Bills

Police (Return to Work) Amendment Bill

Recommittal

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (20:46): I move:

That the bill be recommitted for the purposes of reconsidering clause 4 in committee.

Motion carried.

Committee Stage

In committee.

Clause 4—reconsidered.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: I move:

Amendment No 1 [Brokenshire-1]—

Page 3, after line 14—Insert:

(4) For the purposes of this Schedule (and without limiting Part 2 Division 1, or clause 30 of Schedule 9, of the RTWA), an existing injury or a new injury must be an injury that is directly related to the execution of a prescribed police officer's duty in the protection of the community.

I thank my colleagues for their understanding. The situation is that I had a discussion with the Attorney-General in detail and he raised two specific concerns with respect to the bill that I was putting up to amend the Police Act. I sought legal advice outside of this parliament and also sought advice from parliamentary counsel. Subsequent to that, in an effort to see the government facilitate this without further frustration than has occurred, I filed these two amendments on 9 November.

In regard to amendment No. 1, there was a concern, as my colleague the Hon. Rob Lucas and the Attorney-General raised, that under the bill someone might have ongoing entitlements even though their injury was due to a toaster falling on them in the kitchen at work, or their chair breaking, or (to use the Attorney-General's example) someone sitting in his office and the ceiling falling in. I actually told the Attorney-General that if the ceiling fell in they would have a civil right to sue him for not having a safe ceiling.

Notwithstanding that, importantly, we wanted to ensure that this was to do with operational police officers. The concern was that these entitlements should relate to injuries that were caused within the police officer's duty in the protection of the community. Advice from within and without this parliament says that this amendment addresses this concern and I call for support for the amendment.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: I repeat the comments I made at the second reading. The legal advice we have taken is that, ultimately, should legislation along these lines come to fruition, this particular amendment would need to be tightened or clarified. The legal advice we have received is that it would cover a broader group of persons than the ones in cases similar to the ones which have led the Police Association campaign, and we do not need to go into the details of those.

The Liberal Party accepts this is a genuine endeavours attempt to draw the line between the cases that have been highlighted and the other cases that, evidently, the Attorney-General and Mr Brokenshire talked about with ceilings falling in and toasters blowing up, or whatever else it might happen to be. There is clearly a line that needs to be drawn somewhere there. There are obviously conflicting legal views as to whether this does that appropriately or not, but the Liberal Party will support this amendment as a genuine endeavours first attempt at trying to draw an appropriate line between the sorts of cases that have been highlighted.

Amendment carried.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: I move:

Amendment No 2 [Brokenshire-1]—

Page 4, after line 23—Insert:

(3) An entitlement under subclause (1) will be reduced (including so as to reduce the entitlement to zero) to take into account any lump sum that has been paid under Part 4 Division 6 of the RTWA in accordance with a scheme prescribed by the regulations.

Taking all of the debate into consideration, and what the Attorney talked about, wanting to absolutely categorically make sure that there was no double-dipping, that was never the intent. The intent was simply to reinstate police rights back to where they were prior to 1 July of this year. As I said to my colleagues, and I thank them for allowing me to indulge in this, we have had legal advice outside of the parliament as well as parliamentary counsel and we believe that this amendment does cover that. I will put on the public record that I said to the Attorney-General tonight that we could have had a response from the government saying that it did not necessarily think this was right and that it suggested an alternative amendment. At this point in time I have not received anything.

I believe this amendment is right but, as is the Westminster system, there is an opportunity between the houses, or down in the lower house, if the government was to show some wisdom and support this and come back, as the Hon. Rob Lucas has pointed out, with some tweaking of this or sitting down with all of my colleagues and the Police Association and thrashing it out, I am sure that we could find a suitable compromise. I support and commend the amendment standing in my name.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: I repeat again the comments that I made at the second reading explanation. Again, we have had conflicting advice in relation to this. Information provided by government representatives to us has sought to claim that there would be some continuing double-dipping even under the amendments moved by the Hon. Mr Brokenshire. Ultimately, we accept, as we did with the previous amendment, that this is a genuine endeavours first attempt to try to resolve the issue of preventing double-dipping. As I said at the second reading, if it got to the stage where the government was prepared to have further discussions it may well be that there would need to be further amendment of this particular amendment that has been included in the Hon. Mr Brokenshire's bill.

In confirming our support for this particular amendment, I again highlight that there were a number of other issues, which I will not delay the committee stages with. I will have a private discussion with the Hon. Mr Brokenshire. There are issues such as work capacity reviews and a number of other issues that have been raised which, if we ever get to the stage where the government is prepared to look at these things, would be the sorts of issues which will need to be discussed before any final package might be able to be agreed with the support of the government. With that, the Liberal Party indicates its support for the amendment.

Amendment carried; clause as amended passed.

Bill reported with amendment.

Third Reading

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (20:55): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.