http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jsct/23august2011/report/dissent.pdf

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (17:29): I rise to add my comments to those of Senator Birmingham, to thank him for his work and, as ever, thank the secretariat and staff of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties for their work. Unfortunately, in this instance, the committee has let us down and missed a very important opportunity to reassess the sale of uranium to countries in Europe where most Australians, I believe, think it is going to safe pairs of hands where nothing can possibly go wrong and where meaningful safeguards are in place. In the wake of the horrific disaster in Japan earlier this year, the tabling of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties report no. 122 this afternoon gave us an opportunity to pause, take breath and look at what actually happens. We do not agree that this treaty should simply be uncritically renewed, as essentially the majority report indicates.

Senator BOB BROWN (Tasmania-Leader of the Australian Greens) (19:50): This issue is hugely important to Australians, particularly to the good and true members of our defence forces, their families and their communities. It is a debate that this parliament has not represented well or fairly.

It is one the Greens have pursued throughout the Howard years and through the last four years of Labor government. We are tonight debating the deployment of our troops in Afghanistan and the legitimate question that any parliament, any administration or any leadership must ask as to whether that deployment serves the nation's interests and whether the risk of life and limb and the risk to future happiness of defence force personnel are warranted, because we must never ever have such deployment treated lightly or without due scrutiny.

It is the job of this parliament to scrutinise the deployment of our defence force personnel to Afghanistan. I take issue with some of the comments of Senator Abetz before he left the chamber relating to the ability of parliamentarians to speak up on this issue.

I have never resiled from the Greens position of having our troops brought home from Afghanistan, nor have I ever raised the issue except in the wake of the leaders of the government and the opposition reaffirming the need for our troops to stay in Afghanistan.

Let me quote from Major General Alan Stretton (Rtd) in a recent letter to the press in which he said:
The spectacle of politicians from both parties agreeing to send our finest Australians to their deaths and then appearing on television offering their condolences to grieving widows and relatives is sickening.
The policy that we can train the Afghan army to take over security in Afghanistan is laughable. The Afghan government is corrupt, and its army has been penetrated by Taliban forces whose main activity is killing allied forces operating in their country.
Elements of the Australian Defence Force have now been in Afghanistan for over 10 years-surely this is long enough.

They are very trying sentiments from a good and long-serving, but now retired, member of our defence forces and they are not alone, certainly in dispatches I have received.

Let me put the need for this debate another way. It has been as a result of quite extraordinarily high profile debates in the Netherlands and Canada that they have withdrawn their troops from Afghanistan. These are countries very similar to Australia, both of whom deployed more troops than Australia but whose parliaments have been committed to the very difficult debate-because it is complex-about retaining their armies in Afghanistan. In the case of the Netherlands, the government fell over the issue but their troops were withdrawn.

Indeed, it is those troops whom our wonderful service men and women are now replacing in Oruzgan province. In Canada it was the very conservative government of Prime Minister Harper, faced with opposition from other parties in the Canadian parliament, who finally made the decision to have the Canadian contingents withdrawn, after more than 100 deaths, and that process has now been completed in Afghanistan.

Last week the President of the United States, Barack Obama, spoke in our parliament and asked us to maintain our troops in Afghanistan. Let us look at the relative deployment. The American deployment of some 100,000 is currently being reduced to 68,000. Ten thousand US troops are in the process of being withdrawn before Christmas. There is no such withdrawal of a relative component of Australian Defence Force personnel from Afghanistan. Next year the United States is withdrawing another 20,000 of its troops. There is no plan to withdraw-or lessen by one-the number of Australian troops in Afghanistan. The Cameron government in Britain is going to withdraw 400 to 500 troops by February. There is no similar commitment by the government or opposition in this parliament to have our troop numbers reduced in Afghanistan. President Sarkozy of France has said that there will be a continuous wind-down, from now through next year and into 2014, of French troops. There is no comparable commitment to withdraw Australian troops from Afghanistan.

It seems, on the basis of two similar countries having withdrawn their forces altogether, after a full parliamentary debate in rich, functioning democracies like ours, and a decision in similar but larger democracies to withdraw troops-starting in 2011, not in 2014-that Australia alone has decided to keep its full troop commitment operating in Afghanistan. There is a difference here. President Obama may make his call to our parliament to retain our troops while he is withdrawing 10,000 troops, but would it not be appropriate for our parliament to discuss the deployment of our 1,550 good and true Australian Defence Force personnel to some of the most dangerous situations in Afghanistan at a time when the US is bringing home 10,000 of its troops? I think so.

I heard Senator Abetz again go through the list of things going right in Afghanistan, but there is a lot going wrong as well. Corruption is rampant. Senator Milne tells me that a report in Congress today indicates a vast amount of money for the people of Afghanistan and the war against the Taliban is being siphoned off by people related to the Karzai regime or otherwise in positions of power in Afghanistan.

We have the position where there is an increasing voice in Afghanistan itself calling for the withdrawal of our troops and of course today the news in Australia, completely ignored by the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and, indeed, Senator Abetz in his contribution to this chamber, of a call by the commander of the Afghan troops with whom the Australians are serving in Oruzgan province, Brigadier General Mohammed Zafar Khan, for Australia's troops, effectively, to leave. 'Give us your equipment and leave' is effectively what the Afghan leader our troops are working with said. He said:

Three years is too much time for the Australians to stay here.

We, as responsible guardians of the welfare of our troops committed in Afghanistan and with a huge obligation on our shoulders to defend the interests of their families and our communities, surely should be debating such a remarkable statement from such a leader in the Afghan forces. It is time our troops were brought home to Australia.

ENDS

Thursday, 13 October 2011

Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (12:33): These are important amendments from the perspective of harmonisation. These amendments will bring the protections that will apply in the amended Work and Health Safety Bill to people who might bring complaints or take steps that are available to them under OH&S laws into line with the protections that exist in the Fair Work Act. There are a number of reasons why that is important.

The general principle point of view from someone who has practised in this area for a number of years is that it is very rare, when it comes to questions of discrimination and victimisation for exercising workplace rights that are available to you, that an employer, a fellow worker or whoever it may be says: 'I am now taking this action against you for a discriminatory reason. I am doing this to you—demoting you, dismissing you—because you have put in a complaint.' For that reason the law has recognised for a number of years, under governments of both persuasions, federally, that when it comes to protecting workplace rights it makes sense for the onus to be reversed, but for that to be something that is of course rebuttable on the evidence. That allows someone who has an evidentiary basis for a claim to proceed, and then the onus is reversed.

In the Fair Work Act that we have at the moment that has continued. It also applies to complaints that are made under workplace laws, and those workplace laws can include health and safety laws. If these amendments are not passed, firstly, we will have a situation where someone under the Health and Safety Act will have a lower level of protection available to them than someone under the Fair Work Act and will find it more difficult to exercise their workplace rights. Given the importance we have heard about these provisions and the importance of the protections they provide, every protection should be made available to someone to exercise the rights that are available to them under law.

Secondly, because of the potential overlap between the Fair Work Act and the Work Health and Safety Bill we are going to have a situation where, unless they are harmonised, we are going to encourage forum shopping. We are not going to see complaints made under the Health and Safety Act and a separate system of resolution; we are going to see—and who could blame someone for doing this?—people exercising their rights under the Fair Work Act and potentially seeking to expand the definition of what counts as a workplace right under that act, knowing that there will be more favourable provisions available to them there—provisions that, as I have said, have been enacted under both coalition and Labor governments.

It is for that reason, if we are serious about harmonisation, that these amendments should be passed. I commend the amendments to the House.

Monday, 31 October 2011

Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (13:14): As foreshadowed when this bill, the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Fair Protection for Firefighters) Bill 2011, was in the main chamber when we last sat, the federal and ACT governments had raised a number of concerns about the operation of the bill. There was then to be a period of discussion during which we would consider how to deal with those concerns. A fortnight later, I am very pleased to be in a position where there are a set of amendments proposed by the government and supported by the Greens, and there is an amendment that I have moved that I understand will be supported by the government. The member for Calwell outlined the amendments well and went through the purpose of those amendments, so I do not intend to add to that. Those amendments will clarify issues around prospectivity, clarify to whom the bill applies and clarify the date from which the bill operates.

There is one matter, though, that I do wish to note briefly. In the course of the discussions, the ACT government raised the point that it wanted to make it clear that this bill and these amendments would apply to employed firefighters and not to volunteers, because there are a number of volunteers who are employed in the ACT government. Accordingly, that is reflected in these amendments. My position is that I hope that, if it is the case that, at some later stage, volunteer firefighters consider they can mount a similar, science based case to be included in this, then they are in a position to do that. Maybe the review of the legislation that is to be conducted, to be concluded by 31 December 2013, would be an appropriate opportunity to do that. It should be said that, when the bill was first introduced, it proceeded on the basis that we were talking about, where it applied to a very small group of employed firefighters, but that should not preclude those who feel they are in a position to make a similar, science based case coming back with that at some later stage. But they will not be included in this amendment, as I think everyone understands.

The amendment that has been circulated in my name, amendment (1), gives effect, broadly—with one exception—to one of the recommendations of the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Legislation Committee inquiry into this bill. The report of the committee noted that the number of cancers to be covered by the bill was substantially less than what is covered in other jurisdictions and, in particular, in Canadian jurisdictions. The Senate inquiry recommended that, were the bill to proceed, Australian firefighters should have the same—no less but certainly at least as much—cover as is given to firefighters in other jurisdictions. The science has advanced, and all of the cancers that I propose be included, as per my amendment, are supported by the science, according to the Senate committee inquiry and as reflected by the legislation in other jurisdictions.

The one exception I mentioned is lung cancer. Lung cancer will not be covered by this bill, and the primary reason for that is that there is not yet in Australian law an adequate definition of 'nonsmoker'. The Senate committee recommended that the reversal of onus and the presumption that this bill would enact only apply to nonsmokers who get lung cancer, but there is as yet no suitable definition of 'nonsmoker' in Australian law. As the member for Calwell indicated, that is something that the government will enact by regulation when there is a suitable definition of 'nonsmoker'. All interested parties will have the opportunity to contribute to the framing of that definition because it may have broader implications.

I would like to conclude by commending the approach taken by the government and the opposition in this matter. Minister Evans's office in particular has devoted a good deal of time to making sure that we come up with a solution that addresses the legitimate concerns of employers but also provides the support that firefighters in other jurisdictions are entitled to, in line with the Senate committee recommendations, which ought to be put in place. I commend the opposition for their stance on this. I think it would be a fitting end to this year to pass, with the support of everyone in the parliament, a bill that will give greater protection to those who protect us.