On August 26 2022, Australia’s Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Burke, spoke at a union conference. This is not an unusual event for Ministers, but the timing of Burke’s address was less than a week before a major Jobs and Skills Summit – the hottest political event in town at the moment. The …
Australian political debate has a recurring thread of State and Federal responsibility. Currently, this debate focuses on the emergency response for floods in Queensland and New South Wales. Before this was the COVID response and the Black Summer bushfires. This argument over responsibility has trickled along for many years, for Constitutional and other reasons, including …
Below is some interesting occupational health and safety (OHS) issues that have appeared over the last week that I don’t have the time to explore in the usual depth but are useful. Danger Money appears David Marin-Guzman reports that unions are asking for an extra “$5 an hour to compensate [disability workers] for risks in …
Following on from the product safety theme in yesterday’s article, it is noted that the Australian Treasury has opened a consultation phase on improving the effectiveness of the Consumer Product Safety System. The report makes specific reference to workplace health and safety laws. This consultation is a direct result of the recent review of Australian …
It has been noted that the recent World Congress on Safety And Health at Work had “Vision Zero” as one of its three themes. It was curious that the opening remarks of Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong (pictured right), did not mention Vision Zero at all. In fact he was quite measured in his …
The Australian Treasurer, Scott Morrison, released his 2016 Budget in early May 2016. The principal aim of the Budget and Liberal Party election campaign announced on 8 May 2016 is to create “jobs and growth”. Every one of those jobs should be a safe job for many reasons other than saving lives, but none of …
The quest for accurate determination of the costs of poor occupational health and safety (OHS) has been a regular discussion point in this blog but the quest may be a never-ending one and ultimately pointless. Recently the UK’s HSE Chairman, Judith Hackett took the Forum for Private Business (FPB) to task over estimates of OHS …
