Tuesday, 22 September 2026

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:59): I am pleased to make our contribution on the Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026. From the outset, we really believe this should be two bills. There are no logical reasons why these two issues have been crammed together in one bill, and they really should be separate, because the issues within them should be considered separately and they have completely different sets of merits and arguments around them.

I will start with what the bill does do and some of the things we do support within the bill. The bill amends four acts: the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013, the Accident Compensation Act 1985, the Transport Accident Act 1986 and the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. It discusses specialist disability accommodation, financial guarantees for self-insurers, board appointments and medical panel fees, and then in the middle of all that it segues into a massive transfer of investigative power from the regulator to representatives of unions or OH&S representatives in a workplace, which has nothing to do with any of those prior things.

We do support the changes to specialist disability accommodation. In 2024 the Parliament moved group homes under a broader definition of SDA dwellings in the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 and replaced references to group homes across the statute book accordingly – in the Transport Accident Act and in the workers compensation acts. But it was not a like-for-like substitution. It swept NDIS-funded housing into a definition of supported accommodation and with it the costs of that accommodation across the TAC and WorkSafe, which had never previously met, were never designed to meet and were never asked by the Parliament to meet. That has introduced ambiguity, so that it is possible that someone will end up disadvantaged or a claim will turn on it, and left alone it would be tested, so correcting it now is the responsible thing to do. The coalition supports it without qualification, and we would have supported it immediately if it had come up on its own.

We also support the changes to the surety bonds. Victoria has 33 self-insurers, including Westpac, BHP, Qantas, Melbourne Water, RACV and Mars. They carry about 5 per cent of the scheme. They manage their own liabilities, and in exchange they must lodge a guarantee with WorkSafe worth one and a half times their claims liabilities or $3 million, whichever is greater. That guarantee must presently be a bank guarantee, which means real assets are pledged as collateral and mortgaged in place and are unable to be sold or borrowed against, so it is a lien against the company’s assets. For a large employer that is a great deal of capital doing nothing at all. A surety bond does the same job without freezing the balance sheet, and the bill sensibly requires the issuer to be APRA regulated. Victoria has 34 self-insurance licences. New South Wales, which is a fairly comparable economy, has 70. South Australia, much smaller, has 71. The Self Insurers Association of Victoria supports this change. In our consultation not one self-insurer raised a concern, and neither do we.

The administrative amendments – the board chairs’ terms, the medical panel fees – are all sensible alignments, and we do not oppose them either.

But with those reforms there and in support, the bill is carrying this change to occupational health and safety, and we cannot quite understand why. The changes fold back to August last year, when the government commissioned Mr White to review the employee representative framework. He held over 30 meetings, received over 60 written submissions and made 17 recommendations. This bill acquits four of them in full and three in part, and the remainder, according to the minister, await further policy analysis in consultation and an assessment of their regulatory impact. So it is seven out of 17 recommendations – the seven, coincidentally, that will go through expand the powers of union officials, and the 10 that might have balanced them out require further analysis and have been pushed out. This makes even less sense when you consider the timetable. The provisions before us now do not commence on assent; they commence on proclamation, with a default date of 10 September 2027. The government has given itself the better part of two years. There is obviously no urgency here, and so there is no reason why these provisions could not return later to the Parliament – when the other 10 recommendations have also been considered – as part of their own bill, having been properly examined, and commence all on the same day.

We feel that bundling this in with some very worthy reforms on one hand and squeezing it in here is just simply disingenuous and yet another example of the government not respecting the chamber, by putting two things together – which have nothing to do with each other and have considerably different concerns – as some kind of wedge to force them through. We have several areas of genuine concern about these occupational health and safety changes, and these are based on wide consultation with the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Business Council of Australia, Master Builders Victoria, the South East Melbourne Manufacturers Alliance and the Australian Industry Group. I will go through the five concerns.

First is the reach of the document power. The bill allows health and safety representatives and authorised representatives of employee organisations – that is, unions – to inspect and copy any document they consider relevant to a suspected contravention. There is no limit here, so they can go into a business and they can look at documents around commercial terms, subcontractor arrangements, HR records, joint venture material, project plans – anything – infrastructure, personnel files. There is no line as to what they can and cannot look at, and any safeguards that are being proposed are effectively and in practice unenforceable. Yes, sure, the bill in writing prohibits the publishing of this material online, as if that is the only way information gets communicated or shared. It does nothing to stop it being handed to a union’s office or a trades hall or anyone who asks. It sets no limit on how long copies may be kept and no requirement that they ever be destroyed.

Because these copies in practice will be photographs on a representative’s own phone, the material leaves the employer’s custody the moment the photo is taken. These are the safeguards; in other words, there are none.

Third, the scope of a visit can now grow while the investigation is underway. Today a representative must give notice of a suspected contravention before entering and must leave and re-enter to pursue a new one, which might be a bit of an inconvenience, but it is also due process. It is the only thing that keeps an entry bounded. Remove it, and the representative who came in to look at one matter can, on any pretext now, expand the remit of that investigation to any other matter they suspect. That is an extraordinary power. It is basically free rein to walk into a business on one pretext, go through every document in the company and then find other pretexts to continue on with. If that is not leaving a process open to abuse, I do not know what is. It is clearly a really poor way to remedy what you are trying to remedy, because there is no governance or boundary around it.

We also note that there is a regulator called WorkSafe Victoria, and it has extensive investigative and document-gathering powers exercised by trained inspectors, subject to oversight and answerable to Parliament. If those powers are not being used well enough, the answer is to make WorkSafe faster, more consistent and more willing to enforce. It is not to issue a set of parallel powers to a party who may be party to the dispute itself. A regulator that cannot keep up does not need a surrogate; it needs to be fixed.

Fifth, there is the question of cost. Every hour spent producing documents and potentially expanding the remit of the inquiry is a cost to the business. There is no safeguard to say there will not be vexatious investigations, and the party performing them has nothing to reel them in, nothing to make them answerable, nothing to make them transparent, no way to appeal what they are doing, no way to challenge the validity of what they are doing and no way to question whether it is vexatious. There is no due process. It is actually opening unfettered power to an interested party to go after someone.

Again, this is simply inviting abuse. All kinds of processes and procedures are not there to protect the best behaviour, they are there to limit and prevent the worst behaviour. To pretend that there will not be bad behaviour, to pretend that in all cases everyone will act aboveboard and has no incentive or no temptation to act otherwise is naive in the extreme. Clauses 22, 23, 25 and 27 carry these powers. We do not support them. We will drill down on these in committee.

The minister, in her second-reading speech, said:

These amendments do not disturb the operation of existing privacy, secrecy or confidentiality provisions under other laws.

That is rubbish. Of course they do, because they are widening the scope of what may be investigated and what documents may be seen. You can make the very simple observation that had these laws been in operation at any time over the last five years, an OH&S representative – say, from the Big Build, effectively a bikie – would have the right to go into your office and go through every one of your filing cabinets because they can. And if they find something in one filing cabinet they can keep that and take a photo of that, and then they can move to another filing cabinet. They can probably ask you to empty your drawers and they can probably ask to go into a safe, because there is absolutely nothing in the law that says they cannot – in fact the law expressly says they can. So it is a dangerous power. I cannot understand how anyone would put this before us and say this is an appropriate governance process. In its broadest sense, it is perfectly legitimate that we need to find documents and we need to make employers accountable for what they do, but handing powers to effectively unregulated people to do whatever they want is swinging the pendulum so far the other way you come around hitting yourself on the back of the head with it.

If an authorised representative – again, we can read ‘union’ – or others publish material improperly, WorkSafe can allegedly prosecute. If a health and safety representative employee does exactly the same thing, WorkSafe cannot. The employer’s only avenue is to take its own worker to the Magistrates’ Court. The explanatory memorandum assures us these protections run in both directions: in one direction there is a regulator and in the other there is a private prosecution that will be very difficult and costly for people to bring.

Who actually decides what is relevant to a suspected contravention? It is the representative. There is no mechanism in the bill by which an employer can test that judgement at the point the demand is made – no review, no referral and no inspector to call. An investigation of a suspected contravention on a construction site can be made to reach infinitely into the confidential affairs of a company. What the government has in practice drafted is a search power that authorises itself and a warrant that writes itself, issued by the person who wants to use it.

We know what has been happening on other sites. We know about the intimidation. We know about the treatment of women on government projects, documented and reported across the past 12 months to two years. We know which organisation has been at the centre of it. Some of the documents this bill opens up are bullying and harassment records – complaints, names, allegations made by workers who were frightened to make them and were told the complaints would be held in confidence. It gives the right to copy those records to officials of the organisation whose members are in some cases the subject of the complaint. The government cannot tell anyone in this chamber that it is combating misconduct in the construction sector when handing the people implicated in that misconduct a lawful key into any complaints file, and it cannot ask a woman on a Big Build site to speak up and in the same bill make it possible for the man she spoke up about to learn her name through his union official. Those two points are irreconcilable.

The government says this legislation will combat misconduct in the construction sector, but I think it will do the opposite, and it will do it to the people least able to withstand it. We do not want to legislate this power, because we know it will be misused. We will not ask workers to report misconduct and then make their reports available to the people they reported.

The coalition is not opposed to employee representatives having the tools to do their work. We are opposed to the execution of it in this way. It is a clear distinction. Four changes would remove the bulk of our objection. Put a boundary on the document power defined by relevance, by reference to the notice of suspected contravention, and give the employer somewhere to go – a WorkSafe inspector on a day when it says a demand has gone beyond the original inspection. Deal with copies properly: require material obtained under these powers to be held securely rather than on personal devices and destroyed within a fixed period once the matter concludes. Every other comparable regime does that, and this one does not. Make the misuse provisions have teeth in both directions: give WorkSafe the carriage of enforcement against health and safety representatives as well as authorised representatives, so that the remedy does not depend on an employer suing its own employee. And report – the member for Eildon asked the minister to publish enforcement activity under the new coercion and misuse offences. We repeat that request here too. If the government believes these provisions are balanced, it will have no difficulty demonstrating it in the Parliament each year by reporting.

To close, we support the disability accommodation amendments, we support the surety bond changes and we support the administrative changes. We will vote for all of them if the bill is split. What we will not do is accept unbounded transfer of regulatory power to one party in the workplace, a power not needed until September 2027, as it lumps employers with undue regulatory requirement costs and empowers the actors of misconduct with even more power.

 Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:17): I rise to make some brief remarks on the Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026 on behalf of myself and Greens colleagues. We will state from the outset the Greens are supporting this bill. Much of the detail of the bill has been covered, so I would like to make this just around a few particular elements of the bill itself. It seeks to progress some of the work of the independent review of employee representatives, a review conducted by Mr Eugene White into whether the powers, functions and support provided to authorised representatives of registered employee organisations (REOs) and health and safety representatives (HSRs) under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 remain effective and fit for purpose to deliver improved health and safety outcomes for all workers. This bill is acquitting, I understand, four of the recommendations from this review in full and three in part.

I will have questions for the committee stage to clarify some of the details of the bill, but in short I think it is important that this bill does ensure that REOs have access to the relevant documentation that they need and that employers will be required to provide these documents relevant to a suspected contravention. I think it is important that this bill provides clear mechanisms for REOs to escalate a matter and access the relevant documentation if an employer does not cooperate with the provision of documentation. Unions have always been at the forefront of protecting and improving worker safety in this state. I hope the improvements in this bill continue to support their vital work.

The bill also clarifies that the TAC and WorkSafe are not liable to fund specialist disability accommodation. I have received strong assurances from the minister’s office that this will not impact on any current TAC or WorkSafe recipients, and I very much hope that that is the case. While the bill does also cover some changes to options for self-insurers under the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013, the WorkCover scheme, I cannot sit down without also mentioning the plight of hundreds of injured workers across the state here in Victoria. Almost every week I am contacted by an injured worker who is navigating an unwieldy system that is making recovery harder, and in many cases, it is injuring them further. The level of gaslighting, the roadblocks, the delays, the challenges, the rejections, all the inconsistencies and the heartbreak, the stress, the financial strain, the hoops that injured workers are being forced to jump through – it is beyond belief what people are experiencing when trying to access support and recovery following a workplace injury.

We need a serious shake-up of the WorkCover system so that the scheme actually treats injured workers with respect, dignity and empathy; genuinely supports workers through their injuries to improve people’s health and wellbeing; and stops causing harm to people that it should be supporting.

As I have stated from the outset, the Greens support the bill. I will foreshadow there is the potential that I may be moving some amendments during the committee stage. We are still in active conversations across different parts of the chamber as to how we will proceed there, so I will not speak to those at this point. I will speak to that in the committee stage as appropriate. In saying that, I will leave my comments there, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:21): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026. This is a bill with a fair few different moving parts to it, but it is fundamentally about ensuring that Victoria’s occupational health and safety laws continue to support safe and fair workplaces. It is something that has long been a passion of mine, and indeed I know it has long been a passion of yours, Acting President Berger. With our respective backgrounds in the trade union movement and seeing the impact that a dangerous workplace or a workplace injury can have on particular workers, we know the difference that a workplace which embraces a culture of positive health and safety makes and the difference it makes on the physical and emotional wellbeing of working Victorians.

It is something that I often saw in my background with some incredible HSRs. It is why I am so pleased to see that this bill before us today makes some reforms to support the work that health and safety representatives in workplaces do. Having looked after union members in the retail, other service and food service sectors and seeing the difference that a HSR can make, especially one that is empowered, that is well trained and that is supported by their colleagues and by their members, it is quite extraordinary.

There are a number of reforms within this bill. In particular, when it comes to health and safety representatives, we know that these are often the people best placed in stores to identify hazards before they become a greater issue and before they present something that causes a worker to be injured. They are the best placed to identify and respond to those issues. Indeed, as part of the government’s response to the independent review of employee representatives – a very important review, I might say, that ensures that WorkSafe safety practices are modern and keeping workers safe – this bill will implement three of those recommendations fully and another four partially. These are responsible amendments.

When it comes to HSRs in particular, as well as authorised representatives of registered employee organisations, or REOs, they play an integral role in Victoria’s workplace safety framework, particularly by strengthening the ability of health and safety reps to resolve workplace safety concerns by allowing them to inspect and copy documents that are relevant to a suspected contravention. This means of course that hazards may not be immediately visible, such as psychosocial hazards. They can be more accurately identified should their impact be made primarily in document form. This change will help HSRs and REOs to investigate issues within the newer psychological health regulations that are already in place – in fact that commenced in December of last year. These new powers are supported by safeguards that ensure that gathered information is used appropriately and that it is not shared in ways that might damage a workplace’s reputation, such as by sharing on social media or live streaming.

This bill also implements commonsense reform for REOs, who no longer need to leave and re-enter a workplace to investigate additional suspected contraventions, which may be discovered whilst they are investigating the first contravention. HSRs will also receive a standardised way to issue PINs – or provisional improvement notices, as they are formally known – to ensure consistency in this process and allow for digitisation, which will support that as well.

I know many of the most effective HSRs would use PINs very effectively, not by issuing them willy-nilly of course but by approaching it in a responsible manner in having those conversations with management. With the ability to take that next step and issue a PIN, it obviously proves very effective in actually resolving the majority of disputes, in my experience, before a PIN actually needs to be issued. But when it does come to the issuing of them, it is very important that they are done in a way which is as straightforward and indeed as modern as possible and supports HSRs to fulfil and acquit their roles in the most effective way. There are many more things I could talk about in the substantive bill. However, I do wish to at this point, on behalf of the responsible minister, circulate the government’s house amendments.

There are three broad themes to these amendments, which I will now speak to. The first, which I will come to later, relates to increased financial support for children who are affected by fatal road trauma. The other two broad schemes of amendments relate firstly to dust-related conditions. These amend common-law rights for workers with occupational dust-related conditions. They are intended to ensure that workers with dust-related conditions are treated more fairly and more consistently in a way that reflects the nature of these diseases. Dust-related conditions can develop over long periods and worsen over time, and a worker may first be diagnosed with one condition before later developing another separate condition arising from the same occupational exposure. The law should recognise this, and with the successful passage of this amendment today it will.

Firstly, the bill extends existing arrangements to allow workers with dust-related conditions to seek a second award of damages where they later develop another dust-related condition from the same exposure. This builds on the current approach for certain asbestos-related and silica-related conditions. Secondly, the reforms address a historical gap in access to common-law damages for workers who were exposed between the dates of 12 November 1997 and 20 October 1999. These amendments help to ensure that compensation reflects the full circumstances of that exposure. Thirdly, the bill will also remove the limitation period for claims relating to dust exposure during that same period, recognising that dust-related conditions may take many years to emerge. Finally, the bill will remove prelitigation processes for common-law damages for dust-related conditions, which will support a more direct pathway to the Supreme Court. Taken together, these reforms will create a more coherent framework across Victorian legislation.

The second part of the amendments I wish to speak to relate to the sentencing of Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 offences. This house amendment will create a framework for courts to consider impact statements from affected persons, such as bereaved family members and others in OH&S sentencing proceedings. They will repeal improvement project orders, rename and expand health and safety undertakings and increase maximum penalties. They will significantly increase maximum penalties for reckless endangerment and introduce a new offence within section 32, which applies to contraventions of a health and safety duty and is not limited by a workplace element. These amendments will improve the ability of people who are affected by workplace incidents to participate fully and meaningfully in sentencing proceedings for OH&S offences and strengthen sentencing practices. The amendments are proposed to commence on 10 September 2027, unless they are proclaimed earlier, which is provided for in these amendments, to align with the commencement of other Occupational Health and Safety Act amendments in the bill and to allow time for implementation.

I also wish to turn to something that is a matter that is fixed by this bill, which is something that has come to the attention in recent months of the Legal and Social Issues Committee, with our inquiry into claims made through the Transport Accident Commission. This was a very worthwhile committee for me and many others, indeed some of them in this room, to be a part of. I do want to acknowledge at this point Mr Limbrick for his bringing this matter to the attention of the Parliament and for his instigation for the LSIC to conduct this inquiry. It is through that that we received many powerful pieces of evidence. As I spoke on at the tabling of the report, the majority of people who came and shared their experience with us shared some very deeply emotional and deeply personal stories about their experiences.

We also had the benefit of hearing from others, including the TAC itself and including medical and legal professionals who came and told us about their perspectives on the scheme. Whilst we did hear that overall the scheme is performing well and working well and there are a number of improvements being made, there are certainly some areas for improvement that we identified as a committee.

Our committee made 13 recommendations: 11 recommendations to the TAC itself and two to the Victorian government. I am extremely pleased to say that just earlier this day the government tabled its response to the inquiry’s report, which perhaps may be a record – it is certainly a record in my time in this chamber – of a four-week response, about five months earlier than was required. I acknowledge the incredible efforts of those in Minister Dimopoulos’s office, in the department, in the TAC and Minister Dimopoulos himself in ensuring that the government’s response to this inquiry could come through as quickly as it did. I think it shows a great deal of respect to everyone who participated in our inquiry, and I hope that they have had the chance already to consult and consider the government’s response, and indeed the fact that the vast majority, 12 out of 13 recommendations, are being supported in full by the government.

I do wish to speak, though, specifically where it relates to the amendments in this bill and to recommendation 6 of our inquiry. Recommendation 6 came about as a result of evidence that we received from a remarkable couple, Bernard and Michelle Robertson from Geelong, who came and shared with us their story. Their daughter had a child as a single mother. She decided to have a child and was certainly, from what we heard as a committee, a wonderful and loving mum who was tragically taken from us all and from her family far too soon in a road traffic accident. As a result, Bernard and Michelle took over guardianship and custody of their grandchild. However, due to what we could call a flaw in the Transport Accident Act 1986, the payment that they received for the care of their granddaughter as her new effective guardians was not the same as what it would have been – in fact was a fraction of what it would have been – had they been a surviving parent. This is a clear – unintentional but clear – inequity in the current set of arrangements, and it was something that I know concerned the committee, I believe, quite unanimously. I know it is something that also concerned the member for Geelong in the other place, Chris Couzens, who is the local MP for the Robertson family and who has been advocating for this case most strongly as well. Along with Mr Limbrick, I also want to acknowledge the member for Geelong for her tenacious advocacy that has also led to where we are today.

As a result, recommendation 6 of our inquiry’s report does propose to remedy this. It is something that is beyond the power of the TAC to apply discretion to; it does require legislative intervention. I am delighted that as a result of recommendation 6 of our committee’s report, and as a result of the government’s response tabled earlier this day, these amendments will actually address that loophole, ensuring that for any families in future who are also subject to the same tragic circumstances, the people providing care for the child will receive the same entitlements as they would if they were a surviving sole parent. This is something that the Robertson family have been speaking up for incredibly selflessly on behalf of people that we do not know, but we know that this will, very sadly, happen again. The reforms in this amendment, which I sincerely hope will be passed along with the remainder of the bill by this chamber today, will make an extraordinary difference to these families. It is a very small number of families, but with the changing nature of families, evolving day by day, it is something that will sadly happen again to quite possibly more people. For those future people, this will make a profound difference.

Given that this is something that has been able to be achieved within such a short turnaround, within literally 28 days of our report being tabled – I had the privilege of meeting with the new minister very shortly after our report was tabled and drew his attention, though he was already aware, to recommendation 6. I am really grateful to Minister Dimopoulos for the very keen interest he has taken in the work of the committee.

I give him enormous credit for driving this reform through and finding a pathway so that we could address this issue today. I also particularly want to acknowledge Carla Ienco, the adviser in his office, and in particular, Rumaan Baryalai, who worked tirelessly in a very, very short space of time to find a way for us to bring this amendment forward. This amendment is very special to be able to talk to because it is a result of committee work in this Parliament, work that we all, as upper house members, constantly put in, delivering real and meaningful change for Victorian people. There are many who rightly deserve credit for this, including the member for Geelong, Mr Limbrick and all of those on the committee who put this recommendation forward. It is a true honour to be standing here and commending this particular amendment to the house. This is one of those cases where in this job we are incredibly privileged to be able to be doing work which makes a profound difference in Victorians’ lives – in this case, not a great many Victorians, but a profound difference for those who it will affect. I particularly commend this amendment, and in doing so, I commend all of the house amendments and the bill to the house.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:36): I also would like to speak a bit on the Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026. I have got good news and bad news on this bill. I will start with the good news. The good news is, as Mr Galea mentioned, the government is moving an amendment to this bill as a result of the output from the inquiry into TAC claims. One of the issues that was brought to the committee’s attention by the Robertson family, who very bravely gave evidence at a public hearing on this, was that unfortunately, not through design but through what I think Mr Galea termed a loophole, something that was not foreseen was that when children are orphaned through a traffic accident and someone such as their grandparent takes over guardianship of the child, the payments to them are only a fraction of what they would have otherwise been if the surviving spouse had have been alive and received a payment from the TAC. Obviously for grandparents who might be in or approaching retirement, this unexpected financial burden of looking after an orphaned child can have a huge impact. We certainly heard that from the Robertson family, who gave evidence to that effect.

I made a few complaints about the way that the government was using the funds in the TAC through taking dividends from the TAC. But one thing that I will not complain about is when those funds are redirected through an amendment like this to be paid to orphaned children and their families or their guardians. I think that this is a wonderful thing. I would like to thank my fellow committee members for unanimously agreeing that these issues were valid in terms of making recommendations and also Minister Dimopoulos for actually taking swift action on this. I agree with Mr Galea; I do not think I have ever seen a committee response come back so quickly. I am still going through the response myself. My team only just received it today, but certainly recommendation 6, which was around payments to guardians for looking after children orphaned through traffic accidents, is an excellent amendment. This is a good use of TAC resources. It is a good use of the funds that everyone pays for in their registration payments. As I said, there have been many cases where I have been upset at how these funds have been used, but this is not one of them. This is an excellent use of those funds, and I think that anyone who pays their registration into the TAC fund would think that this is a very appropriate way to use those funds to help the children and families who are suffering because of a car accident. So that is wonderful news.

The bad news is this bill otherwise has some problems. The main problem, as Mr Welch has pointed out, is around the new documents order powers that are going to be afforded to unions. I get the motivation for this. If there is a health and safety issue, you want to be able to make sure that you have got all the evidence available and that sort of thing. The problem here is that the reality is that we know at least one union has been, and we assume still is, infiltrated and corrupted by organised crime. We recently initiated and supported a royal commission into corruption in the construction sector. We do not know how many other unions have been infiltrated like this – I hope not many. I hope none actually, but we do not know. We will need to wait for the royal commission to do its work. The idea that people from a potentially corrupted union could go into a workplace and demand documents to be ordered – and not only demand documents to be ordered but go through their computer systems with very few safeguards – I would normally oppose, just because it is a property rights breach and causes all sorts of potential problems. But also, in the case of a union that has been corrupted, what is happening here is dangerous. We do not know what they might use these documents for or this information for. I think that this is an extremely dangerous thing to do, and quite frankly, I am surprised that the government would do this at this time when we know that this royal commission is just getting started.

Maybe we should get a handle on what sort of corruption is actually going on before we start handing over powers like this to union officials, because we do not know what sorts of people we are actually giving these powers to yet. I have some concerns about that, and I think that everyone in this place should have some concerns about that because we know that we have seen massive corruption through organised crime in the government construction sector, including by infiltrating the union and taking up positions. I will note that in one of the reports in the media it turned out to be a bikie that was a health and safety officer in the union – like, the exact person that you are giving these powers to. I think that that alone should be enough to make anyone hesitate in supporting this. I think that this is a very, very dangerous power, and maybe we should wait until we get the results from the royal commission before even thinking about something like this.

Therefore the Libertarian Party will be opposing this, but I will be letting it go through the second reading because I am interested to see what happens with the splitting of the bill. Hopefully this house will support splitting the bill, because I agree with the opposition here that this is a very, very dangerous power. It would be dangerous if the unions were not corrupted, but it is more dangerous knowing what we know. We actually do not know who we are giving these powers to, and I think that this is extremely dangerous.

 Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:43): I rise to make a contribution on the Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026. I might just start with some comments around the work of the Legal and Social Issues Committee inquiry into claims made through the Transport Accident Commission because, as other speakers have noted, in regard to this there were some things that the committee recommended and the government has acted on, in terms of children whose parents have died as a result of accidents or illnesses contracted through the workplace. So some of those things are quite positive. I then want to turn to some of the things that Mr Welch and also Mr Limbrick have commented on. As a union official of some 25 years standing, I thoroughly disagree with a lot of the concern that has been raised around right-of-entry powers and the right to inspect wages and books. But anyway, I will come to that shortly.

The Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee held an inquiry into claims made through the TAC and tabled its final report on 25 August 2026. The report made 13 recommendations designed to improve the outcomes and experiences for TAC clients and providers. The government proposed to support in full all the recommendations except for recommendation 1, which relates to a separate inquiry into the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and which government has already responded to in any event. The report made a recommendation, recommendation 6:

That the Victorian Government review surviving spouse and legal guardian payments in the situation where a child is orphaned and a new guardian is appointed.

The recommendation follows the finding of the committee that the TAC legislation did not provide for fair and equitable treatment of all family types, including where grandparents become legal guardians of children following a transport-related death of the parent. The proposed amendment aims to address this recommendation. It is a really great credit to the committee and all who gave evidence to the committee that the committee has come up with these recommendations, because it clearly is I guess an unintended consequence of the way that the legislation operated. It is clear how the legislation operated on the face of it, but we are certainly addressing that point where grandparents or other family types might become legal guardians of children. No worker or family expects that a worker that goes to work will not be able to come home safely or will not come home at all, so adopting this recommendation and the proposed changes means that this will be amended and further hardship will not be visited upon families who already unnecessarily suffer.

Also there are dust-related condition amendments. Dust-related conditions are often very different from other workplace injuries because they can take years to develop and to appear. These can arise from exposure across multiple workplaces and are often progressive and incurable and can take a very long time. Sometimes people might have left a previous workplace where they had exposure and may not have known that there was exposure and then these things get traced back over a long period of time. These features, the way these dust diseases can progress, can make it harder for injured workers to access fair compensation under the current system. While Victoria has introduced reforms for workers with conditions such as asbestosis and silicosis, stakeholder groups continue to highlight the gaps in the law for other types of dust-related conditions. The proposed reforms are intended to address those gaps and ensure that the compensation system better reflects the nature of dust-related conditions. I think we can all reflect on what happened when – and this is just in recent memory as well – everybody was getting those stone benchtops. They might have looked great in the house, but the problem was that the dust that came from cutting those stone benchtops then led to silicosis forming in those workers who were exposed to the dust. Some of it was quite horrific, actually, the way the disease progressed and how workers were struggling to breathe; it really did reflect the journey of people who were exposed to asbestos. It just goes to show why we need strong health and safety regulation in this country.

I also just want to touch on the amendments to the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. The house amendments will create a framework for courts to consider the impact of statements from affected persons, such as a bereaved family, bereaved family members and others. In the OH&S sentencing proceedings real improvement project orders rename and expand health and safety undertakings and increase maximum penalties as well; also, they significantly increase maximum penalties for reckless endangerment and introduce a new offence within section 32 which applies to contravention of a health and safety duty and is not limited by the ‘at a workplace’ element. These amendments will improve the ability of persons affected in workplace incidents to participate fully and meaningfully in sentencing proceedings for OH&S offences and strengthen sentencing practices as well. The amendments are proposed to commence on 10 September 2027, unless proclaimed earlier, to align with the commencement of other OH&S act amendments.

Also, importantly, just on the dust-related conditions house amendments, the bill extends existing arrangements to allow workers with these dust-related conditions to seek a second award of damages, as I touched on earlier, where they later develop another dust-related condition from the same exposure. This builds on the current approach for certain asbestos-related and silica-related conditions. As I remarked upon earlier, sometimes these conditions can take a long time to develop and secondary conditions can continue. The gaps in the law meant that often those people who contracted secondary conditions fell through the gaps and were not compensated. This will improve that situation.

Secondly, the reforms address a historical gap in access to common law damages for workers exposed between 12 November 1997 and 20 October 1999. These amendments help ensure compensation reflects the full circumstances of that exposure. Thirdly, the bill will also remove the limitation period for claims relating to dust exposure during the same period but again recognises that dust-related conditions may take many, many years to emerge. Finally, the bill will remove pre-litigation processes for common law damages claims for dust-related conditions, supporting a more direct pathway to the Supreme Court. Taken together, these reforms will create a more coherent framework across Victorian legislation, enabling workers to have better access to the compensation claims framework.

I also want to touch on some of the comments Mr Welch and Mr Limbrick made, which I can summarise neatly as about concern around union officials having access to records and who these people are and what they might do with these records and the like and remarking on what happened in the construction sector. Might I add that there are many, many unions who represent many, many workers. Having worked for the nurses union just before coming into this place, I can say I have never worked with a more professional bunch of people. They are dedicated to their work and furthering the interests of nurses in our hospital system and in our aged care system. It is of course not surprising that we see attempts by the opposition and perhaps Mr Limbrick to cast a net and cast aspersions over all people who work in the mighty union movement. I have worked with a number of unions and spent a long time advocating for workers, and I have always found, for the most part, people to be professional and respectful and absolutely dedicated to the cause of making sure that workers, when they go to work, can come home safely and are not subject to exploitation and abuse.

Mr Welch and Mr Limbrick may not be aware, but statutory right-of-entry powers allowing union officials and inspectors to enter premises and inspect wage records have existed in Victoria for over 120 years. Maybe a little bit of history might have gone down well for those opposite. There is a long history going back to 1896. I remember this from when I was a young union official. This is a very old piece of legislation. Minister Stitt, sitting in front of me, might remember this as well. The Factories and Shops Act of 1896 used to allow – we are all shaking our heads and going, ‘Yes, I remember that’ –

Ingrid Stitt interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: Yes, we are showing our age and our collective knowledge of many, many years. If you added together all the collective knowledge of the prior union officials in this place it would be probably over 100 years. Certainly, this was introduced to allow inspectors a broad statutory right to inspect workplaces, check time books and enforce the early wages boards’ minimum wage determinations. It was about making sure that workers were not being ripped off. Then we had powers under the 1904 Conciliation and Arbitration Act: formal rights for registered trade union officials to enter workplaces and inspect time and wage records. 1904 is a long time ago. These are not new powers. It should not come as a shock or surprise to anybody. Then of course we had the mid-20th-century Victorian wages boards’ determinations. State-based conciliation and arbitration awards routinely included explicit right-of-entry clauses. Accredited union representatives were legally granted access to inspect time and wage book records et cetera. Then of course we skip right forward to 2004 and the Occupational Health and Safety Act in Victoria. Victoria reinstated state-level statutory right-of-entry powers specifically for health and safety representatives – authorised representatives of registered employee organisations, so accredited health and safety representatives – to inspect workplaces.

Today the right to inspect wage and employment records in Victoria is primarily governed by part 3–4 of the Fair Work Act 2009. Union officials have to give notice before they enter. There is a lot of consternation on the other side about this, but what we know and understand is the reason why union officials actually need to have access to investigate concern about health and safety breaches, alleged health and safety breaches and the like is because we want to make sure that workers are not being ripped off and that their health and safety is not being compromised in some way.

As I said, these powers have existed for some time; they are not new powers. Again, it is important that union officials can have access in order for some of them to put provisional improvement notices on things where it is imminently dangerous or inherently dangerous. I would say if you are doing nothing wrong, you have got nothing to worry about. The contributions of Mr Welch and Mr Limbrick about this being dangerous and these people are going to be running around – it is completely ridiculous. I thought we had moved on from the fearmongering that goes along with those sorts of views.

As a union official I have sat down with employers across the table and talked about health and safety incidences where we have been able to agree on the employer making improvements to the workplace so that people are not injured. For example, one of the last things that I did was when a nurse was seriously injured at work and had her arm broken. That employer was able to sit down and talk to them about how we could make improvements. The opportunity for me to access that workplace was there because of the framework that allowed me to enter, through a right-of-entry permit. I was able to gain access to that workplace and have a very frank conversation with that employer, and we were able to work out, through those discussions, how workplace safety could be improved. There is nothing wrong with that, but sometimes employers resist those attempts to have those conversations. And that is where a union official exercising those powers has every right to, and they should continue to, given the long history that I have just outlined.

This bill, as I said, does a number of things that will help. There are stronger integrity and accountability measures. The powers will come with appropriate safeguards. It gives clear protections against coercion and misuse of information; prevents inappropriate online publication of material; protects privacy; safeguards sensitive information; and strengthens confidence in the occupational health and safety framework. It is everybody’s business – employers, unions, workers – to make sure every worker who goes to work every day can come home safe and uninjured. I have just gone through some of the changes that arise from the recommendations of the Legal and Social Issues Committee, because they go to directly supporting workers and families who may have suffered as a consequence of very serious workplace injuries.

This bill does present a practical package of reforms. It will improve workplace safety, strengthen the integrity of Victoria’s occupational health and safety system, reduce unnecessary red tape and provide greater certainty for employers and workers alike. Again, it delivers on the government’s commitment to ensuring Victoria remains both one of the safest places in the world to work and one of the best places to do business. These are sensible and balanced reforms that workers support and employers also support, and they will protect the long-term sustainability of the WorkCover and TAC schemes. I might leave my remarks and my contribution there. I recommend the amendments and the amendment of the bill to the house.

 David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (16:58): I rise to make a contribution on the Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026, which makes amendments to several bills encompassing Victoria’s workers compensation and occupational health and safety framework. It enables self-insured employers to use regulated surety bonds as an alternative to bank guarantees. Currently, self-insured employers must provide bank guarantees to ensure workers compensation liabilities can be met if the employer becomes insolvent. Surety bonds provide greater flexibility and liquidity for employers while preserving protections for workers if their liabilities are transferred to the WorkCover scheme. It makes several governance and administrative changes relating to the chair of WorkSafe and other operational matters.

The bill implements reforms stemming from Eugene White’s independent review of employee representatives, which considered whether the powers, functions and support provided to authorised representatives of registered employee organisations and health and safety representatives under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 are still effective in terms of delivering improved health and safety outcomes for workers.

That review made 17 recommendations to improve the effectiveness of employee representation, but unfortunately only four of those are acquitted in this bill. The bill improves the ability of health and safety representatives to identify and resolve OH&S matters, enabling them to inspect and make copies of documents relevant to alleged contraventions of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, a topic I will return to shortly. The operation of existing privacy, secrecy or confidentiality provisions under other laws will still continue.

It also gives health and safety reps greater authority to investigate breaches when found onsite and to provide a notice of suspected contravention. It enhances certain administrative functions for multi-employer designated work groups on sites where multiple employers operate side by side. Unions are supportive of these reforms. They have long advocated for better access to information and stronger powers to help workers raise safety concerns before injuries occur.

The bill introduces offences relating to coercion in respect to nomination and election of health and safety reps, restricts the misuse of information obtained through occupational health and safety powers and prohibits the live streaming or publication of photographs and recordings obtained in the course of exercising those powers. We welcome these changes, and we commend the government for bringing this bill before the Parliament.

The bill, however, does not fully implement the recommendations of the Independent Review of Employee Representatives report, particularly around access to workplace documents relevant to suspected contraventions. We have some amendments which will strengthen and authorise representatives’ power to inspect documents. I ask that these amendments be circulated now. The amendments firstly clarify that electronic records and documents can be accessed rather than being restricted to documents that are actually physically located on the site. This will broaden access to documents relevant to suspected contraventions so representatives can more effectively investigate safety concerns and ensure that employers cannot avoid compliance with an authorised representative’s request for documents simply because that information is stored digitally or offsite rather than in hard-copy form. This makes perfect sense, because I am sure people have heard that there is actually now a greater reliance on digital documents in the modern workplace – I know; surprise, surprise – yet suddenly they become privileged simply because they are electronic. This is a deliberate oversight and one that the government is well aware of. Despite government assertions to the contrary by the minister, recommendation 9 of the independent review recommended:

That the Victorian Government amend the OHS Act to:

• require an employer to allow an HSR or ARREO to inspect and make copies of documents relevant to a suspected contravention that are:

• kept at the workplace or are accessible from a computer at the workplace

• not kept at the workplace, subject to notice given during work hours at least twenty-four hours but no more than fourteen days before entry

The amendments also establish the right of authorised representatives to require employers to produce relevant workplace documents and create an obligation on the employer to provide access when requested. This mandate is entirely consistent with Mr White’s recommendations.

The OH&S act still maintains the protection that an authorised representative may only do things reasonable for the purposes of inquiring into a suspected contravention, and in the case of a dispute, either the employer or the representative may call to arrange a WorkSafe inspector’s attendance, so employers retain their protection.

Listening to Mr Limbrick’s assertion – and I am sorry, I missed Mr Welch’s contribution in total, but I believe they were in common – I would go so far as to suggest that it is panic-mongering to make the assertion that this bill or these amendments should not go ahead because of alleged corruption in the construction division of the CFMEU. That division makes up a small percentage of the construction workforce, which in turn makes up a small percentage of the overall workforce. To suggest that because there is alleged corruption by a small number of people – and it is alleged – these protections should not apply to all workers, including workers that are not in unions, and that is the majority of workers, and let us recognise that many health and safety reps are not actually in unions, to suggest that because of that tiny question, though it is a current and very important question, no-one should have these protections, is outrageous, especially given this vision that has been painted of a CFMEU construction division health and safety rep coming in unannounced and rampaging through a company’s IT system. The reality is a request is required in advance and it needs to define what is being sought. And most importantly, if either the health and safety rep or the employer are concerned about the circumstances of that request, either can request that an inspector be present. That is the reality – that is the law – and to pretend that this is opening up some Wild West frontier is, frankly, outrageous and insulting to the community’s intelligence.

Our amendments merely enliven recommendation 9 and bring Victoria into line with the existing Commonwealth work health and safety laws. We have heard from the minister and others this preposterous notion that there may be ‘unforeseen circumstances’. That federal legislation has been in place for some time; unforeseen circumstances have had the opportunity to be seen. To suggest that that is not the case is, I am afraid, gratuitous. In that context, we suggest that there is nothing mysterious or unknown or dangerous about extending this right to electronic records. This is a simple change and one that the government should have brought itself or at least should have agreed to after discussions with a range of stakeholders, including Trades Hall. I would indicate that we are also supporting the amendment being moved by Mr Puglielli to broaden the provisions for the award of damages to injured workers with certain dust-related conditions to ensure that these workers have fair and efficient access to compensation.

The bill also clarifies that neither the TAC nor WorkSafe is liable to fund specialist disability accommodation under the NDIS, resolving what the government describes as an unintended overlap in the legislation. As an aside, the government’s handling of the transition of disability supports from the federal NDIS scheme to the states has been, frankly, a shambles. It has been incredibly stressful for parents and carers of people with a disability, who have been largely left in the dark about how the changes to the scheme will impact them. They are exhausted, they are overwhelmed by these proposed changes and will most certainly be the ones filling the gap left by the reduction in services – but I do digress. That said, the bill seeks to introduce positive changes to worker safety and representation. As I said, we will be supporting this bill and our amendments will serve to strengthen this bill. I commend both to the chamber.

 Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (17:10): Thank you very much for the opportunity to rise today and speak on the Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026. We are making sure Victorian workplaces are safe while at the same time making it easier for Victorian businesses to operate and grow. This is a highly practical piece of legislation. It updates our occupational health and safety laws, it gives self-insurers new financial options, it corrects technical errors in our transport and accident compensation schemes and it includes incredibly important house amendments for workers suffering from dust diseases.

I want to focus first, if I can, on the workplace safety reforms. Safety on the job is a fundamental right. To make sure worksites stay safe we rely heavily on health and safety representatives, or HSRs, and on authorised representatives of registered employee organisations, known as ARREOs. Following the independent review led by Mr Eugene White, we are putting in place reforms to ensure that these representatives have the tools they need to do their work properly. Currently the law allows safety representatives to physically inspect a workplace, but we know that modern workplace hazards are not always physical. Hazards like bullying, unmanageable workloads and harassment often leave their evidence in policies, risk assessments and written procedures. That is why this bill explicitly gives HSRs and ARREOs the power to inspect and make copies of documents related to a suspected safety breach. This gives them the practical ability to identify risks and resolve health and safety issues with employers before someone actually gets hurt. We are also fixing an unnecessary administrative burden. Right now if an authorised representative enters a construction site to investigate a specific safety issue and, while there, they spot a completely separate, dangerous safety hazard, they are legally required to leave the premises, issue a brand new notice and then re-enter the site to investigate it. Safety should never be delayed by paperwork. This bill fixes that, allowing authorised representatives to look into a newly identified safety hazard during the exact same visit, as long as they issue a new notice of suspected contravention.

While we are ensuring these representatives have the powers that they need, we are also making sure those powers are used with absolute integrity. We know that safety representatives can obtain highly sensitive confidential information during their inspection. This bill strengthens the safeguards against the misuse of said information. We are making it an explicit ground for disqualification for a health and safety representative to intentionally use, disclose or provide material for a purpose that is not reasonably connected to their safety role. We are expressly prohibiting these representatives from publishing sensitive workplace information online. We have heard reports of workplace information, photographs and recordings being live streamed or posted on social media. Posting this kind of content online has the potential to cause substantial harm to the privacy of individuals and does nothing to resolve a genuine safety dispute. If you are an authorised representative who breaches this prohibition, you will face penalties. This reform ensures that safety powers are used strictly to keep workers safe.

To further protect the integrity of the system we are introducing new coercion powers and offences. We have heard allegations of intimidating behaviour on some worksites, including pressure being applied to dictate how safety representatives use their powers or intimidation tactics used to control safety elections. This bill introduces a broad coercion offence covering all these matters under parts 7 and 8 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. If you attempt to threaten, intimidate or coerce someone in relation to a safety election or the exercise of a safety power, you will face significant penalties: up to 500 penalty units for an individual and up to 2500 penalty units for a body corporate. Workplaces must be safe, and the people elected to protect this safety must be able to operate entirely free from intimidation. I will just declare to the chamber that I was once an elected representative of my workplace. This is an amendment that I feel very strongly about, and I am very pleased to see it contained in the bill before us.

To support the prompt resolution of disputes, this bill also gives WorkSafe inspectors the power to make binding decisions on unresolved matters when negotiating safety groups on sites with multiple employers. Previously inspectors could only offer guidance for these shared sites, leaving workers on large projects without the same access to binding dispute resolution as a single-employer workplace. We are also requiring that provisional improvement notices be issued in a WorkSafe-approved format. This ensures clarity and supports the digitisation of safety reporting across the state.

I want to come now to work that I was particularly pleased to see, and that is some house amendments that have been incorporated into the bill – amendments that go directly to how we support Victorians facing unimaginable tragedy. For workers suffering from occupational dust-related conditions, the legal framework historically failed to recognise how these diseases progress. The worker exposed to dangerous dust might be diagnosed with one condition today only to develop a completely separate, terminal condition years later from that exact same exposure. This bill extends existing arrangements to allow workers with dust-related conditions to seek a second award of damages if they later develop another condition. It also addresses a historical gap in access to common law damages for workers exposed between 12 November 1997 and the 20 October 1999. We are removing the limitation period for claims relating to dust exposure during that time, ensuring workers are not locked out of justice simply because the disease took decades to appear. We are also removing prelitigation processes for these claims, supporting a much more direct pathway to the Supreme Court for dying workers who do not have the time to wait. Having begun my union career working in dust diseases, I need to say that seeing a worker wait and wait and wait for justice from the courts is a tragedy compounded by tragedy, and I am so pleased to see any measures that bring justice to these workers more quickly. Of course I spent four years in workplace health and safety, and that was a quite a formative time in my life. So can I take a moment to acknowledge the extraordinary leadership of Bernie Banton, who was an inspiration to me over that period and showed me great kindness.

Can I just say I had the privilege of being called up quite last minute to the Legal and Social Issues Committee for the Transport Accident Commission inquiry, and I must confess I did not know too much about the system. Going into that, I saw evidence very clearly about the way we treated orphaned children – that was just not acceptable. I am certainly very happy to see the house amendments before us contained in this bill that deliver fairness for children impacted by fatal road trauma. We are increasing the payments provided by the Transport Accident Commission to children orphaned by transport accident who are in the care of a guardian, and we are extending the education allowance to all children who have lost a parent on our roads. This guarantees equitable financial support for every child who suffers this profound loss, regardless of their family structure. This is a response to the committee’s work, and can I thank the members of the community that came along and presented that evidence.

Further to issues around road safety, we have strengthened our sentencing practices for workplace deaths. Following a review by the Sentencing Advisory Council, this bill creates a framework for courts to formally consider impact statements from affected persons such as bereaved family members in safety sentencing proceedings. When a worker dies on the job, their family deserves to have their voice heard in court. We are also significantly increasing maximum penalties for reckless endangerment, ensuring that the punishment reflects the crime when an employer gambles with a worker’s life. I commend that on behalf of my cousin James Watt, who died on the job, on the road, in 2017 by a reckless employer who thought that his safety could be gambled with, and unfortunately on that day his life was lost. I honour him.

I would like to take this moment to acknowledge Mr Berger, who joined me this year at the truck drivers memorial, where we had a chance to come together and honour all those whose lives have been lost on our roads. It is true that the opportunity to speak up on behalf of our bereaved family members was something that was not afforded our family, but I wish that those in the future have those opportunities afforded now by the bill before us, which I am so pleased to see.

We are strengthening protections for workers and supporting Victorian businesses. I want to talk about self-insurers and non-WorkCover employers. The current requirements to ensure that their compensation liabilities are exclusively through bank guarantees is a really highly restrictive practice. The bank guarantee requires a really massive cash deposit, tying up capital that could otherwise be actively used, and this bill allows these employers to use surety bonds as an alternative. It is a straightforward win for productivity, and a surety bond does not require a cash deposit. By accepting surety bonds, we are freeing up vital cash flow for major employers. If you are a large manufacturer, instead of having your capital sit idly in a bank to satisfy a guarantee you can use those funds to hire more staff, upgrade your machinery, hopefully upgrade your safety and expand your operations. To ensure that the WorkCover scheme remains financially secure, we are mandating that any surety bond issued must be regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority, or APRA, and meet strict credit rating requirements set up in the ministerial directive.

The bill also, I will just say quickly, contains technical amendments to the Transport Accident Act 1986, the Accident Compensation Act 1985 and the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013. To address what Mr Ettershank spoke to earlier, the unintended drafting issue regarding specialist disability accommodation, I think Mr Ettershank actually covered those remarks and I am sure others have, and I do thank them for that contribution. I would also say that there are some administrative improvements, and the bill aligns the appointment, resignation and pay arrangements for the WorkSafe board chair with those of the WorkSafe board directors, ensuring that these terms are set by the responsible minister. We are also streamlining the process for setting the fees and costs payable to members of medical panels, moving this to a ministerial gazettal process to cut unnecessary red tape and align with the Wrongs Act 1958.

This bill protects the integrity of our occupational health and safety system. It gives our safety representatives the tools they need, while enforcing the strict accountability that Victorians expect; it frees up capital for our major employers to invest in growth; and it ensures that our compensation scheme remains sustainable and focused on its true purpose. This is a bill, despite having many different elements, that speaks to Labor values and workers’ experiences – like me and my family losing a loved one through a tragedy in a workplace accident or in fact the everyday experience of my life when I was in my late 20s working with people suffering from dust diseases, as a workplace health and safety representative and also as somebody who saw firsthand the actual debilitating life of somebody suffering a dust disease. There are elements of this bill that I am enormously proud of, and it is true that only our Labor government is the party that will always stand with the working people of Victoria.

This I believe may be my final bill contribution of this 60th Parliament, and so it is only fitting that I stand up here and speak to a bill that speaks so much to my lived experience, so much to my values and so much to the issues that very much affect me. I want to thank the union movement for championing all of these reforms that very much make a difference in the lives of working people. It is true that it was only the union that could be trusted to come to the side of my family during some tragedies and some hardships, whether they were safety issues onsite, the loss of my cousin or in fact when my mum’s arm got caught in a machine in a factory that should have absolutely done some necessary safety upgrades and did not. These bills make actual lives change, and I cannot commend the bill enough. I thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to something that is so deeply felt.

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:25): I rise to speak on this bill also. I am going to start by saying if this bill is not split, then the coalition will have absolutely no choice but to reject the whole thing. The reason for that is because of the unions’ right of entry and what this gives them. I just want to start off by saying both Ms Terpstra and Mr Ettershank – well, actually they said different things. Ms Terpstra called our concerns ‘fearmongering’ and Mr Ettershank ‘panic-mongering’. If that is the truth, then why is it that your boss Premier Carroll is calling a royal commission? Why is he calling a royal commission? I am going to tell you why he is calling a royal commission. It is because it is quite well known that it was literally union reps on worksites that had women trapped in areas while they smoked ice in their faces. Had this been the law a year ago, had this bill been an act in February, that exact same union rep would have had access to the women’s addresses and whatever they wanted. It says this in the bill brief. I will get it. Actually I will just read the clause of concern of the bill, clause 22. That got a yawn there from Mr Ettershank. It shows his interest and respect in this matter. It says that it provides that health and safety representatives have an express power to inspect and copy or take extracts from any document at the workplace – any document.

Let me tell you what happened on these Big Build sites and why we are having a royal commission – not that it has got that many teeth. It is because there was criminal infiltration on many worksites. Outlaw motorcycle gangs, organised crime figures and drug traffickers gained access to these major sites, particularly, it is well known, through OH&S reps. These OH&S reps were used to house prisoners, domestic violence abusers and bikies. That is why you are having a royal commission. To say that somehow we are fearmongering about this access is very duplicitous, and it does not actually line up with the key policy that Premier Carroll brought in as soon as he became the Premier of this state.

David Ettershank interjected.

Renee HEATH: I will pick up on your interjection there, Mr Ettershank. He said, ‘What about the other 99 per cent of the workforce?’ This is about protections. I tell you what, I care about that lady that was held in a confined space by somebody who had just got out of prison for domestic abuse. You know what, she might not be the 99, she is the one, Mr Ettershank, and I tell you what, she is worth protecting whether you think she is or not. Had this law been enforced earlier this year, those OH&S abusers – the people that were being used in those positions, the criminals, the people that were in jail – would have had access to whatever they wanted. To say that is fearmongering is dishonest, I believe, it is completely detached from reality and it is not even acknowledging the very policy that has become the star policy in your Premier’s government, which you belong to. I just wanted to raise that. Here are some other things that were happening: illegal activities, workplaces were used for drug distribution and union-tied workers engaged in ghost shifts. There were other rorts that uncovered extreme misconduct. There was widespread use of strippers – taxpayer-funded strippers on worksites – often organised by OH&S workers.

Mr Ettershank is continually rolling his eyes. It is nothing new; we have put up with it for four years. But why are we having a royal commission if that is not the case? It is the case. Those people were contractors forced to bow to union demands. There were reports of coercive control. These are the people, had this law been enforced, that would have access to documents. That is why Premier Carroll has commissioned and established a state royal commission to investigate this. If you think that our concern about those union officials – the corrupt ones, not the good ones – having access to absolutely any document they want is unwarranted, well, I think that says more about you than it says about us.

 John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:31): I rise to speak on the Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026. Let me first start by thanking my friend in the other place, the Minister for WorkSafe and the TAC, for introducing this legislation and for his ongoing work to improve safety for workers across Victoria. Today I speak in support of this bill, as it represents an important step forward in improving the effectiveness and the equity of the workplace compensation system here in Victoria. The way I see it, one of the key roles that we have as parliamentarians in this place is to ensure that all Victorians are able to go about their lives in the knowledge that everything is being done to ensure their safety. Chief amongst these responsibilities is ensuring that all people are able to go to work every day and come back home in good health and uninjured.

The role of workplace safety is of absolute importance. No worker should be subjected to unsafe conditions. Workers should also be able to go to work with the knowledge that, should an unfortunate injury happen in the workplace, their interests will be protected and advanced. When people are at work, they should be able to have confidence that their employer is doing everything necessary to keep them safe, that regulators have the necessary powers to intervene when needed and that if something goes wrong there are systems in place to compensate and protect them. I am extremely happy to be part of a government that not only understands this responsibility but is a government that takes it seriously. With that being said, the bill before us today represents another step forward in making sure workers in this great state have that stability.

This bill makes several amendments to previous workplace laws here in Victoria. The first major amendment that I will discuss revolves around the financial guarantee requirements for businesses in Victoria that are not covered under the WorkCover arrangements, specifically amendments to the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013. These amendments will make it so the employers financial guarantee requirements are able to be met by surety bonds, in addition to the current system of accepting bank guarantees. Those businesses who are self-insurers should need to provide some level of financial guarantee underwriting liability for their workers. This helps provide stability to the whole system of workplace safety. This also ensures that, should these firms experience financial instability and are thus unable to pay out any insurance claims, WorkCover is not subsidising them. This has the effect of granting more options for employers to meet their obligations to WorkSafe in the event that the employer defaults.

Making these changes has a number of advantages for the broader Victorian public. For one, it is creating a system that is more time and cost effective for businesses that are forgoing WorkCover. These changes also create additional liquidity for these enterprises, which in turn allows for greater capacity to meet unexpected costs or engage in capital investment. Critically, though, these amendments do not change the underlying obligation for employers to provide financial security. This creates stability and confidence in the workplace insurance scheme. This in turn leads to a system that better serves the Victorian public. This, I believe, represents a sensible addition to the current WorkCover system.

The second part of the bill addresses some of the recommendations made by the White review into employee representatives. This review by Mr Eugene White was started a number of years ago to look into the system of employee representatives and their role here in the state of Victoria.

Employee representatives play an important role in ensuring ongoing workplace safety in Victoria’s workplaces, therefore making sure that the system of employee representatives is working well and is in the interests of the broader Victorian public. In passing this bill, four of the 17 recommendations will be acquitted in full, and it will further acquit three of them in part. The status of the remaining recommendations will be determined at a time after these changes have had a chance to experience a review. The effects of implementing this review mean that the ability of the employee representatives to look out for the safety of the employees are strengthened. In addition, there will also be sensible limitations placed on employee representatives to avoid abuses of power.

Another component of the system that is covered by this bill and the amendments that it makes covers occupational health and safety. Occupational health and safety is another core component of ensuring worker safety. These standards are how our Victorian workers are kept safe when they go into work every day. Those people who enforce these standards have the capacity to shape and save lives by ensuring that businesses follow the codes and standards that apply to them. The people who do this critical work need to have the backing to be able to investigate any potential breaches that may occur when they occur. This is how we protect workers. It has long been the commitment of successive Labor governments to improve the systems in place that maintain occupational health and safety. This commitment can be seen in the pieces of legislation that Labor governments have advanced in this place and the other place across the hall.

This bill before us today is a continuation of the long-running commitment that Labor governments made. This bill will amend the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 to enable health and safety representatives or other authorised representatives to look at and, if necessary, make copies of documents that may pertain to a contravention. Additionally, the requirement of the authorised representative only in respect of the contravention that they had originally been called out for will be gotten rid of. This means that these representatives will be able to pursue and investigate any other suspected breach that they identify so long as the notice of suspected contravention is issued. These are the two sensible changes that the current laws will benefit from having in the pursuit of better occupational health and safety standards here in Victoria. In turn, it will protect lives and protect livelihoods.

Given the new powers are being granted to the authorised representatives of health and safety, it is important that all Victorians know that these representatives are acting in a way that is responsible. In this bill there are recommendations to strengthen various rules and regulations around the integrity of the individual being discussed. Integrity is an important issue that is on the minds of a lot of Victorians right now. A few months ago the Premier made a commitment regarding integrity and how this government will operate. The truth is that integrity in governance goes beyond just what happens at the highest levels. In fact there is a tremendous, innate ability for individuals acting as employee representatives to impact on the lives and livelihoods of the employees and employers that interact with them. Therefore it can be argued that there is an increased importance to ensure integrity at this level. This is what this legislation does by ensuring that all employee representatives are held to a high standard.

On top of these large changes are numerous changes that are small but are no less significant. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to go over them all; however, taken together they add up to do the important work being done to ensure integrity in all facets of public life here in Victoria. These changes basically will make the rules around sharing information gathered during the inspections stricter, and they will implicitly outlaw coercion in the health and safety systems. With this, Victorians should be assured that this system is working as intended without any bad behaviour or rorting, and if and when it occurs, it will be dealt with appropriately.

Additionally, in this bill there are a number of small improvements that are being made to the process of occupational health and safety. These changes have been proposed to support the delivery of more effective and consistent outcomes for occupational health and safety. They will support the speedy resolution of matters relating to health and safety. Lastly, they will help modernise the way that the provisional improvement notices are given.

Finally, this bill makes important changes to the wording of certain legislation to ensure that there is no confusion in how legislation is interpreted. This is specifically in relation to liability requirements around specialist disability accommodation. In 2024 this Labor government made a necessary change to strengthen the tenancy rights for protections for people living in specialist disability housing. This was a good and important change that protected some of the most vulnerable people in our state.

However, in making this change there was some unfortunate overlap in the wording of various pieces of legislation. This happens, and it is unfortunate due to this confusion that that can occur, but this should not undercut the good work that was done by the changes introduced in the original bill, nor should it be used to say that this legislation was not worthy. The mix-up in the wording implied that the Transport Accident Commission was liable to fund specialist disability housing when that indeed should not be apparent from the intention of the original bill. This bill will amend the act to eliminate this oversight and prevent any unintended consequences that flow from it. Sometimes this is needed, and I want to thank the minister for ensuring that this oversight was addressed in a timely manner, before there were any major adverse consequences.

The changes that I have just outlined represent what are, on their own, small changes. However, taken together they represent meaningful changes in the workplace, insurance and health and safety systems here in Victoria – changes that I think no doubt will be positive for the overall system. These changes make it easier for employers to meet their obligations while supporting the changes recommended in the White review. They also strengthen the abilities and the integrity of workplace health and safety officers, leading to greater protection of both the employees and the employers. Importantly, they improve the efficiency of the system and amend unfortunate drafting errors that were present in the legislation. Simply put, this is a good bill that works to improve the conditions of the safety of workers throughout Victoria.

These changes are also a part of the broader efforts that this Labor government has engaged in to improve the workplace protections that Victorians have. One of the most significant of these recent changes has been the introduction of workplace protection orders. What the Carroll Labor government recognises is that no worker should be going to work with a fear that they will be assaulted or harassed. That is why the Carroll Labor government has announced these new protection orders. Under this new system, those who assault or harass workers can face jail time or be banned from attending premises that they acted against. For me this is particularly impactful in the field of transport. The amount of people in the transport industry that have horror stories about how customers have treated them is outrageous. Those who work in the transport industry are some of the most important people in our workforce. They have the responsibility of moving us and our stuff around. Not a single transport worker should go to work with a fear that they might be assaulted or that they will not come back home the way they left. Every transport worker and indeed every worker, regardless of their station in life, deserves to be treated with respect and with dignity. The Carroll Labor government remains committed to making that a reality. For too long there was a type of harm that workers could be exposed to during their employment that was not considered as part of their workplace health and safety. Obviously, physical threats at the workplace should be treated with the gravity they deserve. However, it used to be the case that psychological impacts that someone could be exposed to at the workplace would not be considered matters of health and safety. It was this Labor government that changed that, because all workers deserve to be safe in their environment, and that means a safe physical and mental environment.

One of the main topics of this legislation is the WorkCover system. This is a proud Labor reform introduced by the Cain government back in the 1980s. The fact is that Victorian workers not only need but deserve a fit-for-purpose and efficient workplace compensation scheme. Throughout the history of this state it has only been the Labor government that has delivered this, but over time we have worked to build on it, making a better and stronger service for workers. In my opinion it is up there with Medicare and superannuation and crucially more important reforms that Labor governments have delivered.

The Carroll Labor government will always stand with workers and ensure that they remain safe in the workplace. I think that this commitment can be seen in the legislation that is before us today as well as the legislation passed a few months and years before. We will also always work to ensure that the system in which businesses and workers have to navigate is efficient, responsive and as effective as possible. In passing this bill, we will continue to work with successive governments to deliver better and safer outcomes for workers. Therefore I commend the bill to the chamber.

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (17:44): I rise to give some additional comments from the Greens in relation to this bill. I will confine my contribution mainly to the amendments that the Greens will be seeking to move to the bill. Those amendments are in Mr Puglielli’s name, and I ask that they be circulated now.

Broadly, the Greens amendments to this bill strengthen fair and efficient access to compensation for victims of dust-related diseases. Workers with these conditions currently face multiple overlapping time limits. This is confusing and expensive, and it forces people to pursue claims before they know how serious their condition will become. It is also complex, given the long period of time that can elapse between exposure and the development of a condition. We want to encourage workers to get screened and diagnosed as early as possible to ensure their best health outcomes, and the exemption from time limits allows and encourages that.

The house amendments do remove time limits. However, they only remove time limits for the specific black hole period. The whole point of removing time limits is to simplify the system. However, a partial exemption just adds another layer of complexity to an already complicated regime. Policy developed with WorkSafe Victoria already routinely waives time limits, but a time limit defence remains available to manufacturers, who can and do rely on it. Without the full exemption, many workers will still be forced to pursue their claims prematurely, risking significant undercompensation for what can be progressive and permanent diseases, so the Greens are proposing a full exemption from time limits for those with dust-related conditions.

Secondly, when it comes to streamlined prelitigation processes, we want to see broadened access to streamlined, faster and simpler prelitigation processes so that all dust disease sufferers can bypass the time-consuming serious injury application process and defer the question of serious injury to trial. We also want to ensure that the transitional provisions that allow the implementation of the more streamlined prelitigation process are drafted to be retrospective for all cases that had not been heard by a court or had a settlement agreement reached – but some specific diseases have been carved out. Only specified diseases are given under the broader retrospective commencement under the transitional provisions. Our amendments stick to the definition of ‘serious dust-related condition’, thereby allowing the bill to apply to all workers with a dust-related condition that have not yet had their case heard by a court or agreed to a settlement. This will remove the limiting specified diseases, and thus the transitional provisions will apply to all serious dust-related conditions. This change is important, as it ensures that the beneficial transition arrangement applies to all workers with a dust disease, not just those whose cases have not yet commenced, and will not be limited to certain categories. Finally, our amendments insert a statutory review after 12 months to ensure that the dust-related disease provisions are working as intended. I will conclude my comments on the bill there.

 Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (17:48): I rise to speak in support of the Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026. The bill makes practical improvements to Victoria’s workers compensation framework for injured workers, and the bill supports Victoria’s reputation as an incredibly safe place for workers. It is a reputation that has been worked on over decades, and there is always more to do to ensure the safety of workers. The bill responds to findings of the independent review of employee representatives, led by respected barrister Mr Eugene White. It strengthens the ability of health and safety representatives to identify and resolve workplace safety issues, while ensuring powers are exercised appropriately and responsibly.

To clarify its existing policy intent, specialist disability accommodation (SDA) is specially designed housing for people with extreme functional impairment or very high support needs, such as homes with wheelchair access, hoists or automated doors. The TAC and WorkSafe are not generally liable to fund accommodation costs like utilities, food and personal items; these are daily living expenses that would have been incurred regardless of a transport accident or workplace injury or illness.

However, a consequential amendment in 2024 unintentionally created ambiguity regarding the funding of accommodation costs associated with SDAdwellings, even though this is a daily living expense that TAC and WorkSafe only fund in very limited circumstances. To rectify this, the bill amends the definition of ‘supported accommodation’ in TAC and WorkSafe legislation to remove the reference to ‘SDA dwelling’ that was unintentionally inserted in 2024. The amendments restore the intended legal position that these schemes are not intended to fund daily living expenses, such as SDA accommodation costs, and aligns with current practice. This does not affect current WorkSafe or TAC clients’ access to SDA through the NDIS.

The bill enables health and safety representatives, HSRs, and authorised representatives to inspect and copy documents relevant to suspected OHS contraventions and allows authorised representatives to investigate additional suspected contraventions identified during a workplace visit, reducing unnecessary administrative barriers. It gives WorkSafe inspectors authority to make binding determinations in multi-employer designated work group negotiations and supports digitisation and consistency by requiring provisional improvement notices to be issued in a WorkSafe-approved format. It removes references to specialist disability accommodation from supported accommodation definitions in relevant legislation and restores the original policy position, avoids unintended liabilities for TAC and WorkSafe and clarifies existing operational arrangements regarding daily living contributions for TAC clients after hospital discharge. It aligns arrangements for the appointment, remuneration and resignation of the WorkSafe board chair with those for WorkSafe board directors and streamlines arrangements for setting medical panel fees and costs payable to members for workers compensation referrals. It is also about improving the operation of Victoria’s workplace safety, workers compensation and transport accident schemes. It is an important balance between reducing unnecessary red tape, protecting workers and strengthening the integrity of our regulatory frameworks.

I think it is also important to – I want to get to the amendments within the bill, but before I do that, I just want to touch again on the importance of correcting the unintended drafting consequences from earlier legislation that restore the longstanding policy approach that accommodation costs are generally personal living expenses rather than compensable costs. The amendments provide certainty and avoid costly legal ambiguity. This bill is a practical package of reforms that improves workplace safety, strengthens the integrity of Victoria’s occupational health and safety system, reduces unnecessary red tape and provides greater certainty for employers and workers alike. It delivers on this government’s commitment to ensure Victoria remains one of the safest places in the world to work. These are sensible, balanced reforms that support workers, support employers and protect the long-term sustainability of the WorkCover and TAC schemes. This government will always back reforms that improve safety, support productivity and deliver better outcomes for Victorian workers and employers.

Moving on to the house amendments, they make several amendments, including to the Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026 to increase financial support for children affected by fatal road trauma; restore and expand compensation and common law rights for workers with dust-related conditions; and improve sentencing outcomes for occupational health and safety, OHS, offences.

Firstly, the house amendment will increase the support the TAC provides for children that have lost a parent due to road trauma. In particular, the house amendment will increase the payments to children orphaned by a transport accident and in the care of a guardian and extend the education allowance to all children who have lost a parent in a transport accident. This provides equitable financial support for every child who loses a parent in a transport accident, regardless of the nature of the parental or guardianship relationship in which they live. This responds to recommendation 6 of the Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee inquiry into claims made through the Transport Accident Commission report, which recommended the government review surviving spouse and legal guardian payments in situations where a child is orphaned and a new guardian is appointed. The Victorian government will continue to consider opportunities to support the fair and equitable treatment of all family types.

On the amendments for workers with occupational dust-related conditions, these reforms are intended to ensure workers with dust-related conditions are treated more fairly and consistently and in a way that reflects the nature of these diseases. Dust-related conditions can develop over long periods and worsen over time, and a worker may first be diagnosed with one condition before later developing another separate condition arising from the same occupational exposure. The law should recognise this.

Firstly, the bill extends arrangements to allow workers with dust-related conditions to seek a second award of damages when they later develop another dust-related condition from the same exposure. This builds on the current approach for certain asbestos-related and silica-related conditions. Secondly, the reforms address a historical gap in access to common law damages for workers exposed between 12 November 1997 and 20 October 1999. These amendments help ensure compensation reflects the full circumstances of that exposure. Thirdly, the bill will also remove the limitation period for claims relating to dust exposure during that same period, recognising that dust-related conditions may take years to emerge. Finally, the bill will remove prelitigation processes for common law damages claims for dust-related conditions, supporting a more direct pathway to the Supreme Court. Taken together, these reforms will create a more coherent framework across Victorian legislation.

Relating to the sentencing of OH&S offences, the house amendment will create a framework for courts to consider impact statements from affected persons, such as bereaved family members and others, in OH&S sentencing proceedings; repeal improvement project orders; rename and expand health and safety undertakings; increase maximum penalties; significantly increase maximum penalties for reckless endangerment; and introduce a new offence within section 32 which applies to conventions of a health and safety duty and is not limited by the ‘at a workplace’ element. These amendments will improve the ability of persons affected by workplace incidents to participate fully and meaningfully in sentencing proceedings for OH&S offences and strengthen practices.

You can hear that this bill does many important things that those on this side stand up to support. There are a lot of people in here to support this bill as it goes through. Those on that side do not support it. We know why – because they are anti-union and they have economic policies that want to drive down workers’ wages. Those opposite lack values, but we know what does bind them together, and that is trying to drive down the wages of working people. We know that that is what drives them, and that is what drives the people that back them. Members on this side, day in and day out, work together with shared values to support communities, to support families, to support workers to have incomes and to make sure those incomes support the communities where they live. While those opposite want to pull this bill apart, we will stand here and speak to it. Dr Heath has just come back. She stood there and wanted to talk down unions. And if a bank –

Renee Heath: On a point of order, President, Mr McIntosh is misleading the house. It offends the standing orders if he is not factual, and I would ask him to withdraw.

The PRESIDENT: It is a debate, and there are no rulings around second-reading speeches.

Tom McINTOSH: We see organisations across Victoria – whether they be banks or whether they be sports organisations – and when the people within them step out of line, those organisations need to be corrected. But you do not throw the whole lot out, and that is exactly what the Liberal–Nationals will do if they have the chance. In alliance with One Nation, they will go after the organisations and the people that represent working people so they can cut the wages of working people, just like they will cut the services to working people and just like they will cut the services that communities depend on. It is very hard to identify values on that side, but if there is one thing it comes back to – (Time expired)

 Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:00): I move:

That debate on this bill be adjourned until later this day.

Motion agreed to.