Every summer in Australia, it seems we are in crisis. Somewhere there is a bushfire, and somewhere else there are cyclones and floods. Somewhere, there are places that experience these two extremes almost at the same time. In all these circumstances, Australians expect strong, effective and compassionate leaders. These expectations affect how corporate executives behave and employ their “soft skills”.
When the International Labour Organisation declared safe and healthy work a fundamental human right in 2022, Australia quietly joined a global shift that reframed workplace safety from a technical discipline to a matter of human dignity. It didn’t make headlines. It didn’t trigger a legislative overhaul. But it did change the ground rules.
The question is whether this shift has improved worker health and safety in Australia—or whether it risks becoming another layer of symbolic language sitting comfortably above the realities of work.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) can feel like nothing but administrative work, wading through safety clutter. It is easy to forget that OHS is about preventing harm or managing the consequences. There are people behind the statistics and families behind the people. I find it important to keep myself grounded by attending small events that remind me of why I do what I do.
Last week, just before Australia’s Safe Work Month, I attended a small gathering of people affected by work-related deaths, which was organised by GriefWork.
Australian occupational health and safety (OHS) laws require employers to be compliant with their OHS duties, but also allow the flexibility for employers to determine their own level of compliance. This has complicated OHS because employers can never be sure that they are in compliance. Compliance and non-compliance are usually determined accurately through the courts after legal action by the OHS regulatory agency and after a workplace incident. This uncertainty is compounded for small business owners who just want to be told what to do to be compliant.
Perhaps the most challenged industry sector is farming, which cannot avoid the uncertainty that the OHS laws provide. This uncertainty is one that highly-resourced employers are proud to claim as a well-fought-for benefit, namely, flexibility, but it is more of a problem for isolated rural workplaces and small businesses.
There was a row of cheering trade union supporters in the late session of the documentary “Union” at Carlton’s Cinema Nova earlier this week. The film was showing as part of a documentary festival, and the cinema was less than half-full. The film showed an example of grass-roots union organising. There were optimism and failures, and the occupational health and safety (OHS) catalysts for the unionism were mentioned in passing.
A Magistrate has said there is insufficient evidence to find Rosemary Gamble guilty of a criminal offence over an incident involving an inflatable jumping castle that resulted in the deaths of six children at Hillcrest in Tasmania. The prosecution may have ended, but a Coronial inquiry remains scheduled, and a civil class action against the state of Tasmania and Ms Gamble was launched in 2024. This article looks at the occupational health and safety aspects of the incident.
Elements of Andrew Hopkins’ latest book have been spinning in my head for a couple of weeks as they echo my thoughts on occupational health and safety (OHS) over the last few years. I cannot shake his discussion of stakeholder capitalism and shareholder capitalism. These two elements of business management are crucial to our understanding of OHS and how we should proceed, particularly in relation to psychological health.
