In February 2008, I interviewed Garry Bracks of the Australian employer association, Employers First. Garry has been prominent in the industrial relations and OHS debates for some time and it was a pleasure to finally catch up with him.
The podcast of the interview illustrates some of the general concerns of employers with the government’s announce review into OHS law.
Adjunct Professor Geoff Taylor recently emailed me with his concerns about the pipeline explosion on Varanus Island.
Media reports in Western Australia over the last few weeks raised serious questions about the gas crisis. Some may say that it is easy to be wise after the event, but the government had ample opportunity to be wise before the event, and develop a plan to keep a close watch on the engineering integrity of energy suppliers’ plant and an emergency plan for the state and nation. There presumably would be a safety case on file for Varanus, for example, and safety cases include contingency plans.
Prof. Andrew Hopkins wrote a book Lessons from Longford that reported on the contributing factors to the Longford gas explosion ten years ago, which left Melbourne without gas.
Here more recently we have had vibrations in the Dampier-Perth pipe, the Woodside electrical substation problem in January which cut gas supply, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority (NOPSA) concerns reportedly expressed to Apache in April, and the prohibition notice NOPSA issued to the Four Vanguard FPSO off Barrow Island reported in May.
In fact it has reportedly emerged that the WA government has a critical infrastructure protection committee advising the Premier. The police had also apparently looked at Apache, from the point of view of a terror attack primarily, in 1993 and 2001, and provided advice to the company.
It is vital that the state government’s energy ministry takes a keener and more sustained interest in these matters in the future, as they clearly can affect not just WA firms and residents, but the state and national economies, and Australia’s overseas customers.
Clearly better coordination between NOPSA, WA Resources Safety (both of which find it hard to keep staff), the energy ministry and the Premier’s committee is vital. The state’s energy system cannot be run continuously at near full capacity, because there will be outages and shutdowns for maintenance.
The advent of peak oil has highlighted the critical nature of hydrocarbon supply to our way of life, and that and the need to address the greenhouse effect also require a clear national and state energy and urban design strategy, for a state and nation so far designed around cheap fuel.
Geoff is the co-author of some excellent OHS books, particularly Enhancing Safety.
In 2000, sexworkers advocates in Australia published “A guide to best practice – Occupational health and safety in the Australian sex industry”. They tried for some time to have OHS authorities accept it as an industry-based code applicable to that particular State. As far as I know, they were unsuccessful but many of the elements of the guide have been picked up in various laws and licensing conditions since then. An updated soft version of the guide is available online, along with guidelines from other jurisdictions. (My edition of Safety At Work concerning the sex industry is still available as a free download)
I was reminded of this today when I saw a report from New Zealand about sexworker safety. It was reported that two Women’s Institute members from England have undertaken a world tour of brothel districts to determine the impact of local laws on prostitution. They were very impressed by New Zealand’s sex industry.
I am very impressed that an institution like the Women’s Institute undertook this activity. The realist approach to an activity that will never go away speaks volumes for how an organisation unfairly stereotyped is establishing a contemporary relevance.
Disclaimer: I treasure the WI Cookbook I purchased in the Lake District on my honeymoon over 20 years ago. It’s much better than some of the modern books that rely on manufactured ingredients.
Some years ago the CEO of an OHS certifying body came to Australia from the US. He spoke intriguingly about the benefits of having an independently-assessed safety practitioner registration. I could see the potential international career benefits but I am already a registered safety practitioner through my membership with an OHS professional association. I couldn’t…
Last weekend two Queensland workers fell 26 storeys from swing scaffolding to their deaths. They were patching concrete on a building from a platform similar to those used by high-rise window cleaners. According to a 24 June 2008 ABC news report: “The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) says the men were wearing harnesses…
Several years ago, one of the major contributors to my Safety At Work magazine came to stay for a couple of weeks with my family in Melbourne. Melody Kemp is a passionate safety professional who works mostly in the Asian region. Melody has a fresh and blunt perspective on safety that keeps westerners and academics from becoming too pompous and isolated.
Melody wrote articles for me on women in the defence force, Indonesian fishing industry hazards and several other fascinating articles. She has written for Dissent magazine, was the author of Working For Life – an OHS sourcebook for women, which is now a free download, and now has a blog of her own. I highly recommend you spend some time reading her blog and reflecting on your own approach to OHS.
Further details have begun to emerge from the vat explosion at the Pioneer Sugar Mill at Burdekin in Queensland on 20 June 2008. According to media reports, the plant, owned by CSR, was one of four sugar mills that suffered equipment failures on almost a daily basis, according to Burdekin Limited district manager Jim Collins.
Three workers were treated for minor injuries and the 80 staff at the mill at the time were evacuated.