Logie Jan: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6148. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a call in this debate around the title and commencement clauses of the currently named Health and Safety Reform Bill. I want to pick up on my colleague’s point which has been made consequently by Damien O’Connor about the meaning of “reform” being “to make it better”—to act on the unnecessary deaths that are happening in our workplaces as well as the injuries and the fact that in the last 5 years there have been 104 deaths in agriculture in this country.This legislation was prompted by the royal commission that was established in response to the Pike River mine tragedy and the subsequent Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety which both recommended that we as a country needed stronger worker participation in our legislation to ensure that we had safe workplaces to ensure that these unnecessary deaths would stop. So my suggestion is that “Reform” is inappropriate—that actually as it has been characterised by the Council of Trade Unions this is a bill that waters down those protections. “Waters down” is more appropriate.The bill that was discussed by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee where there were so many submissions made and so many people urged this House to pass legislation that honoured the dead and protected those still living—that was upheld and the committee was working in that light. The committee was working towards legislation that would truly reform and then at the last minute what we have been given in this Committee is a piece of legislation that actually waters down existing provisions. Under today’s law any business regardless of size—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Title and commencement. Come back to that.JAN LOGIE: Sure. This is referring directly to the title and the point around reform and the fact that this is a watering down because the existing law requires employee participation in the system regardless of the size of the workplace.For this Government to introduce legislation that puts 20 employees as the limit and then some categorisation that is entirely opaque to this Committee around “high risk” is not doing an honour. It is not reforming. It is not what we consider to be the health and safety reform that is required because we know that participation is at the core of what will make our workplaces safer. That is the essential part that is missing at the moment: the protection for workers to have a safe voice. That requires systems. It does not happen naturally. It is not happening in workplaces without that designated position.We are hearing from employers. They are saying it is happening when clearly it is not because people are dying in their workplaces. They are saying that workers are speaking up and have the opportunity to participate but they are not because they are worried about their jobs and about being able to put food on the table. Their voices are not being heard because there is not a protected position.This bill is not delivering the reform that is required to ensure that participation and to ensure the possibility of having safer workplaces. That to my mind is dishonouring the memory of the dead and is—I do not know. It is spitting on the hopes of those families who came to us and said that this legislation was their hope to have meaning out of that tragedy. To be in this Chamber and be debating the concept of this as being reform when it is clearly not is just so very deeply disappointing. I do hope that the Government has an epiphany and that somehow from here something changes.