SPEECH - INTERNATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING - BLACKTOWN - 28 APRIL, 2021

Acknowledgements

A few months ago now I met with Kay Catanzariti, Pam Gurner-Hall and Linda Ralls.

They'd all gone to work safely and come home safely. But the people they loved had not.

A husband, a husband, and a son.

And while the loss wasn't recent the grief will always be raw.

The description of the way their loved ones died.

The knowledge of the loyalty and support they had from their union.

But most importantly, the frustration that every single workplace death is preventable.

Every single workplace death is preventable.

And while we often - when we talk about workplace deaths - deal purely with occupational health and safety issues, workplace health and safety, it does go broader than that.

We can't ignore the workplace health and safety rules. We have had now, for more than two years in Australia, the Boland Review, with 34 recommendations, not one of which has been acted on.

And for the life of me I do not understand how it is that the workplace is the only place where someone can be killed without criminal penalty. The only place.

We need to work with the states and territories to implement the Boland Review. We need to have within the model laws for workplace health and safety a crime to be there and available for industrial manslaughter.

But the reason I say it's not only the workplace health and safety laws that determine whether or not people get home safely is because of this simple experience I want to explain.

Two weeks ago, I was in Central Queensland with coal miners.

I was there to talk to them about insecurity at work. About what was happening with labour hire, about what was happening with casualisation.

I expected we were going to have a conversation purely about wages. And we did talk about wages.

But within two minutes, every single coal miner went to the fact that if someone doesn't have secure work, they are less likely to speak up.

If someone is worried about whether or not they'll get their next shift, they are less likely to make a complaint when they see something that needs fixing.

And there is a direct line between insecure work and unsafe work.

And that's not just in our oldest industries, whether they be mining, whether they be construction, whether they be manufacturing.

It goes right through to the newest industries.

Dede Fredy. Xiaojun Chen. Chow Khai Shien. Bijoy Paul. Ik Wong.

Those five men all died within a space of two months working in what's meant to be an exciting gig economy. Earning less than what is the legal minimum wage.

And when we put those issues to those currently in government we were told that it was “complicated”.

We will today unveil a reminder of more than 100 years of Australian history that minimum standards are not complicated. They are an entitlement.

And when they are minimum standards of pay or when they are minimum standards of safety, they all mean the same thing.

They mean the dignity of being rewarded for work and the dignity of getting home at the end of the day.

We mourn everybody who has not had that right.

We grieve with their families.

And we use our resolve to make workplaces safe and secure as people have a right to know they should be.

ENDS