Tasmania’s Liberal Government and Labor Opposition are in agreement about tackling dangerous workplace invasions by groups such as the Bob Brown Foundation which is targeting Tasmania’s timber industry. However, they are in disagreement over how to achieve it. Source: Timberbiz
The Government will send its controversial anti-protest laws to the Legislative Council this week – probably Wednesday – and needs Labor Party support to get it passed.
Labor says it will not support the laws but wants to work with the Tasmania’s Resources Minister Guy Barnett to draw up an alternative Bill.
“The Bob Brown Foundation continues to hinder the legitimate activities of the Tasmanian timber industry by staging dangerous stunts for social media including standing on loose log piles for photos, locking on to moving machinery and doing tree sits in logged coupes,” Shadow Minister for Resources Shane Broad said.
“These activities are incredibly risky and could easily lead to the serious injury or death of protestors and timber workers.
“It’s clear the timber industry wants a bipartisan approach to addressing this issue and I am offering to work with Minister Barnett to draft Legislation to tackle these job destroying stunts,” he said.
“The Labor Party’s concerns about the Workplaces (Protection from Protesters) Amendment Bill are well documented. This bill risks making a criminal out of every Tasmanian and will provide Bob Brown a fundraising gravy train he will take all the way to the High Court of Australia.
“Under the proposed legislation, nurses protesting about a lack of resources outside our hospitals or factory workers demanding better leave entitlements could be fined or even jailed.
“There are alternate models that I believe we can implement with bipartisan support that would provide certainty and protection for the forest sector and other industries targeted by workplace invasions.’’
However, Mr Barnett said Dr Broad’s claims that nurses and factory workers could be fined or even jailed under this legislation was completely misleading “and Labor knows it’’.
Mr Barnett said that Section 5 (2) of the Act, which is not amended by the Bill, specifically excludes hospitals from the definition of business premises to which it applies.
Therefore, nurses and medical staff protesting at hospitals were exempt from this Bill. The Act also provided certain exemptions for protected or lawful industrial action.
“Labor’s fabricated attack on the Bill is nothing more than a poorly-disguised attempt to hide the fact that it is the only Labor Party in the country that seems to oppose these laws,” Mr Barnett said.
“Unlike Labor parties in NSW, Queensland, South Australian and Western Australia, the Tasmanian Labor party has bucked the national consensus and voted against this Bill when in the lower house previously.”
Mr Barnett said he acknowledged and applauded Labor’s condemnation of the Bob Brown Foundation’s recent radical protest action.
“Tasmanian businesses and workers deserve the right to work free from threats and invasions from radical extremists,” he said.
