government – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Australian Workplaces Cannot Adapt Forever

On November 5 2026, Safe Work Australia (SWA) held a research webinar on the occupational health and safety (OHS) context of global warming/heating. This continued this year’s OHS theme, promoted by the International Labour Organisation. SWA will develop a strategy on the issue and can already draw on ILO research and frameworks, but OHS has very little political clout. Global warming has only slightly more. Addressing this existential risk will require significant, rapid change in social structures, purposes, and political policy. OHS has an important role to play, but the scale of climate change means that workplace safety interventions alone will never be enough.

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The Rigged System Behind Workplace Injury and Illness

At the time of writing, it looks like the Democrats in the United States are smashing the Republicans and President Trump in the mid-term elections. One of the earliest winners was Democrat Jon Ossoff. His campaign strategy, focused on calling out presidential and political corruption, seems to have worked. This strategy of blunt honesty could be exported to Australia and applied in arguments about reducing work-related injuries and deaths.

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Useful Seminar but a Couple of Missed Opportunities

Wellbeing programs and resilience training can support employees, but they aren’t a substitute for addressing workplace risks at their source. That was a key message from WorkSafe Victoria’s webinar on psychological health and safety for small and medium businesses.

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Safe Work Australia’s Big Bet on an Expanded OHS System

The release of Safe Work Australia’s Best Practice review left me wondering whether Australian work health and safety policy has reached regulatory overreach, or whether it is finally catching up with the realities of contemporary work.

Much of the discussion has focused on the report’s individual recommendations. What interests me more is an assumption that seems to underlie almost every recommendation: that occupational health and safety (OHS) should become the nation’s principal framework for preventing workplace harm in all its forms, not merely physical and psychological injury.

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Procurement as Safety Policy? The ACT’s Construction Culture Experiment

The culture standard for the construction industry has been discussed for several years. Trials have been conducted, and the results were positive, but the value of this standard has always depended on someone powerful implementing it in practice. Last year the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Government embedded it into public-project procurement, arguing that government purchasing power can drive improvements in wellbeing, diversity and psychological safety across the construction sector.

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Safe Work Australia’s Review and the Predictable Politics of OHS Change

The “Best Practice Review of the Model Work Health and Safety Laws” report released by Safe Work Australia (SWA) is a lot to digest. Summaries and initial analyses are already appearing on some LinkedIn and law firm posts, but the report needs careful consideration. The recommendations seem sound, but such things almost always trigger a knee-jerk reaction from business groups, driven by ideological objections and concerns about increased business costs. I suspect we will see some of this objection in the media over the next few days.

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Rethinking Safety by Focusing on the Risks We Rarely See

Recent Nordic research has dropped a number that should unsettle Australia’s safety regulators: fatal workplace incidents make up only 1% of work‑related deaths. If similar proportions apply here, our entire inspection and prevention model is pointed at the wrong end of the problem.

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