Category: law

What the judge said about Dreamworld, other than the penalty

Some readers raised eyebrows on the article titled “No lessons in the Dreamworld penalty” but the point was that the occupational health and safety (OHS) due diligence and governance lessons were there months ago following the Coroner’s damning findings.

Most of the media’s attention has been on the record size of the financial penalty but looking at Judge Dowse’s decision in the case provides a better understanding of that penalty, the breaches of the safety legislation and the opinions of the judge.

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Hoists and petards

Many on the Conservative side of Australian politics want to see Daniel Andrews, the Victorian Premier, fall, especially over the use of security guards in hotels used to quarantine returning travellers who may have had COVID19. Some of Andrews’ critics are being mischievous by linking the Industrial Manslaughter laws that his government introduced to his, and his Ministers’, accountability for COVID19 deaths linked to the hotels. The latest is Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz in Federal Parliament.

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The myth of “correct lifting technique” persists

In 2017 Work Health and Safety Queensland (WHSQ) released this advice about reducing the physical risks associated with manual handling:

“The research evidence shows that providing lifting technique training is not effective in minimising the risk of injury from manual tasks.”

So why is “correct lifting technique” still being included in safety procedures and Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS) three years later?

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Precarious Work, Pandemics and Australia’s Future – Let’s Not Forget the Link

This is a guest post by Michael Quinlan & Dr Elsa Underhill (links added).

In mid- August 2020 Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews labelled insecure work as toxic and argued a fundamental policy reset was required into the future.  He stated:

Insecure work is toxic. There is nothing good about insecure work, and when this is done, when this virus has been beaten, we will need to commit ourselves to do something really significant about it. It is no good for anything, for families, for a sense of security [and] for public health, for any purpose. We have a lot of people who work very hard but have no safety net to fall back on and that is just not something we should settle for .

(Guardian 16 August 2020)

The observation generated little publicity and was soon forgotten as the Victorian COVID outbreak caused deepening concern across the nation. But the first major Australian political leader to call precarious work for what it demonstrably was should start a long overdue public debate.

Continue reading “Precarious Work, Pandemics and Australia’s Future – Let’s Not Forget the Link”

Work-related mental health remains contentious

This article is about SafeWorkNSW’s recently released Draft Code of Practice for Managing the Risks to Psychological Health, but it is not going to focus on the Code.  Instead the focus will be on the supplementary Explanatory Paper because this presents the rationale for the Code’s contents and, in many ways, is a more useful tool for occupational health and safety (OHS) discussions. However, just as the Code has structural and legislative limitations as part of its Purpose, the Explanatory Paper is a support document for submissions on the Draft Code and therefore has its own limitations.

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Change big things, little things benefit

I bought Genevieve Hawkins’ self-published book “Mentally at Work – Optimising Health and Business Performance through Connection” because I have met Genevieve at various Australian occupational health and safety (OHS) conferences and wanted to know her thoughts.

Her book is about an increasingly important element of OHS – psychological harm – and reinforces the Human Resources (HR) approach to mental health at work which is based around Leadership and Psychology. This HR perspective is the dominant approach to mental health at work in Australia, but it largely omits the organisational and cultural context of mental health. As such, the book will be popular with those whose perspectives it reinforces, but it misses some important OHS and research perspectives about harm prevention.

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OHS prosecution request over COVID19 sent to WorkSafe

The Australian newspaper is notoriously supportive of the conservative side of Australian politics, so it is little surprise that one of its business journalists, Robert Gottliebsen, is maintaining his advocacy for Industrial Manslaughter and occupational health and safety (OHS) prosecutions over COVID19-related infections, echoing many of the desires of Ken Phillips, the head of Self-Employed Australian and Independent Contractors Australia.

Phillips wrote to WorkSafe Victoria on September 9, 2020 demanding a prosecution by WorkSafe Victoria of a swathe of Victorian government Ministers, public servants, police, as well as

“All members of the management team known as the State Control Centre………….”!

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