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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-05-01 Daily Xml
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WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY ACT

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (11:17): I move:

That the following codes of practice made under the Work Health and Safety Act 2012, entitled Construction Work Code of Practice; Preventing Falls in Housing Construction Code of Practice; and Safe Design of Structures Code of Practice, made in July 2012 and laid on the table of this house on 19 February 2013, be disallowed.

The work health and safety legislation was a very controversial piece of legislation which eventually passed through this parliament late last year. You may recall, and I am sure members do recall, that the legislation was promoted as harmonisation legislation to give us standard legislation across the nation. The result is that nothing could be further from the truth. We have a hotchpotch of legislation in various jurisdictions. Some have passed parts of legislation and some have not done anything. In South Australia the parliament has largely passed the legislation as was presented. There were, I believe, some amendments.

Notwithstanding that, one of the significant concerns about the legislation was the adoption of codes of practice, a plethora of codes of practice around the legislation, and that is why I am bringing this matter to the attention of the house today. We know that in South Australia—and this is endemic across the nation, but it is probably even more so in South Australia—the housing industry is in the doldrums, and there are a number of reasons for that. The economy is quite flat and people have little confidence to go out and invest in new houses. One of the problems that we have seen in the housing industry in recent years is escalating costs, and it is becoming very difficult, particularly for first home owners, to go out and stump up a deposit and take on the risk of building a new home.

The Housing Industry Association informs the opposition that it believes that the introduction of these three codes will add to the cost of an average house built in South Australia somewhere between $10,000 and $12,000. It beggars my imagination (and I am sure other members would agree): what an amazing thing to do, when we have a housing construction industry literally on its knees. The state economy is struggling, and we would then impose an additional cost of $10,000 to $12,000 per house. That is why the opposition has great sympathy with the position of the Housing Industry Association and has agreed to move the disallowance of these codes in this and the other place.

I mentioned the work, health and safety legislation and its lengthy debate in this place. During the debate it is my understanding—and certainly was the understanding of the Housing Industry Association—that classes 1 and 10 buildings would be exempt from these particular codes. Class 1 is a standard dwelling, a house (in which most of us probably live), and class 10 is generally a shed, garage and/or a fence associated with a residential house. It was the understanding of the Housing Industry Association and the housing industry, I believe, that exemptions would be made for those two classes from these codes.

The exemption is because the height restrictions before which you would need to take particular measures under these codes, like having scaffolding, etc., is two metres. It was an understanding—and the Housing Industry Association believed was an agreement—that those restrictions would not come into place until the height of three metres, and that is where they believe the additional costs would come in. To provide full scaffolding on the construction site of a standard dwelling to my mind, and certainly to the mind of the Housing Industry Association and the industry, is a nonsense and flies in the face of many years of practice.

The three codes that I mentioned include not just the construction code but also the design code. The issue with the design code is that under that code the designer must prepare a report on health and safety risks, and that must be in writing and provided to the person who has commissioned the design, and generally that would be the mum and dad building the home. The Housing Industry Association believes that that in itself would add about $2,000 to the cost of building a home. Previously the national code, to which South Australia had agreed, was to exempt classes 1 and 10 buildings from these obligations. I understand the code, as tabled, has no exemption for classes 1 and 10 buildings.

The construction code again is a code of practice, which generally is about construction on major construction sites—multistorey apartment buildings, high-rise residential and/or commercial buildings. It assumes that it is a significant construction site and it has a static workforce, that is, there will be a group of workers on that construction site who are there for maybe many months. The code would require certain amenities to be provided on the site, for example, hot and cold water, washing facilities, more than one toilet, toilets with air locks, and dining room facilities.

It requires the registration of persons onto and off the site each day, the display of evacuation procedures, emergency lighting, etc., all of which one would agree would be totally inappropriate for the average house construction site, which I think would be characterised by a group of subcontractors arriving on almost an ad hoc basis, from my observation.

You will get the electrician in one day and he might come back a couple of days later. You will get the plumber coming in to do the initial plumbing work before the foundations are poured, and then coming back and doing some further work and doing the final fix towards the end of the process. It is not the sort of project that is envisaged by the construction code and it seems a nonsense that the obligations under the construction code should be imposed on such construction work.

The Housing Industry Association has a number of concerns—as I said, the opposition is very sympathetic towards those—not the least of which is that the industry believes that it had an agreement with the government that these exemptions would be provided when the codes were tabled, following the passage of the legislation in the upper house. So, not only is the industry concerned about the cost impost, the industry and the opposition are very concerned that there was seemingly an agreement for these exemptions to be provided and yet that agreement does not seem to have been upheld or fulfilled by the government.

I urge members of the house to think on this matter and consider it very seriously. Can we in South Australia afford to impose a further $10,000 to $12,000 on the construction cost of an average residential home? I think we would all agree that the answer to that is no. Can we afford as a parliament to have legislation pass with the acceptance of an industry association, where they believe that certain undertakings have been given, only to find out after the legislation has been passed that those undertakings are not fulfilled? I think the answer to that question again is no. I urge the house to seriously consider the matter I have brought before it today and to support my motion.

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (11:27): Just briefly, I rise to support the member for MacKillop particularly in the matter he has brought forward and it does strike a chord. I think most members of this house would agree with most or a lot of what he said. The Work Health and Safety Act passed here; that was bad enough. It did pass with some dispute between both houses, but then of course we saw the codes of practice come in, and they are really adding huge costs and are damping down a key industry vital to our state economy.

We know that when the housing industry is getting a cold, the rest of the state gets pneumonia. This instance, as the member for MacKillop very capably said, is just exactly the wrong legislation at the wrong time. We just do not need this. This is the ultimate addition to red tape, bureaucracy, and causing delays and extra cost to projects. We know that it will cost between $10,000 and $12,000 extra per house. No wonder that young people—first homebuyers—are having difficulty being able to afford their house. They need to be helped, not hindered.

Unions and, indeed, their inspectors have been given huge powers in this legislation, and these powers seem to get worse every day. We all talk about it; we all hear about it. We are all trying to cut red tape. We make great speeches in grand places about this matter, but what do we do about it? Nothing, and here we are just making it a lot worse.

The issue of scaffolding, particularly, affects a lot of us, particularly farmers. I am a great person for using stepladders. I have spent half my life up a stepladder, and I have fallen off one once or twice; in fact, I ended up in hospital with one, and that was my own silly fault. I think it is ridiculous to know that the rules are that, if you are living especially in a government house, if the light is further than two metres from the floor, you cannot use a stepladder; you have to go and get a scaffold.

These are the sort of stupid rules we have, and what have we done? Nothing. Good on the member for MacKillop, I say, for saying, 'This house has the capacity and the ability to say, "Hang on! You've done this by regulation; we're going to disallow these regulations."' Yes, we do want safe workplaces, I am the first to admit, and we have to protect our workers where and if we can by being reasonable and having common sense.

We have an inquiry in this parliament, and I happen to be sitting on that inquiry, in relation to SafeWork SA, and some of the evidence coming in is exactly as the member for MacKillop has highlighted—exactly these issues that are adding costs. I might like to hear from a member of the government in a minute if they would like to give a précis of the information that is coming into the committee. Incidentally, I find that committee extremely worthwhile—it is well chaired and the information coming in is very good.

There are many other issues affecting farmers in relation to occupational health and safety which really make it impossible, or is a total deterrent, for us to employ outside labour on our properties because it is not just machinery it is also where they work, in relation to guardrails, staircases and that sort of thing. It is really becoming that we now have a lot of farmers who have a policy, 'Sorry; unless you're a contractor, we can't or won't employ you because, if we do, we have to go to huge extra costs to put in the mandatory safeguards and everything else we have to have to employ a person.'

On our operations, at home and personally, we take every precaution to protect the machinery but, as I have said, if we do not have to employ, we will not. The worst thing about this is that this law is encouraging people to ignore the law because it is just not realistic, economic or essential. I congratulate the member for MacKillop for bringing this matter to the house, and I hope that the house will support it without too much debate.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.

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