Innes Willox of the Australian Industry Group is a well-established figure in Australia’s political and industrial landscape. As such he was a good choice to be the first speaker at a small safety conference in Melbourne Australia.
The best speakers about workplace safety are often those who do not speak about safety but those who speak about a world that includes occupational health and safety (OHS).
I have written before about the use of Broken Windows theory in an occupational health and safety context. Earlier this year another OHS professional, Bryan McWhorter, wrote about his success in following this approach.
One advantage of talking about this theory is that it applies a concept from outside the OHS field to affect worker and manager behaviours. A safety professional can use the theory’s origin story to show a different approach to safety management. It allows a rationalisation for enforcing safety on those “long hanging” hazards. Continue reading “Broken Windows seems to work”
A safety conference in Victoria Australia today heard from Innes Willox of the AIGroup about new challenges in business and occupational health and safety (OHS). As many have mentioned recently big data is a challenge but with important benefits. A major flaw in any of these discussions is an overestimation of data sources and usefulness. Continue reading “Big OHS data needs to digitise the past”
Australia has a political structure of States and Territories existing within a Federation or Com
monwealth. Legislative change has a smooth journey when political stars are aligned, where the same political party is in power at State and Federal levels. Federal change is even smoother when the same political party has control of both houses of Parliament. Not surprisingly, this ultimate combination is rare and could be as damaging to occupational health and safety (OHS) as it can be beneficial. The recent OHS harmonisation process is a good example of a political mess.
This may be the reality of Australian politics but it doesn’t need to be.
Several Australian States have
The Western Australian Government is getting serious about making its occupational health and safety regime consistent with the strategies and operations of the other Australian States. On 27 August 2017, Premier Mark McGowan stated, in a media release, that
“Penalties for workplace safety offences haven’t changed for 13 years. The substantial increases reflect the seriousness of ensuring the safety of Western Australian workers.”
Coincidentally, as an article about quad bike safety was being uploaded to this blog, details of the release of Tasmanian coronial findings were received. The findings were released by Coroner Simon Cooper on August 25 2017 and were not reported widely.
The Coroner investigated seven deaths related to quad bikes but only two occurred on workplaces or as part of performing work – Heather Richardson and Roger Larner. Curiously, WorkSafe Tasmania did not investigate these work-related deaths. Continue reading “Tassie Coroner releases his safety findings on 7 quad bike deaths”
In findings released this week in New Zealand, Coroner Brigitte Windley has recommended that WorkSafeNZ and the Accident Compensation Corporation consider whether there is a case for mandatory crush protection devices (CPD) or Roll-over protection devices (ROPs) for all quad bikes. She states that her decision is based on
“…compelling Australian research providing the first ever infield evidence about [CPDs] protective benefit”.
Continue reading “NZ Coroner suggests mandatory ROPS for quadbikes”