Unions have called for more funding to be given to Work Safe ACT in light of the territory's director of public prosecutions highlighting a need for better investigations to support prosecutor's efforts.
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And the Master Builders' Association ACT has similarly called for the territory's work safety regulator to be given more funding, but stopped short of pushing for greater enforcement powers.
Director of Public Prosecutions Jon White on Wednesday told a Legislative Assembly hearing that work site fatalities needed to be treated with the same rigour as full-scale criminal investigation to help improve the prospects of successful prosecutions.
Mr White's comments follow a number of unsuccessful industrial court cases, as the prosecutor's offices suffers under stretched resources and Work Safe ACT faces continued union criticism for a lack of enforcement.
Unions ACT secretary Alex White said the director's comments highlighted a number of "live issues" on work sites, ranging from a lack of resources for WorkSafe ACT and the DPP to sub-contracting and phoenixing of construction firms.
But he said that the "root cause" of such problems was the compliance framework under Access Canberra, which meant the work safety regulator "only pursues the big cases".
"If you only prosecute those [big cases] then your investigators don't have the experience they need, and prosecutors don't get the experience they need on the smaller cases," he said.
"So the compliance framework pacifies the inspectors and means WorkSafe' is only briefing the DPP on the big cases, and because they only get a handful of industrial cases, they don't have the experience of resources to prosecute them."
The union leader also said the DPP had highlighted that the use of labour hire firms and subcontracting was allowing some building companies to "expressly avoid their obligations", urging the government to act on both funding and regulating labour hire firms.
While MBA chief executive Michael Hopkins backed the calls for increasing funding for WorkSafe ACT, he said the current laws had strong enough enforcement powers, but funding needed to be increased "for those laws to be implemented".
Mr Hopkins said the industry also wanted greater funding for a range of areas, including enforcing building quality standards, planning and environmental enforcement, as well as work health and safety.
But he said irrespective of Mr White's concerns that subcontracting made prosecutions more complex, such arrangements were the nature of construction activities and even if a subcontractor ran a separate legal entity, safety on work sites was "everyone's responsibility".
The union movement has called on the government to make WorkSafe ACT an independent statutory authority, establish a labour hire licensing scheme and boost funding to the DPP for industrial prosecutions in its 2017-18 budget submission.
Meanwhile, MBA has urged a similar boost to funding, increase land supply, continue tax reform and fund the previously-announced position of a territory government chief engineer.
A spokesman for Chief Minister Andrew Barr said that "as a general rule" the government did not comment on individual budget submissions, but they would be reviewed to "inform the development of the 2018-19 budget".
