Safe Work Australia has just published a summary report of its review into best practice. It is a curious document, essentially a summary of the perspectives of many organisations interested in occupational health and safety (OHS), particularly regarding OHS laws. It is an important distinction that this review was not about OHS but the laws that we use to provide safe and healthy work.
Every company seems to have a Mission Statement, a Values Statement, or something similar that all employees are expected to follow and comply with. Largely, these are aspirational statements, but they are sometimes invoked when/if an employee needs to be disciplined or dismissed. The values are often vague and lend themselves to various interpretations, even though compliance is expected and is usually part of the employment contract.
At the moment, some conservative politicians, such as Angus Taylor, are emphasising the need for citizens and immigrants to commit to and comply with “Australian values”. How he plans to enforce them is unclear, but most of his proposed values have direct impacts on how occupational health and safety (OHS) is likely to be managed.
In Australia, the sovereign citizen movement has gained strength for some time, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also, according to The Age newspaper recently, creating administrative problems for the courts – Flash juries and Bible verses: How sovereign citizens clog up Australian courts (paywalled). I began considering how I would manage a worker who held sovereign-citizen beliefs and might object to certain policies and directives used in the occupational health and safety (OHS) context.
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.
The President of the United States has always been recognised as a major leader. The morality they display spreads to global corporate leaders, especially those in the United States, and is promoted by these leaders, business institutions and management publications to business leaders and senior executives in Australia. That is why some of President Donald Trump‘s recent comments are so concerning.
Two major Australian media outlets are continuing to focus on the issue of working from home (WFH), criticising the concept and some local political moves. WFH offers some significant mental health benefits that are being largely ignored. The front page of The Australian newspaper for September 1, 2025, provides the latest example.
I have attended many memorials for deceased workers. Usually, a local or State politician makes a speech about the importance of occupational health and safety (OHS), and how every worker has a right to return home safely and healthily at the end of the working day. The speeches are usually clichéd, even though these words are heartfelt and sometimes sound like they have been written from a template.
So I asked an artificial intelligence program to write a speech for International Workers Memorial Day by a senior Australian politician. Below is the remarkable result.
