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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-03-20 Daily Xml
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Question Time

Farm Work Health and Safety

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (Leader of the Opposition) (14:19): It won't surprise you that I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Industrial Relations a question about farm work health and safety.

Leave granted.

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: There have been three extremely serious farm workplace accidents in South Australia in the space of less than two months. In February, two people in separate incidents were crushed and killed by their own tractors. This month, a farm worker received critical injuries after being run over by a harvester sweeper. I note there is a 'Farmers' Guidebook to work health and safety' published in May 2017 and available on the SafeWork SA website. We are not in the habit of telling farmers how to do their job but given the rise in serious incidents, which includes a loss of life while in the workplace, my questions to the Minister for Industrial Relations are:

1. Does the minister have plans to review and update the 'Farmers' Guidebook to work health and safety'?

2. How is the current information including the guidebook distributed and promoted amongst the farming community?

3. Does the Minister for Industrial Relations agree that a targeted safety awareness campaign in regional areas is due?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (14:20): I thank the honourable member for her questions and I agree with her in many respects in what she said in relation to the questions. Workplaces, no matter where they are, be they primary industry workplaces on farms, primary production workplaces in food processing factories, or any other workplace, people should feel that they will finish their day's work and be as safe as when they went into work. Any loss of life, particularly in an accident at work, is one too many.

Of course, anyone conducting a business undertaking has a responsibility to provide a safe workplace. That is a fundamental part of our occupational health and safety laws. That applies equally whether it be a workplace as a farm or a workplace as a building site. I know SafeWork SA, which is the regulator in South Australia in terms of occupational health and safety, has a number of roles. One of their roles is as regulator, and they conduct prosecutions for failure to provide a safe workplace, but as the honourable member has pointed out they also have a role in terms of education and providing guidance to workplaces about how to best meet their obligations to provide a safe workplace.

I know that SafeWork SA regularly provides updates in various ways to a whole range of industries. I am happy, and I will undertake to go away and at my next SafeWork meeting that I have regularly with the regulator, to talk about primary industries. I am pleased too that, after very substantial cuts during the last term of the Liberal government, we have restored nearly all of the funding for positions in SafeWork, which does such critical work in keeping people safe in South Australia.

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