Category: politics

Regulatory Impact Statement to be released on 14 September 2011

According to a media release from Senator Chris Evans, the Australian Minister for Workplace Relations,  the Regulatory Impact Statement for the new OHS regulations will be released today, 14 September 2011.  The release is not yet publicly available on-line so the full text is included below:

New health and safety regulations to boost national productivity

“Historic health and safety reforms will deliver up to $2 billion a year in productivity gains Minister for Workplace Relations, Senator Chris Evans said today.

The Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) for the harmonisation of health and safety regulations released today confirms the economic benefit of a national OHS system and demonstrates that the reforms are on track to be implemented by 1 January 2012.

“The Statement vindicates COAG’s decision in 2008, and the Gillard Government’s determination to pursue OHS harmonisation as a key economic reform,” Senator Evans said. Continue reading “Regulatory Impact Statement to be released on 14 September 2011”

Alarmism and confusion over Australia’s OHS harmonisation process

The Australian Financial Review (AFR) on 13 September 2011 is muddying the waters on objections to Australian harmonised OHS laws.  The Victorian Government would support a delay to the introduction of the laws until, according to previous media reports, the release of the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) on the new laws.  The AFR is reporting (not available online without a subscription) that the government

“…will not endorse the regulations until the federal government releases a cost-benefit analysis.”

It is understood that an RIS is not the same as a cost-benefit analysis even though costs and benefits are part of an RIS.

Australia’s Office of Best Practice Regulation (OPBR) states that an RIS has seven (7) key elements:

Victorian Government may be a hurdle in OHS harmonisation

SafetyAtWorkBlog has been receiving several requests for information about the introduction of the model Work Health and Safety Bill into the Victorian Parliament.  As the new laws have been “modelled” on the recent Victorian Act, some thought the introduction of the Bill could be undertaken early.  Others, for the same “modelling” reason, argued for delay.  On 12 September 2011, Victoria’s Assistant Treasurer, Gordon Rich-Phillips, has spoken in favour of delaying the date for enacting the laws past 1 January 2012.

Rich-Phillips is basing his position of the continuing lack of a regulatory impact statement (RIS) for the laws, a delay that has also caused concerns on various OHS discussion forums over recent months.  His demand to know the “costs and benefits” of the laws is not unreasonable however the RIS is only about the impact of the regulations and not the harmonisation process as a whole. Continue reading “Victorian Government may be a hurdle in OHS harmonisation”

Employer association criticises Australia’s new Work Health and Safety laws

On 9 September 2011 The Australian newspaper reported  that the executive director of the Independent Contractors of Australia, Ken Phillips, had serious concerns over the new Work Heath and Safety laws to be introduced in Australia in 2012.

Phillips has received legal advice that identifies serious shortcomings in the new laws compared to the existing Victorian OHS laws. These include eliminating the right to silence and protection against self-incrimination during incident investigations by OHS regulators.  The article says that the ICA’s analysis

“…shows that the new system would also empower workplace inspectors to seize entire businesses without the oversight of a court, something that is currently not permitted in Victoria.”

It also reports that Phillips fears

“…the scheme would lead to a recurrence of what happened under the former workplace safety system in NSW where “ordinary people were prosecuted even if they had no control over the business”. Continue reading “Employer association criticises Australia’s new Work Health and Safety laws”

Professor Niki Ellis speaks about OHS, CSR and resilience

Next week the National Comcare Conference is held in Melbourne Australia.  One of the keynote speakers at the conference is Professor Niki Ellis, a prominent Australian OHS researchers and consultant  who is also heading up the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR).

On a sunny September 5 2011 I was able to spend half and hour with Niki at a noisy cafe outside Victoria’s State Library talking about:

  • The profile of OHS is Australia as a profession
  • The importance of a practical application for OHS research (what Niki refers to as “interventionist research”)
  • The need for innovation in tertiary institutions
  • The legacy of Dame Carol Black’s UK report “Working for a Healthier Tomorrow“
  • The challenge for OHS professionals to cope  with emerging psychosocial hazards
  • The role and importance of Corporate Social Responsibility to workplace health and safety
  • The deficiencies of applying resilience to workplace mental health issues

Kevin Jones

Australian OHS experts call for a single OHS regulator and a unified insurance system

Some of Australia’s top work health and safety experts have stressed, to Safe Work Australia, the need for a single national OHS regulator.  Many also called for a radical overhaul of workers’ compensation and insurance structures to achieve a combined insurance/compensation similar to that of New Zealand, the Accident Compensation Commission (ACC).

These calls were made in a  whole day workshop, conducted by Safe Work Australia on 30 August 2011, on the development of the next ten-year national OHS strategy.  This was the latest of around ten consultative sessions whose notes will be summarised and posted online.  The notes from an earlier seminar list the following discussion topics:

  • “The need to focus on work health and safety prevention.
  • Engagement with target groups and industries to ensure advice and support is relevant to enable them to effectively respond to hazards.
  • Engineering hazards out through good design.
  • Influencing the supply chain inside and outside Australia.
  • Prioritising key work health and safety hazards and focusing national attention.
  • Creating opportunities for innovation in work health and safety particularly within the regulatory framework.
  • Enhancing the culture of safety leadership (promoting highly reliable organisations).
  • The importance of safety culture.
  • Enhancing the capability of workers to return to work following accident or illness.
  • Influencing or assisting academia to undertake research – focusing on intervention effectiveness.
  • Developing a shared communication strategy to promote the new principles of the new Strategy.”

These echo many of the comments in today’s seminar and illustrate what was a major missed opportunity.  The theme of today’s workshop was to imagine what OHS (or work health and safety or work health safety & environment, as some suggested) will be like in 2022 but there were few futuristic suggestions.  This was the opportunity to extend some of the practices currently undertaken by ten years. Continue reading “Australian OHS experts call for a single OHS regulator and a unified insurance system”

Similarities between the regulation of environmental and workplace safety

In June 2011, Victoria’s Environment Protection Authority (EPA) released a revised Compliance and Enforcement (C&E) policy.  There seemed to be some similarities to WorkSafe’s C&E policy, developed in 2006, so SafetyAtWorkBlog spoke this afternoon to John Merritt, who became the CEO of the EPA in early 2010 after many years as the executive director of WorkSafe Victoria.

In an exclusive podcast with SafetyAtWorkBlog Merritt, a major participant in the development of both policies, provides a useful insight into

  • Why a revised C&E policy was necessary
  • The similarities of environmental and workplace safety enforcement
  • How WorkSafe enforcement lessons can be applied to environmental protection
  • The cooperation between government agencies
  • Balancing transparency and information provision
  • EPA’s use of social media
  • Maintaining a local focus in a world of global environmental challenges

The podcast should be of interest to those professionals who need to manage the, often competing, business elements of environmental, safety and health obligations.

Kevin Jones

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