transparency – Page 7 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Beware any politician talking about the coloured tapes of bureaucracy

Some of the Australian media on May 8 2019 began quoting the current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, over his concerns about the “green tape” of environmental laws and something called “the expansion of union “red tape””. (Nine Australia’s papers, paywalled) Crikey’s Bernard Keane asks “Does Australia really have a ‘green tape’ crisis?” (paywalled) and proceeds to answer, No we don’t. But where there is Green Tape, the Red Tape of occupational health and safety (OHS) follows.

What Morrison means by “union red tape” is unclear. The newspapers included this quote from him:

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Chatham House rule misrepresentation

I am one of the few freelance writers in Australia who focuses on occupational health and safety (OHS). As a result, my presence is often uncomfortable to those who organise conferences and seminars, even though I operate under the Journalist Code of Ethics. People have had to accept that there is now a media interest in OHS-related events where previously there was very little. This has caused a couple of problems and challenges.

Chatham House Rule

Recently, one seminar organiser suggested I not attend an event because the “Chatham House Rule” was to be applied. They said that as I would not be permitted to report on anything said in the seminar, it may not be worth me attending. This is a corruption of the Chatham House Rule which is best described by Chatham House itself as:

“When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”

Step into the light, be proud, be an institutional value adder

All Australian businesses are experiencing disruption. Some are embracing this as Change, but not enough. As occupational health and safety (OHS) is an unavoidable part of running a business, it is being similarly disrupted. So what can one do? I chose to read a short book called “On Disruption”. I purchased it because of the title and I had recently shared the media room at the ALP National Conference with the author, Katherine Murphy. That the book wasn’t about OHS but about the disruption experienced by journalism, newspaper publishing and mainstream media, didn’t bother me as, being a blogger, it should still be of interest either way.

And it was. But what was surprising were the parallels between journalism and OHS. I shouldn’t have been surprised as both are, or claim to be, professions.

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What is the “All Victorians Infrastructure Fund”?

ON 22 November 2018, two days before the State Election, the Secretary of the Department of Treasury and Finance released a document called the “Release of costing of election commitment“. Most of the media attention was on the removal of a self-imposed “debt cap” by Treasurer, Tim Pallas, but there is an interesting footnote that seems to involve using some of WorkSafe Victoria’s premium income as a dividend to fund infrastructure.

Attachment A – “Summary of Labor’s 2018 Election Commitments” – lists the following table (figures are in millions):

Footnote 3 says:

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Families get a good deal from the Industrial Deaths inquiry

Will the recommendations of the Senate Committee’s inquiry into industrial deaths benefit relatives of deceased workers? Yes, mostly.

It seemed like relatives gained greater access to this Senate Committee than in other inquiries. Some public hearings were held with only relatives presenting. This is a major change. The transcripts of the 2012

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Stop whingeing and manage OHS properly

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) regularly updates the Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations administered by its Corporate Governance Council. The Council has recently closed submissions on its consultation on the Fourth Edition. The submissions are worth looking at to see how occupational health and safety (OHS) fairs, and it is also worth looking for mentions of the “social licence to operate”.

The 3rd edition of the principles provides examples of what it means to be a “good corporate citizen” (page 19),

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Business Bullshit – and how this relates to workplace health and safety

This is an edited version of my presentation to delegates at the inaugural NSW Regional Safety Conference & Expo in Newcastle, Australia on March 17, 2018.

The current approach to occupational health and safety (OHS) is that we shouldn’t separate it from business operations. One of the motivations for achieving success in business is to build a strong organisational culture that integrates safety.

Companies often start this task by developing Mission Statements or Pledges. Quite often these are done by talking to a lot of different people in the organisation. And I don’t know of any mission statement that hasn’t been already run through Legal and Marketing – they don’t always get run through Safety. What happens is that these statements can become more florid and more inexact, and more unclear. Some of them descend into Business Bullshit.

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Category: transparency

Beware any politician talking about the coloured tapes of bureaucracy

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What is the “All Victorians Infrastructure Fund”?

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Families get a good deal from the Industrial Deaths inquiry

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Stop whingeing and manage OHS properly

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Business Bullshit – and how this relates to workplace health and safety

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