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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-11-27 Daily Xml
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WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY ACT

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. R.I. Lucas:

That the codes of practice under the Work Health and Safety Act 2012, made on 20 December 2012 and laid on the table of this council on 19 February 2013, viz Construction Work Code of Practice, Preventing Falls in Housing Construction Code of Practice, and Safe Design of Structures Code of Practice, be disallowed.

(Continued from 1 May 2013.)

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (00:01): On Wednesday 13 November this year, the Minister for Industrial Relations tabled a report from the Small Business Commissioner. In speaking to this, I indicate that the government will be supporting the Hon. Robert Lucas's disallowance motion. The government, of course, accepts that it needs to deliver practical solutions that can be made into codes of practice over time.

The Hon. S.G. Wade: The things you see in the closing days of a session.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: It is not just a half bad idea; we are actually supporting the Hon. Rob Lucas. It is hard to do. The basis for the government's decision is advice received that the codes in their current form may lead to noncompliance, especially the smaller employers within the industry. The government believes that such noncompliance can only thwart the intent of making the housing industry a much safer place for workers.

The government has taken the decision to instruct SafeWork SA to continue the collaboration referred to in the report of the Small Business Commissioner to assist the housing industry in developing codes of practice that ensure maximum safety for housing industry workers. It is clear from the commissioner's report that the commissioner believes that these claims continue to resonate with employers in this industry.

In making this decision, the government will ensure that the codes achieve the objective of safer workplaces that will be developed and embraced by industry and not detract from the core government policy of affordable housing. The minister in another place has advised that the government's intention is to suspend the operation of these codes to provide for this collaboration. In order to bring about the intended suspension, the government will be supporting the disallowance motion.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (00:03): If it were not for the lateness of the hour, this would have been a most enjoyable contribution indeed, but I will limit myself to a short and modest contribution. All I would like to say at this stage is that for almost two years, I think, or possibly three years, the Liberal Party, business groups and others have been highlighting the absurdity of the work health safety laws, the codes of practice, and the impacts on small businesses in particular in South Australia, and the potential costs for new home buyers, particularly in the residential construction industry. This led to the motion to disallow these codes of conduct.

As I have said, in other circumstances this would have been an extended contribution, but let me briefly quote the government's position. In particular, the Hon. Mr Wortley will be delighted he is not in the chamber for this contribution, but he was the lead man on behalf of the government. When the opposition and the HIA, in particular, made the claims, he said, amongst many other things:

There has been a lot of fearmongering about the effects of these laws. These fears are misguided and, sadly, often based on misinformation from lobby groups with a particular self-interest in seeing this legislation defeated.

Other quotes are 'the unfounded fears expressed by members of opposition about codes of practice', 'criticism and misinformation from the Hon. Mr Lucas' and 'the misinformation and inaccuracies of the Hon. Mr Lucas and the HIA'. He also said:

For many years, the South Australian Housing Industry Association has been running the line that, first, the national construction standard and now the work health safety legislation will increase the cost of building houses in South Australia by some $15,000 to $30,000 per home. These claims are simply sensationalist and inaccurate. While these figures are quoted by the HIA and now by the Hon. Rob Lucas as fact, there are no other reports to substantiate these claims. It is for this reason that I have had to use equally strong language to dispel such information.

There are literally dozens of other inflammatory and dismissive comments made by minister Wortley, members of the government backbench and other ministers in particular. The Small Business Commissioner says:

In general there appears to be a number of recurring issues that this industry sector faces in relation to these Codes. These are:

There are significant additional costs to comply for small businesses;

These costs are both administrative and through the purchase and/or hire of various equipment—for example, lunch rooms, fencing, scaffolding and so on to meet the obligations;

Depending upon the location and size of the build and also the type of construction, for example in a residential house construction (whether it is single or double storey) the cost can range from 4 to 5k at the lower end up to around 25 to 35k or higher. From the information that has been provided there is a consistency in the range of costs for various items for example, fencing related, welfare related, scaffolding related and so on depending upon the relative size of the project;

There is much more in the four-page report. In the summary, the commissioner says:

An unintended consequence of the current Codes, I believe, will be noncompliance by many—especially with the smaller participants in the industry—as many of them do not have the time, skills, or even inclination to read and digest the voluminous amounts of information and associated paperwork that is seen as ambiguous, confusing and not really relevant to their situation. The implementation of the current Codes will lead to increased costs to the industry and these costs would be passed onto the consumer.

This is exactly what the Liberal Party, the construction industry, lobby groups and many others (in particular, the subbies sector) have been saying to the Premier, the ministers, government members, crossbench members and to others for years and years and years, and they were ignored, ignored and ignored and, sadly, from the start of this year, these massive increased costs and red tape have been imposed upon industry. As the Small Businesses Commissioner says, the reality is that they are so complicated and so voluminous. I am positive that the minister and other members who supported the legislation did not take the time to look at the codes and see the problems that were going to be created.

I want to pay tribute to the Housing Industry Association and a number of the other groups because, even though they were pilloried by ministers and others and dismissed by ministers and others, they continued to argue for what they believed in and they fought the good fight in relation to the issue. If you accept minister Rau's position, he happened to go into a cafe on the Norwood Parade and a couple of building subcontractors bailed him up and said, 'What on earth are you lot doing?' As a result of that—not as a result of all the evidence the Liberal Party, the HIA for years have been putting on the public record—it convinced him to suspend the codes. The reality is that there is no such thing as the suspension of the codes. It was a legal fiction.

I indicated that we would leave this disallowance motion until the last Wednesday of sitting to enable the Small Business Commissioner to do the investigation, and I congratulate Hon. Mr Darley for putting a timeline on the government's and the Small Business Commissioner's requirement to look at this, because that forced the government's hand.

The government was playing cute with this; it thought it would refer it to the Small Business Commissioner until after the house got up. The Hon. Mr Darley saw through that process and put a time limit on it, and the Small Business Commissioner did his investigation. He has come back with a response and I assume we now have everybody—or at least the government and the opposition, and most of the other members, I suspect—supporting the disallowance motion, as should have been the case months ago. So I welcome the government's change of heart, albeit delayed.

Motion carried.

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