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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-09-26 Daily Xml
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SafeWork SA

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:22): Thank you, sir. My question is again to the Premier. Given the Premier directed the SafeWork SA inquiry which has been reported on today, what action has the Premier taken on the increased number of workplace deaths to 23 during 2016 and already 12 this year?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (15:22): I tried to outline in the statement I made to the parliament before question time that the government has acknowledged, indeed for some time, that improvement needed to occur in the way in which SafeWork SA went about its business.

We had a circumstance some years ago, which I was very open with the parliament about, where, due to what was described as 'an administrative error', there was a defect in certain complaints issued against individual defendants, who subsequently were able to avoid those complaints—or would have been able to avoid those complaints—because of the fluxion of time. In fact, we had to come back to the parliament to ask for an extension of time in those two cases, one of which was about a fatality and the other about a very, very serious injury. So our concern about SafeWork SA being able to deliver the best possible service it can to the community goes back some time.

We separated the investigative arm of SafeWork and the educational arm of SafeWork so that we could have dedicated teams doing very specific work, rather than have people who were trying to be all things to all people. As I indicated in my answer, after the abandonment of the prosecution that was expected in the case of that terrible incident at the new hospital, the Premier and I discussed the need for an appropriate investigation of what had gone wrong in that case in order for us to be able to take steps urgently to rectify any deficiencies in, essentially, the training and the skills complement of the staff in SafeWork SA. My report, given to this chamber at the beginning of question time, was an update on how that is progressing.

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