and ensuring timely and effective enforcement.
While protecting the rights and safety of workers is a priority, the regulatory system must also be efficient and effective. A key priority will be to legislate a local jobs code for government procurement, making transparent our expectation that the companies we purchase from will be ethical employers.
The government will also seek to modernise the territory’s workers compensation arrangements to achieve significantly better recovery and return-to-work results and to take pressure off premiums. We will work to promote job security for territory workers by examining the growth in and consequences of insecure work in the ACT and ensuring the territory’s regulatory framework protects vulnerable workers.
Recently the Deputy Chief Minister and I wrote to the Fair Work Commission to support the inclusion of domestic violence leave in the national employment standards. The government will continue to advocate for fairness and equity in the industrial relations system through our engagement with the Fair Work Commission and relevant ministerial councils.
My portfolios provide a lens into vulnerability in the Canberra community. I will use the information available through my portfolios, through my interactions with services, workers and volunteers as well as the experiences of everyday Canberrans to help the government identify where and how our community can work together to promote social inclusion, because, ultimately, a fairer, more inclusive society is a better one for us all.
I present the following paper:
Strategic outcomes and priorities—Minister Stephen-Smith—Ministerial statement, 15 December 2016.
I move:
That the Assembly take note of the paper.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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