Category: guidance

Working Alone gets regulatory boost

Over many years OHS regulators in Australia have produced guidance notes and Codes of Practice to assist businesses in addressing the hazard of workers working alone.  The new model Work Heath and Safety (WHS)  Regulations due to be released with several Codes on 26 September 2011 brings the serious hazard of working alone to the front of business’ workplace safety considerations with a specific regulation on control the hazards of “remote or isolated work”.  The inclusion of this hazard overtly in these regulations will mean that addressing the hazard of working alone becomes a legal requirement.

Division 6 of the model WHS Regulations defines “remote or isolated work” as being:

“…in relation to a workers, means work that is isolated from the assistance of other persons because of location, time or nature of work.”

It is worth considering some of the occupations this might apply to:

Work Health and Safety Regulation Impact Statement could do better

[Originally submitted as a comment to a “safety costs” article]

I’ve spent a coupla hours dipping into what looked to me like the important bits of the WHS reg RIS, and I gotta say it don’t add up. I’d also say that the RIS does, in general terms, do what it should do, in terms of making the reasoning processes it uses relatively clear. The merit of the conclusions is up for debate of course, but at least the RIS seems to have made a fair fist of explaining how the conclusions were reached.

For mine there are 2 key flaws.

1. The options to the proposed reg (chapter 4 pg. 19) are just not sufficient. I don’t think it’s at all reasonable to provide 2 “options” which are: do nothing or make the regs. Roger, it might be reasonable to conclude that a big public consultation exercise has happened with the WHS Act, so why revisit a lot of other options? But the fact is the COAG RIS guidelines say a “range of options” should be included, and it’s common practice in RISs to at least have a few genuine alternatives to consider. (See link to the guidelines: ).

The agreement (as it is) by jurisdictions to put the WHS Act into operation doesn’t come with an all-or-nothing conclusion that the WHS regulations is the only option. We have to acknowledge that when it comes to Regulations, we are getting down to tin-tacks when it comes to statutory obligations; it’s that thing about Regulations “giving practical effect to an Act.” That means a big effort is needed to get it right as far as options go. Continue reading “Work Health and Safety Regulation Impact Statement could do better”

Regulatory Impact Statement to be released on 14 September 2011

According to a media release from Senator Chris Evans, the Australian Minister for Workplace Relations,  the Regulatory Impact Statement for the new OHS regulations will be released today, 14 September 2011.  The release is not yet publicly available on-line so the full text is included below:

New health and safety regulations to boost national productivity

“Historic health and safety reforms will deliver up to $2 billion a year in productivity gains Minister for Workplace Relations, Senator Chris Evans said today.

The Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) for the harmonisation of health and safety regulations released today confirms the economic benefit of a national OHS system and demonstrates that the reforms are on track to be implemented by 1 January 2012.

“The Statement vindicates COAG’s decision in 2008, and the Gillard Government’s determination to pursue OHS harmonisation as a key economic reform,” Senator Evans said. Continue reading “Regulatory Impact Statement to be released on 14 September 2011”

Alarmism and confusion over Australia’s OHS harmonisation process

The Australian Financial Review (AFR) on 13 September 2011 is muddying the waters on objections to Australian harmonised OHS laws.  The Victorian Government would support a delay to the introduction of the laws until, according to previous media reports, the release of the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) on the new laws.  The AFR is reporting (not available online without a subscription) that the government

“…will not endorse the regulations until the federal government releases a cost-benefit analysis.”

It is understood that an RIS is not the same as a cost-benefit analysis even though costs and benefits are part of an RIS.

Australia’s Office of Best Practice Regulation (OPBR) states that an RIS has seven (7) key elements:

Victorian Government may be a hurdle in OHS harmonisation

SafetyAtWorkBlog has been receiving several requests for information about the introduction of the model Work Health and Safety Bill into the Victorian Parliament.  As the new laws have been “modelled” on the recent Victorian Act, some thought the introduction of the Bill could be undertaken early.  Others, for the same “modelling” reason, argued for delay.  On 12 September 2011, Victoria’s Assistant Treasurer, Gordon Rich-Phillips, has spoken in favour of delaying the date for enacting the laws past 1 January 2012.

Rich-Phillips is basing his position of the continuing lack of a regulatory impact statement (RIS) for the laws, a delay that has also caused concerns on various OHS discussion forums over recent months.  His demand to know the “costs and benefits” of the laws is not unreasonable however the RIS is only about the impact of the regulations and not the harmonisation process as a whole. Continue reading “Victorian Government may be a hurdle in OHS harmonisation”

Peter Sandman interview in the aftermath of 9/11

In November 2001, prominent risk communicator, Peter Sandman, examined the 9/11 attacks in a long article trying to clarify the impact and the context of the attacks.  Shortly after the attacks I had the chance to interview Peter Sandman for the online magazine I was then publishing, safetyATWORK.  Below is the text of that 2001 interview.

“SAW: As a resident of New Jersey and a risk communicator, what effect has the September 11 attacks had?

PS: I was very lucky. I live a sufficient distance away, that neither I nor anyone really close to me was lost. But lots of people close to people close to me were lost. Everybody in this part of the country is one or two steps removed from someone who died that day. But, professionally, I’m trying to think through, as I assume anybody in risk communication would be trying to think through what we can say to our countrymen and countrywomen about living in a dangerous world. This is obviously a situation where the outrage is entirely justified. The last thing I want to be doing is telling people they ought not to be outraged. But it’s also a situation where the hazard is serious. Most of my work is in either a high-outrage low-hazard situation, where the risk communication job is to reduce the outrage, calm people down; or a high-hazard low-outrage situation, where the job is to increase the outrage, get people to protect themselves. September 11 and its aftermath have to be described as high-hazard high-outrage. Neither paradigm works. And yet clearly the message to people has got to be you need to live your life. You need to take what precautions you can take and recognise that you’re not going to be completely safe and live your life anyway. You need to get on aeroplanes, and go to ball games. You need to go into big cities. I think in the months ahead people like me are going to be trying to figure out how to say that and say it honestly and honourably and credibly to a population that desperately needs to hear it and understand it. Continue reading “Peter Sandman interview in the aftermath of 9/11”

Concerns increase as Australia’s OHS law changes loom

Conference organisers IQPC started its two-day Safety in Design, Engineering and Construction conference on 16 August 2011.  The most prominent speaker on day one was Barry Sherriff of law firm, Norton Rose.  Sherriff spoke about OHS harmonisation‘s impact on the Australian construction industry.

Over time Australian labour lawyers generally have moved from saying that Victorian companies have little to worry about from the new laws expected on 1 January 2012 to quite alarming suggestions of challenges to do with contractor management and consultation.  Part of this modification of advice may be due to the increased analysis of company OHS systems.  Sherriff said that he has been surprised how many companies ask for advice about compliance under the new laws and yet are not complying under the existing OHS laws.

On the issue of consultation, Sherriff identified the “coordination of activities” and managing the “flow of information” as a critical element in the new OHS model laws.  But he stressed that such obligations have existed in OHS laws in many Australian States for sometime but are now more overtly stated. Continue reading “Concerns increase as Australia’s OHS law changes loom”

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