Category: law

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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Why don’t US employers focus on preventing psychosocial hazards?

Many Australian employers, managers and executives take inspiration from counterparts in the United States. When it comes to occupational mental health, they are looking in the wrong direction and could benefit from looking more locally. But there is merit in evaluating the US perspectives.

Below are responses provided by several Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents on my own PC to the question in this article’s title. There is considerable overlap in many, but I start off with the most confronting response, provided by the World Socialist Web Site‘s Socialism AI:

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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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Christopher’s Death and the Questions That Still Demand Answers

Patrizia Cassaniti has produced a remarkable book about how her life changed due to the death of her 18-year-old son, Christopher, in a scaffold collapse in 2019. Her story comes from grief and anger, and the book is one of the few that made me cry.

Cassaniti’s story is compelling and heartbreaking, but its refusal to name those responsible for the scaffold collapse shapes the book’s impact and raises deeper questions about accountability in workplace deaths. The new first-person accounts in the last third of the book are enlightening and enraging.

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If It Ain’t Broken…….

Earlier this week, I heard a person repeatedly say that Victoria was the last Australian jurisdiction to introduce obligations to prevent psychosocial hazards under occupational health and safety (OHS) laws. That is not strictly true.

Contrary to the established understanding, TWO Australian jurisdictions have not joined the harmonised Work Health and Safety (WHS) model laws: Victoria and Norfolk Island. Norfolk Island employers still regulate occupational health and safety (OHS) under an Act from 1988 created by its own legislative assembly, which existed at that time – the Norfolk Island Employment Act. “Psychosocial hazards” are not mentioned.

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