Ivan Dean, Speeches Index

Thursday 14 April 2011

OCCUPATIONAL LICENSING NATIONAL LAW BILL 2011

Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - I will be making a reasonably brief contribution to this matter. I appreciated the fact we were provided with this document, the Occupational Licensing National Law Bill 2011 but we have only had it for a very short period of time. I certainly have not been able to have a look at it and I doubt if -

Ms Forrest - It was e-mailed to us months ago by the Leader's office.

Mr DEAN - I do not recall having received it but I do not say that did not happen at all. Even if I had been given it last night or what have you I think it might have been of some assistance and support to me here today.

Madam President, I thank the Government for the briefing this morning and it has certainly answered a number of issues I was concerned about and I will briefly refer to a couple of those points in a moment. I might add I will probably pursue this in the Committee stage unless the honourable Leader is able to answer this during his closing debate here.

In relation to the Occupational Licensing National Law Act 2010 in Victoria that applies in this instance to the Tasmanian law I am just wondering why that document has not been included as either an attachment to this bill or as a part of the schedule to this bill, why it is not enclosed and becomes a part of it. The Leader might be able to answer that question.

I think, very clearly the Queensland floods probably identified the reasons that we need to go down this track, Madam President, with a number of our people in this State moving to Queensland to carry out operations in that State - the electricians, the plumbers and all those organisations and those who have been mentioned and referred to in this bill.

I would think almost all those people would have been moving off to Queensland to assist and support the recovery in that State. I think it really came to the front when that happened that this needed to happen and it needed to happen very quickly. In actual fact I can say that the police, for instance, had been talking about - and another word often used is 'portability' - police have been talking about portability for decades. That is a police officer in this State being able to move to Victoria or New South Wales or any other State in the Commonwealth and perform their functions as a police officer. That cannot happen.

It only happens under a special authority of the Commissioner of Police of that State where they can issue them a warrant under which they can operate in that State in certain circumstances. Currently it requires that police, if they are going to move interstate or move here from interstate, then they have to undergo a crash course and it is normally a shortened course to be able to operate and act here as a police officer, but portability has been around for a long time.

The question I raised this morning - that is the complaints situation - if a person from interstate, Victoria for instance, an electrician comes here to this State and they are caught up in a complaint where the complaint is made of shoddy work, that is determined by the Tasmanian jurisdiction and the finding of that result is then forwarded to the national body in New South Wales where they implement the action if there is to be a deregistration of that person. I understand that is the process; hopefully that is the process. I think people out there need to understand that.

The member for Mersey is back and may well talk on the issues he raised and I had it down as a matter too to talk on, and that is the workplace standards situation and whether the conditions in the other States are significantly different from what they are in this State and just what the position is because you could have workers moving from here across to another State and the conditions may be much stronger, may require more control in certain areas, and I just wonder where that is within the country and whether or not there will be some national position in place in relation to those rules and laws, in relation to workplace standards and safety. I think that is important too.

When we talk about people moving from one State to another, everything needs to be in place and there needs to be commonality amongst all of these areas, not just some. That is critically important.

Mr Gaffney - Through you, Madam President - I was satisfied with the response I got at the briefing so I will not be raising it.

Mr DEAN - I think that is why it needs to be on Hansard. That is the problem with briefings, in briefings none of the information is on Hansard so there is no way of going back at some later stage and understanding whether or not that was said, whether that is the position. That is why I raised the matter of complaints here today. Members need to be aware of that. It needs to be on Hansard so that you can go back at a later stage if you need to and check it and see what was said in relation to that matter.

I learned that lesson very early in the piece of coming into this place in the Parliament. The briefings are good but they are not on Hansard unfortunately.

Having said that, I will certainly support the bill. It is happening across a whole spectrum of things now. It is happening with many issues that we are currently working with across the board. If you look at our road rules now, we have road rules that apply nationally. It was not that long ago when each State had their own acts and regulations with no commonality between them. Some of the laws in this State were totally different from what they were in another State and vice versa.

Now we have the national road rules. We are moving down that track; Australia is a small place and we do cross boundaries on a regular basis so it is important to have their portability to be able to operate in other areas.

Having said that, I will be supporting the bill. The matter that I raised in the first instance I will raise in the Committee stage if the Leader does not answer it at this time.

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