The road looks slow for OHS research in Australia

In May 2024, Safe Work Australia’s (SWA) Chief Executive, Marie Boland, said she would “be reestablishing a research team and that team will look at options for how we support research and evaluation for the future.” On June 12 2025, SWA announced its “New roadmap for work health and safety and workers’ compensation research“. Progress on occupational …

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Digitalisation, Artificial Intelligence, OHS and Work

What do Safe Work Australia (SWA) executives do outside National Safe Work Month? Several times each year, they appear before Senate committees. Recently, SWA’s CEO Marie Boland, Sinead McHugh, and Katherine Taylor spoke at a Senate Inquiry into the Digital Transformation of Workplaces....

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Addressing Psychosocial Hazards at Work: New Incident Notification Reforms

On the afternoon of Friday, August 1, 2024, Safe Work Australia (SWA) announced important changes to the incident notification obligations in Australia’s Model Work Health and Safety laws. These changes are particularly relevant to the issues of psychological harm in workplaces and work-related suicides. I asked SWA for some clarifications on the changes and the …

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Sick leave entitlements miss the OHS justification

Australia is currently in the Winter season of sniffles, colds, and influenza, which generates illness and workplace absences. In the northern hemisphere, excessive heat may be causing a similar level of workplace absences. A recent article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation discussed workplace absences due to illness....

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Psychosocial incidents to be notifiable in Australia

The CEO of Safe Work Australia, Marie Boland, told delegates of the Psych Health and Safety Conference in Sydney on June 19 2024 that psychosocial injuries are likely to be notifiable to occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators, including instances of work-related suicide....

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Initial report on Psych Health and Safety Conference

Half way through Day 1 of the Psych Health and Safety Conference and it often feels like we are sitting at a dinner party of organisational psychologists, listening in to a conversation of respectful work colleagues. Some conversations are honest, some are uncomfortable and some are reassuring, but all are interesting....

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Broadening the OHS perspective

Over the last decade, the occupational health and safety (OHS) profession has been challenged by a new perspective on OHS and its professional interaction with it. Safety Differently, Safety II or some other variation are important and intriguing variations, but they seem to remain confined to the workplace, the obligations of the person conducting a …

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