insurance – Page 16 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

SA Liberal party policy on WorkCover

It is less than a month to the state election in South Australia so policies are being released frequently. This week the South Australia Liberal Party released a WorkCover policy – 18 pages saying it will “fix Labor’s mess”.

The policy is linked to through this blog article for several reasons. Many Australia States have elections in 2010 and in most States, the Liberal Party is in opposition. The SA policy may indicate some of the measures to be promoted in other States elections.

Also, policy statements tend to be quietly dropped from party websites and agenda if they become embarrassing after a loss. Continue reading “SA Liberal party policy on WorkCover”

Workers comp becomes political but not in a nice way

Workers’ compensation clearly has become a political issue in Australia recently due to cock-ups, and electioneering.

Embarrassment

The Australian Financial Review has embarrassed the Liberal Party’s shadow Minister for WorkCover in Victoria, Gordon Rich-Phillips. Rich-Phillips issued a media release claiming the Victorian Government had been inactive on some deficiencies in the WorkCover system that had been highlighted by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the Government had responded with legislative changes that had already been in Parliament. The Government was provided a free political kick in this election year. Continue reading “Workers comp becomes political but not in a nice way”

Workers’ Compensation becomes an election issue in South Australia

On 12 February 2010, the Greens parliamentarian, Mark Parnell, accused WorkCover Corporation of failing injured workers in South Australia. In response to the release of the Parliament’s Statutory Authorities Review Committee (SARC) inquiry into WorkCover, he said

“The Greens have been saying for a number of years now that the outsourcing of WorkCover’s claims management is a failed experiment, and must be reversed….. Until WorkCover fixes up the poor management of injured workers, it will never get out of its financial mess.” Continue reading “Workers’ Compensation becomes an election issue in South Australia”

Workplace deaths lead to reforms but not of workplace safety

Australia’s Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, has provided a clear indication that, although Julia Gillard may understand OHS, his department does not.

In 2009, several installers of domestic insulation died. One died from heat stress from working in the ceiling space, another was electrocuted as the metal staple he was using to install foil insulation pierced an electricity cable. Now the political heat is on the Australian Government because it was their climate change policy that led to a boom in unregistered and inexperienced insulation installers. Continue reading “Workplace deaths lead to reforms but not of workplace safety”

D/O liability insurance gets to England’s High Court

Insurance policies for directors and officers (D&O) liabilities have yet to gain much application in terms of occupational health and safety penalties. But D&O insurance policies are in Australia and are established in other countries.

According to Wikipedia:

“Directors and Officers Liability Insurance (often called D&O) is liability insurance payable to the directors and officers of a company, or to the organization(s) itself, to cover damages or defense costs in the event they suffer such losses as a result of a lawsuit for alleged wrongful acts while acting in their capacity as directors and officers for the organization.”

A decision by the High Court in England throws further light on the application of D&O. Continue reading “D/O liability insurance gets to England’s High Court”

Accident Comp changes put to Victorian Parliament

According to the WorkSafe Victoria website, changes to the Accident Compensation Act were introduced to the Victorian Parliament on 10 December 2009.

WorkSafe is very confident that the changes will be passed. The summary only talks about “when” the bill is passed. There is every likelihood it will be passed but the summary has a tinge of arrogance to it.

A summary of the proposed changes is available online.

It all sounds positive and most of it seems about financial improvements. There are always concerns when a government move from prescriptive- to performance-based practices. The summary describes the Return-To-Work benefit:

“Prescriptive return to work requirements will be reframed as performance based duties to improve flexibility.”

Usually this sort of change is a red flag for rorts and abuse.

The summary does say that enforcement activities will be increased:

“The Return to Work Inspectorate will have a wider range of tools to improve the effectiveness of compliance activities in relation to return to work obligations, maintaining a fair and consistent application of the law.”

However with the government’s recent spate of administrative mistakes, sloppiness and oversights exposed through the Auditor-General’s reports, accountability in this important area will need to be carefully watched.

The Minister for Workcover, Tim Holding‘s speech to the Bill’s second reading concluded (according to the draft Hansard):

“This bill providers (sic) fairer and better benefits to injured workers and their dependents, recognises that getting injured workers back to work is a central pillar of the scheme, and provides greater transparency for employers in their interactions with the scheme. The benefit enhancements in this bill are financially responsible, affordable, and consolidate Victoria’s position as the leader in workers compensation in Australia.”

Kevin Jones

OHS criticism needs to aim “at the source”

The e-Editor for the Institute of Occupational Safety & Health, Shaun Gibbons, has commented on the recent speech by David Cameron, the Opposition Leader of England’s Conservative Party.

In this editorial Gibbons says

“Instead of cosying up to the newspapers which perpetuate the myths that somehow health and safety is to blame for much of society’s ills, Cameron should be rounding on the media for its part in falsely reporting on health and safety issues.”

If one takes “health and safety” outside the factory fence and consider it as a social attitude or as a collective term for a range of social perspectives, “health and safety” is crucial, or rather the personal fears generated by our concerns for our own health and safety and for those of our family members are a crucial consideration in how we live and work.

David Cameron is a politician and needs the media to distribute his policies and campaign strategies so he is in his natural element.

The print media, principally, does report health and safety issues in an alarming manner but as sensation, and particularly in England titillation, is what sells newspapers, it seems pointless to blame the media for what they have always done.

It will be impossible to get the media to change their attitudes to health and safety. The struggles of Australian OHS regulators in doing so has been touched on elsewhere in SafetyAtWorkBlog. It seems clear that if traditional media cannot be changed in this area, alternate media outlets and mechanisms need to be produced that provide information that is not adequately or appropriately covered elsewhere. This blog is one example. IOSH’s website is another.

Gibbons gets closer to the core issue elsewhere in his editorial:

“…seeing through the predictable soundbites which came from his speech last week, Cameron has actually highlighted an important cultural issue that IOSH does welcome: people’s growing confusion and damaged confidence when it comes to managing day-to-day risk. With the fear of litigation at the heart of this debate, the speech did give IOSH the opportunity to make its call for us all to move away from a culture of blame to one that’s based on better ‘risk intelligence’.”

He is right in saying that society has an (increasingly) skewed perception of “day-to-day risk” but he is more correct when identifying that

“the fear of litigation [is] at the heart of the debate.”

IOSH and other safety professional organisations need to get a better understanding of the insurance and legal industries so that they are able to temper some of the extremism from these sectors that is sacrificing long-term cultural and societal health for short-term gain.

SafetyAtWorkBlog’s editor, Kevin Jones, wrote in National Safety magazine about the pernicious growth in the expansion of directors’ and officers’ liabilities insurance policies to cover the legal expenses AND fines from OHS prosecutions. Either safety organisations are unaware of the impact of these products, do not understand them or do not care, as the silence has been deafening.

Kevin Jones

Category: insurance

SA Liberal party policy on WorkCover

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Workers comp becomes political but not in a nice way

Embarrassment

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Workers’ Compensation becomes an election issue in South Australia

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Workplace deaths lead to reforms but not of workplace safety

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D/O liability insurance gets to England’s High Court

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Accident Comp changes put to Victorian Parliament

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OHS criticism needs to aim “at the source”

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Embarrassment

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