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No matter where you live, in Australia or overseas, anyone who is a director or senior executive of a company with operations in Victoria should be aware the Victorian Government may be taking considerable risks with your personal freedom.
A bill before the Victorian parliament proposes a corporation should become criminally liable for the actions of its employees or agents.
That means if a person is a director or senior officer of a company that operates in Victoria and a staff member or contractor for that company is killed in their operations, the director or senior officer may be jailed for seven years for manslaughter.
Currently a person can be convicted of a criminal offence only if he or she was actively involved in what took place.
Now in Victoria people may be judged on the systems of the groups they hired to do the work.
Everyone in the community wants to see the number of industrial deaths reduced but there is little doubt this action by the Victoria governments is to appease the left wing of the union movement.
Armed with this legislation, unions will greatly increase their power because a safety warning dumped on a company could send the entire board and management to jail if something goes wrong. Accordingly, large sums will have to be paid for worker safety clearance.
Victorian government officials say they plan to nullify most of its impact and require the directors to be actively involved in the mishaps but that would cause them to be accused of murder.
Any act that says one thing and relies on a clause or two to nullify its impact is still, nevertheless, dangerous legislation.
Ken Phillips of the Independent Contractors Association has undertaken research on the act and points out that over the past decade a third of the deaths in Victoria came in the agricultural sector, 21 per cent in construction, 14 per cent in manufacturing and 8 per cent in transport.
The balance came from the public, community sectors and other areas.
If the act was serious about shooting home responsibility for deaths then all those involved in organisations would be covered. Instead, those deaths that take place in the government arena are excluded because public servants and politicians are excused.
Similarly, if a business is organised as a trust there is no responsibility.
Phillips points out that if a tree branch kills a student in a state school, the principal and board will not be jailed.
But if it happens in a private school organised as a company, the principal can be jailed and the board can be jailed if they receive directors' fees.
Whereas large corporations have the money to mount major legal defences, small business people and farmers will almost certainly end up in jail because of the lack of financial clout.
To be a director or a company operating in Victoria will involve incurring a new dimension of risk.
Moreover the definition of employee is wide and covers contractors as well. There is no doubt that if Victoria passes this legislation factories operating in the state need to think about whether or not they want to risk their senior people being jailed or relying on the odd clause or two that the Victoria government may slip in the bill to pacify them.
This is probably the most dangerous legislation that any state government has trumped up.
Those who have jobs in Victoria should understand they are a risk.
Directors may not be prepared to operate in the southern state and risk their personal freedom when there are five other states who are happy to have the businesses operate there and not threaten the directors with jail. Smaller enterprises operating in Victoria may not have the same freedom to move.
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