Wood MichaelHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Responding to questions from both of the members who have just spoken the first in response to Mr Bayly: the answer is that yes a single employee could request to be a representative in that workplace. And there could be good reasons for that. I mean I think the member is trying to create what appears to be an absurd example to diminish the bill. It is potentially less likely that a worker in that situation would do so but it is possible to imagine that an employer might employ a single worker who might undertake some very hazardous work offsite and that worker might be of the view that having the formal training of a health and safety representative—and for example the ability to issue provisional improvement notices—could be an effective and important thing in order to address issues. As I say I suspect it would be much less likely in a situation where there was a single employee in that workplace but as I stated in my previous comments a part of the rationale for this bill is that it is workers who are exposed to the burden of harm within workplaces and we believe that there is a reasonable case to say that those people should have the option to choose formal representative mechanisms if they believe that is going to improve their health and safety.I thank the Hon Michael Woodhouse for his question and reflections on the parent legislation here and many of us do remember the brouhaha around worm farms. For members who might not have recalled that particular episode back in 2013 2014 when the Health and Safety at Work Act was being established by the member and the Government of that time this was around the high-risk designation to certain workplaces.The relevance to this piece of legislation is that high-risk workplaces below 20 can have a health and safety representative. OK there was some media exaggeration and mischief around that particular example but the reason why it became somewhat unstuck was that it to some degree exposed the difficulties of establishing what a high-risk occupation should be and therefore including or excluding certain people in terms of certain types of protection. Some people felt that it was absurd to include worm farming within that but not to include other kinds of agricultural work where people thought that there probably would be a high level of harm. And the difficulty here is: how do you actually judge that?The member mentioned in his question certain types of what he considered to be hazardous work—underground mining etc.—where there probably are high rates of fatalities and serious injuries compared to some other industries. But equally there will be other workplaces—for example parts of the Public Service—where that sort of harm is very minimal but there might well be other forms of harm which are actually quite high and cause health and wellbeing impacts on workers. The fundamental contention of our Government that is embedded in this bill is that it's a little bit artificial to say that workers experiencing one kind of harm but not another should have recourse to having formal representation in the workplace through a health and safety rep or committee and gets a bit arbitrary. And that is where the worm farming example came unstuck.The member is right and I think he might have possibly known the answer to some of the questions that he asked. Workers can raise concerns and participate in ways beyond and outside of the formal workplace health and safety representative or committee system. An expectation of workers being able to have their say and being engaged is embedded in the Health and Safety at Work Act and that is a good thing. And in many cases particularly in small employers I expect that might well be sufficient. As I've said in my previous speeches in the House on this bill I certainly don't expect that all workplaces below 20 will take up this route. I don't even necessarily expect that most will. The contention of this bill is that workers in these worksites should have the same—a worker in a worksite of 18 employees should have the same ability as a worker in a worksite of 22 employees to request that level of representation.The member asked does WorkSafe check into these matters and whether there is appropriate worker participation on workplaces. WorkSafe does do a lot of work in this regard. They do a lot of proactive work in terms of supporting encouraging and educating to ensure that there is worker participation. Often in their enforcement and support activities with employers a part of what inspectors will do is to inquire into and encourage that there is good worker participation in those workplaces.And the final question that the member asked was related to the nature of the research that was reflected in the regulatory impact statement and I think in the departmental report in answers to questions from the Education and Workforce Committee as well. I do believe that some of that was qualitative and some of it did relate to high-risk industries but the broader suite of research is unambiguous that the more you can do to encourage worker participation no matter what the kind of harm you are dealing with the better results you'll get.