Managerial representatives of Dreamworld appeared at the second week of the inquest into the deaths of four patrons at the Australian theme park in 2016. The week ended with Dreamworld’s parent company Ardent Leisure advising the Australian Securities Exchange of the departure of the current Chief Executive Officer, Craig Davidson. So what does this all mean?
Safety Management
Early last week, Dreamworld’s former safety manager, Mark
The first week of the two-week inquest into four fatalities at the Dreamworld theme park in Queensland has concluded. It has substantial occupational health and safety (OHS) management lessons for Australian businesses in a similar way to that of many recent workplace disasters. Those lessons are basic and the hazards are well-known in the OHS profession. Journalists Jamie Walker and Mark Schliebs, in the Weekend Australian newspaper, provided an excellent review (paywalled) of the lessons from that first week.
SafetyAtWorkBlog has not written about the deaths on the, now discontinued, Thunder Rapids ride because there has been an
Victoria’s Trades Hall has criticised the Master Builders Association of Victoria (MBAV) over its opposition to Industrial Manslaughter laws. The MBAV’s opposition is described as “tired” by Trades Hall in a small article in the OHS Reps SafetyNet Journal which illustrates how the gap is unbreachable.
This is what the OHS Unit of Trades Hall said about the
With little surprise, at the Australian Labor Party (ALP) Conference in Victoria on 26 May 2018, Premier Daniel Andrews has included the introduction of Industrial Manslaughter laws as a formal part of the campaign for re-election in November 2018.
According to his media release, if re-elected,
“.., employers will face fines of almost $16 million and individuals responsible for negligently causing death will be held to account and face up to 20 years in jail.
A re-elected Andrews Labor Government will make sure all Victorians are safe in our workplaces, with the offence to also apply when an employer’s negligent conduct causes the death of an innocent member of the public..”
There are a lot of steps between an incident and Industrial Manslaughter charges.
Suicide prevention continues to be a growth area in rainsingfund-raising and awareness raising. On 17 May 2018, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull released a video supporting a treadmill challenge in support of suicide prevention. It seems an odd campaign when there have been various walks and other events in the past that have more of a public statement that being on a treadmill in a gym. But this is not the only odd suicide awareness event. Last week, Winslow Constructions had a program launch that was also a little odd and a campaign that is worthwhile, as far as it goes.
In May 2018, Winslow Constructions held a media event on one of its residential construction projects to the north of Melbourne.
Occupational health and safety (OHS), building safety and public safety often overlap but never more so than in the instance of the Grenfell fire of June 2017. The UK Government has just released the final report into the incident and there are many interesting lessons for workplace health and safety and its social role.
There seems to be a growing community frustration with regulators who hesitate to prosecute about breaches of laws, including occupational health and safety (OHS) laws, and about options that sound reasonable, like Enforceable Undertakings, but still let businesses “off the hook”. The calls for Industrial Manslaughter laws are the most obvious manifestations of the anger and frustration from perceived injustices.
But perhaps there was another way to achieve change in workplace safety, a way that could be based on a model that Australia and other countries already have.