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Kevin Jones

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Unsafe Work, Confused Enforcement and a Union That Could Be Bought

I didn’t expect Michael Crosby to talk about occupational health and safety (OHS) in his presentation at this week’s National Press Club, but OHS permeated almost everything he discussed. Most of the audience was there for the industrial relations (IR) perspective and background to the Royal Commission into the Integrity of Major Public and Civil Infrastructure Construction Projects in Victoria, which focuses on the Construction, Forestry, Maritime and Energy Union (CFMEU) and its relationship with the Victorian government and the industry more generally.

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Leadership Is Important, But It Won’t Fix a Bad System

The safety discipline has spent decades refining systems, procedures and engineering controls. Given Australia’s long-term reduction in workplace fatalities, much of that effort seems worthwhile. The continued analysis of systems of work was at the heart of a recent Australian Institute of Health and Safety webinar by Sentis, provocatively titled The Single Greatest Influence on Safety Isn’t a System. It’s a Leader.

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Over Twenty-Five Years After Longford, Are We Any Wiser?

Professor Andrew Hopkins transformed Australia’s occupational health and safety (OHS) approach through his research on mining safety management and disasters, and especially through his analysis of the Royal Commission into the Longford Gas Explosion. That Royal Commission was only the second in Victoria into an industrial disaster, following the one into the Westgate Bridge Collapse in 1970. His Longford analysis remarkably became a best-selling book and remains an obligatory read for OHS people, senior executives and OHS regulators.

In 2000, I interviewed Hopkins after a Lessons From Longford book launch in Victoria.

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Australian Workplaces Cannot Adapt Forever

On November 5 2026, Safe Work Australia (SWA) held a research webinar on the occupational health and safety (OHS) context of global warming/heating. This continued this year’s OHS theme, promoted by the International Labour Organisation. SWA will develop a strategy on the issue and can already draw on ILO research and frameworks, but OHS has very little political clout. Global warming has only slightly more. Addressing this existential risk will require significant, rapid change in social structures, purposes, and political policy. OHS has an important role to play, but the scale of climate change means that workplace safety interventions alone will never be enough.

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The Rigged System Behind Workplace Injury and Illness

At the time of writing, it looks like the Democrats in the United States are smashing the Republicans and President Trump in the mid-term elections. One of the earliest winners was Democrat Jon Ossoff. His campaign strategy, focused on calling out presidential and political corruption, seems to have worked. This strategy of blunt honesty could be exported to Australia and applied in arguments about reducing work-related injuries and deaths.

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