Category: government

Media releases are all positive for Safe Work Australia Week

Further to yesterday’s blog post that mentioned Australia’s Minister for Workplace Relations, Chris Evans, it is worth noting his new media release (not yet available online) in support of the 2011 Safe Work Australia Week.

On 23 October 2011,  Minister Evans said all the “right” things:

“National Safe Work Australia Week, an annual initiative of Safe Work Australia, is an opportunity for all Australians to think about how to improve work health and safety in their workplace and in their community,” Senator Evans said. “Each and every worker deserves to go to work each day and return home safely each night.”

Senator Evans said workers deserve the same decent safety standards across Australia.

“This is why the Gillard Government is committed to harmonising Occupational Health and Safety laws by January 2012,” Senator Evans said.  “The new laws will cut red tape and ensure that all workers have equal protections regardless of where they live and work.  They will apply not only to employees, but also to contractors and their employees, subcontractors, labour hire workers, apprentices and volunteers.  These reforms are vitally important for the safety of employees in an increasingly mobile labour force.”

Significantly, the continued refusals by Western Australia and Victoria to implement the OHS reforms prior to 1 January 2011 are not mentioned but it is understandable for the Minister to try to set the positive tone of Safe Work Australia Week.

On 21 October 2011, the Chair of Safe Work Australia, Tom Phillips, fails to mention OHS harmonisation in his media release which is his prerogative but it would have been better to address the elephant in the room – OHS harmonisation.

The harmonisation deadline is only a couple of months away and it would have been good to see some urgency on the issue from this prominent speakers.

Kevin Jones

Victorian WorkSafe Awards raise eyebrows and questions

Last week, WorkSafe Victoria held its 2011 Work Safe Awards night.  The host was Shane Jacobson, probably most well-known for his film Kenny.  SafetyAtWorkBlog has been informed that WorkSafe’s Executive Director, Ian Forsythe, was approached by an attendee on the evening complaining about the inappropriateness of some of Jacobson’s jokes and comments.

WorkSafe Victoria has been contacted for clarification of this complaint but as an attendee oneself, there were several times that laughter was subdued and eyebrows raised, particularly with one dubious homosexual reference and a joke about wives and guns.

Judging

A further, more general, concern was expressed to SafetyAtWorkBlog on the night about the awarding of one award to a person who is contracted by WorkSafe to promote OHS in rural areas.  The concern raises the issue again about the benefits of having a transparent judging criteria, or judging process, for safety awards. Continue reading “Victorian WorkSafe Awards raise eyebrows and questions”

Victoria risks $50 million over OHS reforms

A SafetyAtWorkBlog article from last week said that Victoria’s Work Safe Week started flat and that speakers at some events were unsure of the future of OHS laws due to Minister Gordon Rich-Phillips‘ unprecedented call to the Federal Government for a 12-month delay.

A spokesperson for the Federal Minister for Industrial Relations, Chris Evans, has told SafetyAtWorkBlog that Victoria is risking $A50 million of federal government funding if it does not implement OHS reforms:

“….the Victorian Government has already factored in around $50 million in reward payments for the 2011-12 budget forward estimates. These reward payments are dependent on Victoria implementing agreed reforms in accordance with key milestones. This includes OHS reform.”

This economic reality is perhaps behind Rich-Phillips’ continuing emphasis that the Victorian Government continues to support the “principle” of harmonisation.

At the 2011 Work Safe Awards on 19 October 2011, Minister  Rich-Phillips seemed to identify a strategy that is contrary to the application of that principle.   Continue reading “Victoria risks $50 million over OHS reforms”

Victoria is relinquishing its position of OHS leader in Australia

WorkSafe Victoria “launched” its Work Safe Week on 17 October 2011 with a lacklustre seminar about the future of OHS in Victoria but the quiet tone reflected the peculiar approach to OHS law reform taken by the government.  Disappointingly the Victorian Minister responsible for WorkSafe, Gordon Rich-Phillips, failed to use Work Safe Week as an opportunity to introduce himself to the State’s safety professionals.  His profile is almost non-existent other than his recent media release calling for a 12-month delay to OHS harmonisation, a decision that is likely to do more harm to OHS in Victoria than good.  Perhaps he is waiting to appear at the upcoming WorkSafe Awards dinner.

WorkSafe’s first speaker, Lisa Sturzenegger, provided the, now expected, summary of WorkSafe Victoria marketing statistics and stakeholder perception surveys that we became so familiar with from John Merritt’s tenure as Executive Director, but without the spark.  The message was that Victoria is leading the country in low workers’ compensation premiums and injury rates.  Sturzenegger did continue to tell us what WorkSafe intends to do for the next 12 months but without new legislation, the message was “business as usual”, and the other States will be applying a harmonised OHS enforcement policy, anyway. Continue reading “Victoria is relinquishing its position of OHS leader in Australia”

OHS reviews need to leap forward to relevance

Several times recently people have suggested that common sense is an adequate control measure for some workplace hazards.  The United Kingdom’s politicians have been talking about common sense and OHS for several months but perhaps we can apply the broad concept of commonality, implicit in the UK’s advocacy of “common sense”, to OHS information so that people and businesses feel empowered to educate themselves on how to work safety and without risks to health.

Australia’s (seemingly) derailed review of OHS legislation is based on removing red tape but a major focus of OHS reviews in England is

“…putting common sense back at the heart of Britain’s health and safety system…”

Even though reducing bureaucracy is part of the UK review, common sense is certainly the political mantra being applied to the review, being under taken by Professor Ragnar E Löfstedt for the Department of Work and Pensions, as seen by a recent speech by Prime Minister David Cameron to the Conservative Party conference, when discussing the empowerment of local councils:

“…one of the biggest things holding people back is the shadow of health and safety.  I was told recently about a school that wanted to buy a set of highlighter pens. But with the pens came a warning.  Not so fast – make sure you comply with the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002.  Including plenty of fresh air and hand and eye protection.  Try highlighting in all that.”

According to an audio interview with one of the members of the Löfstedt review, Andrew Bridgen MP, the report is due to go to the Minister, Chris Grayling, at the end of October 2011.

In the interview, Bridgen states that people:

“…use health and safety as an excuse not to do things they don’t want to do.”

But the UK is struggling with what to do in response.  There has been a strong campaign by the OHS regulator, Health and Safety Executive, to tackle the “elf ‘n’ safety” myths but this will take a long concerted effort and is likely never to succeed completely.  Many in the media like reporting about seemingly silly local government and regulatory decisions.  This helps depict government as the “fun vampires“.

However the current situation in England, and its echoes in Australia, illustrates the importance of planning for the long term.   Continue reading “OHS reviews need to leap forward to relevance”

Nail gun incident results in $25k fine and lifelong blindness

Western Australia recently prosecuted a company over an incident where a worker was blinded in one eye by a nail that ricocheted from a nail gun.  According to a WorkSafeWA media release:

“The injured contractor was using a nail gun to attach steel holding straps to roof timbers. The nail gun had been purchased 12 months earlier, and came with an operating manual that provided safety instructions.

One of the safety instructions was that the nail gun was “for use with timber to timber fixing or materials of similar or lesser density”, but Mr Vlasschaert and the contractor had been using the nail gun to attach steel straps for 12 months without incident.

On the day of the incident, the contractor had experienced several ricochets where the nail had failed to go through the steel straps and instead flew into the air. Mr Vlasschaert asked him if everything was alright, and contractor said it was, so he had been left to carry on the work.

Soon after this conversation, the contractor was struck in the eye by a nail that had ricocheted, resulting in the permanent loss of sight in his left eye.”

The worker mistook his sunglasses as safety glasses.  Protective eyewear was available in the employer’s car at the domestic building site.

This prosecution, which resulted in a $A25,000 fine, highlights several relevant OHS issues. Continue reading “Nail gun incident results in $25k fine and lifelong blindness”

Politicians are exploiting proposed OHS laws for their own benefit

South Australia’s Industrial Relations Minister, Rob Lucas, stated in the Adelaide Advertiser on 3 October 2011 that

“The Liberal Party has always supported strong work safety laws which protect workers at work sites.”

This may be the case within the limitations of that sentence but the conservative political parties have not always been supportive of the basis for safety management, the creation of evidence through authoritative research.  According to a 2003 submission by the Australian Council of Trade Unions

“After the election of the Liberal/National Coalition in 1996, the Federal Government decided that:

  • the NOHSC budget must be cut by $5.9 million each year;
  • a further 5% cut was imposed across the board; and
  • redundancies had to be covered from within the NOHSC budget.

This represented a cut of $6.6 million (35-40%) to the NOHSC annual budget……

The April 1996 NOHSC decision on allocation of its $14 million budget cut OHS research and information, and education and training. National standards work was also decreased. These areas are central to a national approach to OHS.” [emphasis added]

Around the time of these severe budget cuts Australia had begun moving to a system of national uniformity in OHS.  The impact of this political decision hamstrung the research efforts of NOHSC just as the uniformity momentum was increasing.  As the National Research Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Regulation has written

“A notable development in standard setting in Australia during the 1990s was the movement towards national uniformity in standards in regulations and codes of practice. The process was overseen by the former NOHSC, which in 1991 established a tripartite National Uniformity Taskforce, which identified several key first order priorities for achieving national uniformity: plant, certification of users and operators of industrial equipment; workplace hazardous substances; occupational noise; manual handling; major hazardous facilities; and storage and handling of dangerous goods.

NOHSC developed standards in the first six of these areas, and the jurisdictions were well on the way towards adopting these standards by the end of 1996, although it should be noted that jurisdictions were quite inconsistent in their adoption, particular in choosing whether to implement the standards in regulations or codes of practice, in their drafting styles and, in some cases, the substance of provisions. The national uniformity process was not complete when the Howard government came to power in 1996, and that government first significantly down-sized and then abolished NOHSC, with the result that the move towards national uniformity slowed dramatically after mid-1996.”

Rob Lucas seems to ignore the history of his own party’s decision. Continue reading “Politicians are exploiting proposed OHS laws for their own benefit”

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