Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Workplace health and safety

Ms HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (10:02): Workplace deaths should not happen. They can be avoided by taking workplace safety seriously and caring about human life. Pipecon Pty Ltd in Ballarat is a business with owners that sacrifice safety to squeeze out every dollar for themselves. They are responsible for the deaths of three workers in the space of two years. Charlie Howkins and Jack Brownlee died at work at Pipecon in a trench collapse in 2018. Pipecon was charged and convicted of an indictable offence in November 2021. A third worker, Leigh Suckling, died at Pipecon in 2020 and the case is with the Director of Public Prosecutions.

It saddens and angers me to hear that Pipecon has recently been awarded a local government contract in Ballarat. The City of Ballarat has selected Pipecon from five business tenders to do work and put more workers at risk. Ratepayers, including ratepayers whose family members died at Pipecon, will be footing the bill. Has council audited the work of Pipecon? Has it checked if safety practices have changed? Does the City of Ballarat always support businesses that are convicted of indictable offences? Does it care about its residents working in the city? The state Labor government has introduced the fair jobs code, which comes into effect in December. This is why we need such regulation: to make sure our workplaces are safer and companies with bad safety records are not rewarded with public contracts.