I rise today to speak on the Workplace Safety Legislation Amendment (Workplace Manslaughter and Other Matters) Bill 2019. I have to say it is bills like this that remind me of just how proud I am to be a member of the Labor Party, and indeed a unionist in the labour movement, because we are a party that put people first. I would like to start by acknowledging for a moment the families whose lives have felt the impact of losing a loved one at work. I cannot really begin to imagine what that must feel like: the unexpected shock, the horror, the lack of closure. These are our neighbours, our friends, our siblings, our parents, and they are our children. Every year up to 30 Victorians are killed at work, and that is just 30 Victorians too many.
There has been a lot of discussion and a lot of heated debate this week about jobs and about workers and about the importance of work now and into the future. Let us face it, we all know jobs matter. Workers matter—there is no disputing that. Both sides of the house, no matter our difference in ideology, recognise that. But I cannot help but notice that this chamber is empty of those opposite when it comes to sitting and participating in and listening to the discussion around workplace safety, of keeping workers safe at work. Yes, the dignity of work is indisputable, but so is the importance of being able to go home safely at the end of a day or the end of a shift. So I am standing here speaking this afternoon because I believe that every Australian has the right to work in a safe environment, and today this bill is going to give Victorians just that.
Before being elected as the member Tarneit I worked across the country in our energy industry. I spent years working on distribution and transmission network planning in the electricity sector. So having sat here listening to some of the nonsense earlier that came from across the chamber on this bill, I can say with absolute certainty that it would not hurt those opposite to put their paper shuffling aside, roll up their sleeves and, God forbid, go out and spend time with workers. In fact there are thousands of them working today across Victoria on our distribution and transmission poles and wires, and to those men and women I give a huge shout-out today for their tireless work in keeping the lights on across our communities. If you go and talk to these mums and dads about why safety matters to them and how important it is that employers be held accountable for workplace safety, it is quite an eye-opener.
When I started off as a regulatory analyst up north in Queensland I found all the talk about safety and safety first a little bit strange, because it is very easy for someone sitting in an office or in a very privileged place, like us here this afternoon, to feel quite removed from the importance of workplace safety. It might be why those opposite have chosen to either not contribute to this debate or refer to it as ‘unnecessary’ or ‘unfair’. But let me tell you that I remember a moment two years into my career that was a game changer for me. There I was sitting at my desk in an air-conditioned office, probably sipping on a latte, when an alert came through to staff—all 2000 of us. There had been an incident. A very experienced liney, a dad, had been electrocuted up on the roof of a customer’s house. He fell off that roof. His mates and his colleagues tried to revive him, but he later died. Now, when you are 26 years old and you are confronted with this type of workplace death—of just a regular bloke who woke up that morning, went to work, just like I had, but never made it home—workplace safety and the importance of it becomes very, very real.
On this side of the house we know that every worker will say they are responsible for their own workplace behaviour in relation to safety, but equally employers are just as responsible in providing an environment that is safe for their employees to work in, that will protect them, that will ensure that at the end of the day or the end of a shift they return home safely to the ones they love. At the last state election a promise was made to all Victorians: a promise of justice and accountability—a promise that it is unacceptable for the death of an individual to be factored in to the cost of doing business. That is what we are all here for right now. The passage of this bill will be a promise kept and will see workplace manslaughter become a criminal office. I would like to give a special note in this space to the efforts of the Palaszczuk Labor government in Queensland for already criminalising workplace manslaughter and laying the groundwork on which this, our own bill, has broadly been inspired.
Occupational health and safety standards exist for a reason. Employers’ duties to employees exist for a reason, and quite simply that reason is people deserve to go to work knowing they are in a safe, controlled environment and that their employer has taken the necessary precautions to ensure their wellbeing, to ensure they get home safely at the end of the day. If gross cases of negligence and unsafe work practices on the part of an employer result in a fatality, then that negligence needs to be punished. If found guilty of workplace manslaughter, this bill is going to provide for a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment for individuals and around $16.5 million for corporate entities. This ensures penalties for the crime of workplace manslaughter are consistent with the penalties for already legislated manslaughter-related offences in Victoria. Current standards for criminal negligence are high. This bill replicates these standards for workplace manslaughter provisions where the employer is negligent, where their conduct falls grossly short of the standard of care a reasonable person in their position should have taken, where the conduct could foreseeably cause serious injury, illness or a high risk of death. The employer must protect their employees.
These laws are specifically designed to target individuals and organisations who fail to maintain adequate safety procedures and fail to comply with OH&S requirements. Accountability is what is core to this bill, and corporations and individual officers with a considerable degree of power and control within an organisation need to be held to account for their actions and, importantly, negligent inaction. These proposed offences will apply to all organisations of varying types and sizes, with certain exceptions where deemed appropriate. These exceptions are important. An example of this is in the case of a family business where the actions of an individual causes the accidental death of another family member—a truly, truly horrendous situation, where prosecution would only serve to further traumatise a family suffering. I personally thank those brave individuals for sharing with us their stories, which have helped us draft a bill that is more reflective of community standards and workplace injuries.
With the changes made in this bill introducing criminal offences for workplace manslaughter, we are sending a clear message to our workplaces that failure to prevent these deaths will not go unpunished, but more importantly we are telling the families and loved ones of victims of unsafe work practices that their voices are heard and that they matter. It is the right of every Australian worker to be able to go to work in a safe environment and come home at the end of the day. I commend this bill to the house.
