Workplace Incidents Consultative Committee
Danny PEARSON (Essendon – Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Assistant Treasurer, Minister for WorkSafe and the TAC) (09:54): I rise to give my heartfelt thanks for the work of the Workplace Incidents Consultative Committee, and I am really pleased that the member for Narre Warren South is in the chamber today, as he is the co-chair of this important group. It is a great privilege to be a minister and it is a really special privilege to be the Minister for WorkSafe and the TAC. It is obviously important to work closely with your departments and with your agencies to try to understand what is the right thing to do – how to construct policy in the right way and try to implement it. But what I really value from the Workplace Incidents Consultative Committee is the input of the lived experience. Every one of these members has lost a loved one. Think about that for a moment – the notion that you have lost a child, you have lost a partner or you have lost a parent in a workplace injury. The way in which you choose to respond to that is by volunteering, providing assistance, trying to make sure that we provide the right support to bereaved families that have lost someone as a consequence of a workplace injury and thinking about how we can try to improve our performance to make sure that we minimise the trauma that people experience. So from my perspective I want to thank my good friend the member for Narre Warren South, but I also want to also thank Dr Lana Cormie, who is the co-chair; Samantha Burns, the deputy co-chair; Dave Brownlee; Elvis Martin; James Wood; Bette Phillips-Campbell; Ralph Snider; Michael Stone; Brett Struhs; and Francis Malek. Thank you so very much.