Second reading

Mr J. BULL (Sunbury) — I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the WorkSafe Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. Before I go to the bill I would like to commend the minister, who is in the house, for his commitment to workplace safety and his endeavours in keeping all Victorians safe at work. We all deserve the right to be safe at work — to leave home and return safely home to those we love, home to our family and home to our friends. We deserve to return home without injury, safe, happy and well. That should be the goal of all workplaces. Of course they should be productive and look after the staff, but they should also create an environment that is safe and where workers are cared for. We all deserve to feel safe in these environments, and we all should expect to look after one another.

Sadly, though, we in this house know that we have lost far too many Victorians and indeed far too many Australians at their places of work. Each and every year thousands of injuries happen, accidents that could have been prevented. I have had the opportunity to speak to a number of constituents over the time in which I have been in Parliament. You certainly learn the difficulty of their circumstances and the ramifications they face within their lives and the impact an injury has on their family and friends. Depending of course on the nature and type of injury, significant personal hardship is experienced, which includes loss of wages, bill and mortgage stress and the impact on the family, just to name a few.

The Andrews government is committed to helping all those who are injured at work to get back to work sooner through a fair and just system and to support those who need it the most. Of course we know that Labor was instrumental in establishing the WorkSafe scheme in 1985, and we have been its protector ever since. It was Labor that commissioned the Hanks review of the legislation, made improvements to benefits and ensured that return to work, a critical part of the scheme, was included in the act. If you go to the WorkSafe website, it states:

WorkSafe’s mission is to actively work with the community to deliver outstanding workplace safety and return to work, together with insurance protection. The work we do is important because we impact upon many people’s lives, every day.

It goes on to say:

WorkSafe is:

Constructive in the way we provide information, advice and service.

Accountable for what we do and what we say. We live up to our promises.

Transparent in the way we work, our environment is open and honest.

Effective by working collaboratively to deliver high‑quality services.

Caring by showing empathy in our dealings with everyone we work with.

That final point is certainly one that is of great importance in this space, and it is so because of the fact, as I mentioned earlier, of the hardship and the difficulty that is placed upon the individual and the individual’s family and friends when an injury at work happens.

This is a very important bill. It amends the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013, the Accident Compensation Act 1985 and the Dangerous Goods Act 1985. This bill, as we have heard today, achieves four key objectives. It will optimise workplace safety through strengthening WorkSafe’s compliance and enforcement tools; it will ensure that consequences of health and safety laws act as a sufficient deterrent and ensure that breaches can be appropriately investigated; it will ensure that injured workers and their family members are entitled to fair and equitable compensation; and it will improve the workability of the legislation. This bill also makes a number of minor amendments that provide clarification, remove obsolete provisions, ensure the continuation of current arrangements or are consequential to other legislative changes. WorkSafe handles around 90 000 claims per year, and there are checks and balances in place to make sure that legitimate injuries are compensated for.

When we look at this bill and we think about those examples that I mentioned before and the impact that an injury at work has on a Victorian, we realise that it is always timely and important that we as a government look at these laws and ensure that the appropriate levels of compensation, support and care are provided by WorkSafe. Holistically we all have a role to play in workplace safety. We all have a role to ensure that each and every Victorian can know that in their place of work everything is being done to protect and support them and ensure that they return home safely. This legislation boosts WorkSafe powers by toughening some penalties and giving more time to prosecute offences in certain circumstances.

It is certainly true to say that the Andrews Labor government put ‘safe’ back into WorkSafe after those opposite rebranded it into an insurance scheme. We are making changes to WorkSafe powers so they can lay charges in particular circumstances. The bill amends the Occupational Health and Safety Act, as I mentioned earlier, to extend the time limit for prosecuting indictable offences in the following scenarios: where a coronial inquest identifies that the offence has been committed; where an enforceable undertaking is breached or withdrawn; and where fresh evidence is uncovered and a court is satisfied that evidence could not have been identified within the limitation period.

Clause 18 of the bill amends the OHS act, specifying that the 12‑month time limit for prosecuting an offence of failing to produce documents commences from the date that WorkSafe becomes aware of the offence. Sometimes WorkSafe will become aware of an offence during a court case and in other circumstances where more than 12 months have passed. This ensures that WorkSafe can still lay charges if this happens.

The bill goes on to strengthen some OHS penalties by making them indictable rather than summary. The amendments affect the offences of providing false or misleading information and producing a document that a person knows to be false or misleading. This change reflects the seriousness of those offences, which of course could relate to activities undertaken by a duty holder to obstruct an investigation. These are obviously very important matters that go to the core of protecting workers right across the state.

The bill extends the notification duty to include incidents where a person has a serious injury and receives treatment from a nurse. We are updating legislation to ensure that it reflects modern medical practice where a nurse may provide treatment to someone who has been seriously injured.

The bill amends the act so that WorkSafe inspectors can serve notices by email or other electronic communication to ensure that WorkSafe keeps up with modern employment and communication practices. That is also true across a number of bills that have been before the house. It is part of that modernisation and constant upkeep of ensuring that our bills reflect modern society, in which people use a phone or email far more than they would have in the past when communication was by a handwritten letter in the mail.

Last year we made changes to ensure that those impacted by the federal coalition’s changes to retirement ages would not be left behind if they were reliant on WorkSafe for income support. We are now making more changes to provide new entitlements under workers compensation law to support families and those affected, as I mentioned earlier, by serious work incidents. The change will allow immediate family members to claim travel and accommodation costs in certain circumstances when their loved one is in hospital or there is a need to attend a funeral. Obviously at these points in time there is a great deal of stress and strain on families and individuals. It is something that I fully support. It is part of our commitment to support those in our community that need it the most.

In the time that I have remaining to make my contribution to the bill, and it is very short, I just wanted to end by saying we all deserve the right to be safe at work, but when an accident happens we need that strong, rigorous system to support us in times of need. The Andrews Labor government supports all workers in this state and is committed to the protection of those workers and their families. This bill sets out a number of important changes that I think will go a very long way to supporting workers and workers who are injured. I commend the bill to the house.