Earlier this week, I was a panellist at an occupational health and safety symposium organised by the Victorian Branch of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety. We were asked to be challenging and provocative in our perspectives on the evolution of OHS and OHS law in Victoria since the start of the century.
Although I have expressed concerns about the application of AI data analytics at the recent Safe Work Australia (SWA) Research Summit, I think it is important to list the 15 Leading Ideas that the analysis process identified from the summit. Some of these will seem like the bleeding obvious, but these outcomes will inform SWA’s research agenda and strategy.
Neil Foster and Jacqueline Meredith‘s 3rd Edition of Workplace Health and Safety Law in Australia can be seen as a companion to Creighton and Stewart’s Labour Law. Both have excellent occupational health and safety (OHS) content for their respective markets; both have very different tones.
Safe Work Australia’s recent Research Summit conducted several workshops. Time allowed delegates to only attend two of the eight – a morning and an afternoon. The standout seminar I attended was for “Work as a determinant of our psychological health”.
There are several ways to write about Safe Work Australia’s recent Research Summit. This is the first article and will discuss a couple of features of the summit and ask if the summit achieved its aims.
One of the aims of Australia’s Model Work Health and Safety Act is to
“… provide a balanced and nationally consistent framework to secure the health and safety of workers and workplaces.” (page 5, Best Practice Review of the model Work Health and Safety laws – Discussion Paper, September 2025)
There are several ways to interpret “balance” – an equilibrium/harmony or the process for weighing interest, a noun or a verb. I am not sure that ‘balance’ or ‘balanced’ are suitable terms in a document that should provide clear guidance on occupational health and safety (OHS) matters. It may be an example of how an inexactitude can lead to over-complexity and OHS’s reputation for business bullshit.
In this short 6-minute audio episode, I unpack the troubling case of Cleanaway Waste Management’s CEO bonus reduction following three worker deaths and challenge the notion that trimming executive pay is a meaningful consequence, and whether safety is being treated as a KPI or a moral imperative.
With references to Woolworths, Orica, and SGH Group, Kevin explores how corporate Australia responds to workplace fatalities, and why investor pressure—not ethical leadership—often drives change. Featuring insights from the Australian Financial Review and safety scholars Andrew Hopkins and Sarah Maslen, this episode calls for a deeper reckoning with executive accountability and the true cost of preventable deaths.
