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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-04-06 Daily Xml
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INTERNATIONAL WORKERS MEMORIAL DAY

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:18): There is an important date at the end of this month. April has a number of important dates. Last Friday, 1 April, was Rainbow Autism Day, a celebration of the lives of autistic people living within our community who have been known to overcome unbelievable odds with the love and dedication of their support network and a lot of hard work and determination.

Dedicated parents, Shane and Allison Dix, arranged an activity in association with principal Mrs Wink Dowdy at Redwood Park school, which saw the students raise money and awareness of how normal the needs of autistic people and their families are, with early intervention being the most important action that can be taken.

This year, our Easter celebrations will spill over into ANZAC Day commemorations, creating a particularly long weekend. Families will have the opportunity to be involved in religious traditions and many will take the opportunity to go away on a short break. Attending the ANZAC Day dawn service has become a rite of passage for many Australians. I feel deeply honoured to be involved in services held annually.

However, the date I want to talk about today is 28 April, International Workers Memorial Day. An ecumenical service to commemorate this special day in Adelaide will be held at Pilgrim Church and family, friends and colleagues who have lost someone through a workplace death are invited to attend, regardless of their religious beliefs. I am sorry I cannot be there to join Andrea Madeley and the members and supporters of her group, VOID (Voices of Industrial Death), and commend her work, particularly in strengthening penalties around workplace accidents—the stick part that must accompany the educative carrot in our fight to keep workers safe.

Each year, up to two million men and women die as a result of work-related accidents and diseases. It is a fact that more people die at work than those fighting in war. In a world where death, injury and illness at work can be taken for granted, this day is a very important date in our calendar highlighting, as it does, the preventable nature of many workplace accidents and ill health and the importance of our unions in the fight for improvements in workplace safety. It is recognised as a national day in many countries, including Argentina, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Dominican Republic, Luxembourg, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Thailand, Taiwan, the United States and the United Kingdom.

In Australia, there are more than 600,000 work-related incidents, including diseases, injuries and fatalities, every year. Every two to three minutes, someone in this country lodges a workers compensation claim. The Australian Safety and Compensation Council stated in its March 2009 report, entitled 'Cost of Work Related Death, Disease and Injury', that as many as 7,000 fatalities occur each year as a result of work-related disease, which is four times the annual road toll. Apart from the staggering human cost, the economic cost is estimated to be more than $50 billion a year.

I am pleased to note that the federal Labor government plans to introduce new health and safety laws to ensure national consistency in each state and territory by the end of the year. I hope the new laws will ensure the world's best safety standards for workers will be implemented and that they will respect and uphold the role of unions.

Many of the protections and rights we enjoy at work were fought for and won by unions, including workers compensation, rest breaks, protective clothing, restrictions on heavy lifting, licences and training when working with heavy equipment, and bans on dangerous chemicals and asbestos. We all remember the dogged struggle waged by SA's own Jack Watkins, and many others, to combat the insidious consequences of asbestos.

More recently, around 12,000 people have died in Japan's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami and there are still more than 15,000 people missing. On International Workers Memorial Day this year, I hope we will also pause to think about the workers at Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. So far, there are seven dead and 21 injured. This number will rise as the effect of exposure to high levels of radiation takes its toll.

History has shown that those workers who suffer from acute radiation sickness will not find their way into the most commonly quoted statistics, unless they die promptly. In the days immediately after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, when explosions rocked the plant, 750 workers were evacuated but 50 stayed behind to try to contain the crisis. Reinforcements have since boosted their numbers up to 400, with workers being rotated in and out on one-hour shifts to limit their exposure to radiation.

Twice a day, a bus packed with new shift workers and supplies drives into the heart of the plant. Workers are divided into working groups of specialists, including electricians and control room operators. They toil away in unbearable heat and darkness, breathing through respirators, dressed in white suits with hoods to cover them from head to toe. Even the short periods they spend near the reactors can expose them to dangerously high levels of radiation.

Because deliveries of supplies are limited, they get by on very little food. There is no lunch break, they have bottled water but they do not have running water to wash their hands or bodies because the plumbing is broken. Instead, they are forced to use alcohol spray. The workers are isolated, with no way to talk to their families because the earthquake toppled nearby communication towers. Before they drop off to sleep, they put down radiation protection lead mats on the floor of a huge room on the second floor of the building, just a short distance from the reactor.

These are the living conditions of workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant, who are racing to connect cables, repair machinery and check equipment in order to avert a worse catastrophe at the facility. I acknowledge their bravery, stoicism and selflessness. I also join the Ukrainian community of South Australia in commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

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