Today in Parliament, Abigail spoke in support of a workplace protections bill, welcoming it as a long-overdue, collaborative step toward fair treatment for workers and a crucial win in the fight for safer, more just workplaces.

Abigail said:

I speak on behalf of The Greens as our spokesperson for industrial relations, and work health and safety, to support the Industrial Relations and Other Legislation Amendment (Workplace Protections) Bill 2025. I am glad to see this bill before the House today. I had begun to think that this Labor Government would renege on all of its election commitments and cower from all of the reforms it acknowledged we needed when it was in opposition, and I am relieved and heartened to see that that is not the case. I acknowledge the hard work of Minister Cotsis and her staff and put on record once again what a pleasure they are to work with and how much I value the collaborative approach shown to me and my team in the portfolios of Industrial Relations, and Work Health and Safety.

The bill is another concrete step forward in reforming our industrial relations and work health and safety laws to rebalance the dynamics between workers and employers. It is a critical piece of the preventative work that the Government is doing to reduce workplace injuries. The Minister for Industrial Relations has listened and consulted, and she has responded with a bill that captures reforms that many, including The Greens, have been calling for for years. I thank Unions NSW and the countless individual unions that have been steadfast in their advocacy on so many of the reforms contained in the bill, with a special thanks to those who have worked with my office in relation to this and other reforms. Their expertise and assistance is invaluable.

The bill incorporates elements from the long overdue second tranche of recommendations of the Government's Industrial Relations Taskforce, or the Booth and Boland taskforce. The first tranche of the taskforce's recommendations resulted in the new mutual gains bargaining framework that was passed in November 2023. Also legislated at that time was the re-establishment of the Industrial Court. The bill seeks to refine and expand on those elements, as well as provide for gender equity objectives and create new anti-bullying and harassment powers. The bill inserts a new object to prevent discrimination, bullying and sexual harassment in the workplace and amends section 3 (f) of the Industrial Relations Act 1996—the IR Act—to include a specific object promoting gender equality and eliminating gender-based undervaluation. Amended sections 129M and 134 will require parties bargaining in good faith to provide relevant gender equality information. Section 129P is amended to allow either party or facilitator to declare mutual gains bargaining unresolved.

The bill also clarifies Industrial Relations Commission powers in conciliation, with new section  134 (2A) allowing the IRC to make recommendations or directions without party consent and new section 134 (2C) requiring reasons to be provided if a party refuses. The amendment to section 136 authorises the IRC to resolve disputes on industrial instrument interpretation via interim and final orders. The bill introduces civil penalties of $25,000 for contravening final arbitration orders. Under the bill, a new prohibition on sexual harassment and newly created powers to remedy and prevent sexual harassment are established. The IRC is granted jurisdiction over sexual harassment complaints within the New South Wales system for public and local sectors, applying Fair Work Act 2009 and Sex Discrimination Act 1984 standards. A breach of the sexual harassment prohibition attracts civil penalties of up to $18,870 for an individual or $93,900 for non-individuals and maximum damages of $100,000. A person can be vicariously liable for breach, subject to a reasonable steps defence.

The bill sets a time limit of 24 months for complaints, with conciliation being mandatory before arbitration. In addition, a worker will be able to bring an application to the IRC for a stop bullying order. The relevant definitions mirror the Fair Work Act provisions but apply to public and local government and non‑incorporated entities. The commission may award up to $100,000 in compensation and can apply civil penalties for breach of a stop bullying order—again, they are $18,870 for an individual or $93,900 otherwise. The bill excludes people from making a claim under those provisions while also claiming under anti-discrimination laws, although a person may make a claim for a stop bullying order while also commencing a proceeding or application for the same conduct under WHS laws.

Changes to the IR Act also include freedom of association and anti-victimisation protections by expanding protected activities to include "industrial organising activities" in section 209, broadening the grounds on which employees may not be victimised—for example, on the basis of workers compensation claims or protected characteristics—and reforming the evidentiary standard for victimisation to reflect the Federal Court's objective test. In relation to return to work disputes, the definition of "industrial matter" is expanded to include return to work arrangements for injured public sector or local government workers, and disputes on suitable duties post‑injury are permitted to be handled by the IRC under sections 6 and 130.

The second limb of the bill relates to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011. The bill makes a range of other miscellaneous but important amendments, including expanding right of entry powers to enable permit holders to take measurements, conduct tests and take and use photos and videos where it is directly relevant to the suspected contravention. That is an important provision that has been raised multiple times as an impediment to permit holders conducting important health and safety duties. It has been particularly notable during the ongoing dust diseases inquiry, which just concluded, where unions have said they have been prevented from taking critical air‑quality monitoring measurements in tunnelling projects in order to determine potential respirable crystalline silica exposure levels.

Other amendments include unions being allowed to review certain decisions, the mandatory notification of provisional improvement notices to the regulator and a streamlined prosecution pathway for unions, with moiety now available. The court will be able to permit prosecutions beyond the two-year limit if justice requires. Persons conducting a business or undertaking will be required to comply with or exceed approved codes of practice. The bill also provides for expanded information-sharing powers for SafeWork NSW to improve transparency and coordination. Finally, under this part of the bill, the IRC will also be enabled to resolve WHS disputes, modelled largely on the Queensland legislation.

We can all agree that no-one should be injured at work. We can all agree that putting measures in place to prevent injury is an obvious step to reducing levels of workplace injury. I do not believe I have heard anyone in this place, from any side of politics, argue against a focus on injury prevention in the context of discussions about work health and safety. That is the whole point of WHS laws. But it is a mistake to talk about primary injury prevention in the context of discussions about the workers compensation system. Arguing that we should reduce the supports available to one set of workers with workplace injuries on the basis that we are instead focusing on preventing injuries to another set workers is as nonsensical as arguing that we should reduce money to hospitals because we are focusing on preventative medicine. We focus on preventative medicine to stop people being sick in the first place. If successful in those preventative measures, the corresponding reduced demand on hospitals and hospital funding is an added bonus.

Similarly, if we focus on improving our WHS laws and preventing injuries from happening in the first place, the corresponding reduced demand on our workers compensation system is an added bonus. To try to argue, as the Government has in the context of the proposed workers compensation reforms, that reducing workers compensation entitlements satisfies some goal of injury prevention is logically absurd. One must come before the other. There are excellent injury‑prevention measures contained in the bill that are designed to ensure that poor employers are held accountable for insufficiently safe workplaces and adequately incentivised to change their behaviour before people are injured—measures where an independent arbiter can step in and order damaging behaviour to stop before it causes or exacerbates injury and that facilitate SafeWork to be a more effective and responsive regulator. Those are the sorts of prevention measures we need, along with the work that SafeWork has already started doing to reduce psychological workplace hazards.

I also acknowledge the preventative impact that laws such as the industrial manslaughter laws that this Government has brought in have in incentivising safer employer decision-making. Those sorts of measures will have a real impact on making New South Wales workplaces safer and on bringing down escalating rates of injury, both physical and psychological, in our State. It is that sort of steady and evidence-based work by the Minister and her office—listening to and collaborating with injured workers and the union movement, practitioners, academics and other experts—that will directly lead to not only safer workplaces and fewer lives being impacted or destroyed by workplace injuries but also reduced pressure on our workers compensation system.

The bill is not the whole piece; it is not everything that we need to do in the space. But no-one is saying it is. We have much more work to do to ensure that every worker in our State is safe at work. As a separate issue, there is also a lot of work we can and must do to stop our workers compensation system making people sicker when they are injured and to cut out excess costs from a system that has become bloated with the third‑party expenses. The bill represents a combination of excellent reforms that will make a real difference to the dynamics between workers and employers and, in the process, make workplaces safer and bring down injury rates. My team and I look forward to continuing to work with the Government on that vital prevention work in future months and years. The Greens support the bill.

Abigail later moved the following amendments to the Bill:

No. 1 Duty to manage psychosocial and digital work environment risks

Page 21, Schedule 3. Insert after line 10—

[1A] Section 19A

Insert after section 19—

19A Duties of persons conducting businesses or undertakings to manage psychosocial and digital work environment risks

(1) Without limiting section 19, a person conducting a business or undertaking must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that work is designed, organised and managed in a way that does not expose workers to the following—

(a) unsafe, excessive or unreasonable work demands or workload allocation,

(b) unsafe or unreasonable performance metrics, monitoring or surveillance systems, including performance metrics, monitoring or surveillance systems imposed or administered through digital platforms, algorithms or artificial intelligence systems,

(c) any other system of work or organisational practice that poses a risk to psychological or physical health.

(2) A person conducting a business or undertaking who allocates work by software, platform, code, algorithm or application, must allocate work in a way that—

(a) is not unsafe or excessive, and

(b) does not create unreasonable workloads, and

(c) complies with any requirements of industrial instruments applicable to the workers, and

(d) does not use discriminatory attributes in the distribution of work, and

(e) promotes a fair and equitable distribution of work, with systems promoting a right to disconnect within the meaning of the Fair Work Act 2009 of the Commonwealth through a fair rotational allocation of work.

(3) For this Act, exposure to one or more of the above hazards is taken to be a risk to health and safety and must be eliminated or minimised as far as is reasonably practicable.

No. 2 PCBU compliance with codes of practices

Page 21, Schedule 3[2], proposed section 26A, lines 15–20. Omit all the words on the lines.

Insert instead "a code of practice for the purposes of this Act, comply with the code."

No. 3 Work health and safety disputes

Page 23, Schedule 3[4], proposed section 102D, line 9. Omit all the words on the line. Insert instead—

(b) notice of the dispute is given under section 102C(1), and

(c) the notice does not state an immediate or imminent exposure to a workplace hazard as a WHS matter the subject of the dispute.

No. 4 Duty to manage psychosocial and digital work environment risks

Page 25, Schedule 3. Insert after line 15—

[5A] Section 118(5)

Insert after section 118(4)—

(5) The WHS entry permit holder may exercise a function under subsection (1) in relation to another contravention of this Act relating to or affecting a relevant worker that the WHS entry permit holder comes to reasonably suspect while at the workplace under this division.

No. 5 Duty to manage psychosocial and digital work environment risks

Page 25, Schedule 3. Insert before line 16—

[5B] Section 118A

Insert after section 118—

118A Right to inspect digital systems

(1) Without limiting section 118, the WHS entry permit holder may, while at the workplace under this division, inspect or examine the following in relation to the suspected contravention of this Act—

(a) a digital system,

(b) records, data, logs or audit trails produced by or through a digital system if the permit holder reasonably suspects the digital system is contributing to one or more of the following—

(i) unreasonable work demands or work intensification,

(ii) psychosocial hazards,

(iii) the imposition of unsafe performance metrics or surveillance measures,

(iv) other contraventions of this Act relating to the health and safety of workers.

(2) The relevant person conducting a business or undertaking at the workplace must give the WHS entry permit holder—

(a) access to the records, data, logs, audit trails or other information referred to in subsection (1) in a readily understandable format, and

(b) reasonable assistance to interpret or navigate the information or digital system.

(3) The relevant person conducting a business or undertaking at the workplace is permitted to disclose information to the WHS entry permit holder in the course of giving access to the information for the purposes of an inspection or examination under this section if—

(a) the information relates to a suspected contravention, and

(b) access is reasonably necessary for the inspection or examination.

(4) In this section—

digital system means one or more of the following used or operated at a workplace—

(a) a digital platform,

(b) a software application,

(c) an automated system,

(d) an algorithm.

No. 6 WHS civil penalty proceedings

Page 26, Schedule 3. Insert after line 23—

[15A] Section 260

Omit the section. Insert instead—

260 Proceedings may be brought by regulator, inspector or industrial organisation

Proceedings for a contravention of a WHS civil penalty provision may only be brought by—

(a) the regulator, or

(b) an inspector with the written authorisation of the regulator, either generally or in a particular case, or

(c) a registered organisation on behalf of the person affected by the contravention.

[15B]Section 262

Omit the section. Insert instead—

262 Recovery of monetary penalties

(1) The court may order that the monetary penalty under a civil penalty order is paid to—

(a) the State, or

(b) a registered organisation if the proceedings were brought by the registered organisation.

(2) The provisions of any Act relating to the recovery of penalties imposed for an offence apply in the same way for a recovery of a monetary penalty.

I request the amendments be considered in seriatim. I will go through the six amendments to explain each of them, but I firstly acknowledge that amendments Nos 1 and 5 come from the incredible work of my senior policy adviser, Angus Hoy. Anyone who has seen my stress levels this month will understand that Angus has been on holiday. Before he went on holiday, Angus put together those fantastic amendments that came out of the recommendations of the Select Committee on the impact of technological and other change on the future of work and workers in New South Wales, which the Hon. Daniel Mookhey chaired. Its final report on workplace surveillance and automation made some really useful recommendations, including:

That the NSW Government consider amending work health and safety laws to regulate the allocation of work by software/platforms/code/algorithms/apps, expressly providing that the allocation of work:

• must not be unsafe, excessive or create unreasonable workloads
• must comply with requirements of industrial instruments covering the work
• must not use discriminatory attributes in the distribution of work
• must promote a fair and equitable distribution of work …

A couple of other relevant recommendations in that report have been picked up in these two amendments. Amendment No. 1, which concerns section 19A, puts an obligation on the PCBU to ensure as far as reasonably practicable that work is designed, organised and managed in a way that does not expose workers to unsafe, excessive or unreasonable work demands or workload allocation. Other specific references are made to unreasonable performance metrics, monitoring or surveillance systems—all of the nasty things that have crept into a lot of workplaces in the modern day that do not necessarily create any productivity benefit. Instead, they put incredible stress on workers and unnecessarily invade their privacy. I will not say much more about that. I encourage members to read the report, because it was a very good piece of work.

Amendment No. 2 is mainly intended as what we thought was a tidy-up of the section. At the moment, it says that a PCBU needs to comply with a code of practice or to comply with a set of practices, or policies, that are designed to be equivalent to the code of practice. This amendment tries to bring it back to ensure that everybody can meet and comply with the code as set by the regulation. However, from talking with the Minister and her office, I understand that the intention of the section is not to result in a dispute over what the code of practice is and whether the current practices of the business are equivalent, superior or worse. On that basis, The Greens will not push particularly hard on this amendment. However, I place on record that a couple of unions raised that concern with us, and we wanted to bring that to the Minister's attention.

Amendment No. 3 concerns work health and safety disputes. Once a WHS dispute has been notified to the Industrial Relations Commission [IRC], no inspectors can be appointed, and any inspector already appointed must take no further action. But if a union notifies of a dispute over cessation of work under part 5, division 6 of the Act, owing to the belief that imminent risk to worker safety exists, there is a concern that then means there is no recourse for an inspector to issue a prohibition notice for the duration of the IRC considering the matter. Again, this was raised with us by some of our friends in the unions, and we have suggested this amendment to add a third limb in paragraph (c) that "the notice does not state an immediate or imminent exposure to a workplace hazard as a WHS matter the subject of the dispute" in order to clarify that concern.

Amendment No. 4 attempts to close a loophole. If a WHS entry permit holder has a reason to enter a workplace and sees another hazard while they are there, for which they would ordinarily have to get another permit, the idea is they can address the issue at the same time. This amendment closes that loophole. We have already talked about amendment No. 5. Amendment No. 6 relates to the ability of industrial organisations to pursue civil penalties for contraventions of the Industrial Relations Act. This is a welcome change that will help trade unions better protect the rights of their members in the workplace. This capability should extend beyond the Industrial Relations Act to also allow unions to pursue breaches of civil penalty provisions in the Work Health and Safety Act. That is the intention of amendment No. 6.

I finish by praising the work of Minister Cotsis and her office and thank them for discussing these amendments with me. Hopefully they can be agreed to. I also sincerely thank all of the dedicated staff at Unions NSW and the individual unions, which my senior policy adviser Angus Hoy and I deal with on a daily basis, who have worked to help us understand this very complex area of work health and safety to create amendments like these. I commend the amendments to the Committee.

4 of the 6 amendments were agreed to.

Read the transcript in Hansard here and here.

26 June 2025