Screen Australia has released its sexual harassment code of conduct. If any film project in Australia desires government funding it will need to comply with this Code. The Code is a good starting point and will need support from a broad range of elements of the entertainment industry but this Code is indicative of problems with many such codes that see the issue as a legal one rather than a safety and cultural one.
On April 3, 2018, the University of Sydney launched a new app
”to assist victims and witnesses record information in a way that can help with convictions and prevent miscarriages of justice”.
This immediately sparked my interest in using the app as a record of workplace incidents.
iWitnessed is intended as a tool to assist a person’s memory when confronted by an incident or a traumatic event. The app steps you through the basic evidence-gathering questions of what happened, where, when, who was injured etc.
Australia’s Office of the Chief Economist has released its first Industry Insights document for 2018. This one focusses on flexibility and growth and included this statement in the chapter written by Andrew Charlton, a Director, of AlphaBeta :
“At the macroeconomic level, much of this change has been positive. The economy has created new jobs that are, on average, better paid, more satisfying and safer than the jobs that were lost.” (page 19)
Safer jobs? The last claim sent me to the source of the data –
Another Australian Government inquiry into workplace health and safety (WHS) was announced on March 26 2018. According to the Senate Hansard, the Senate’s Education and Employment References Committee will report on a range of occupational health and safety (OHS) matters by the end of September 2018.
Australia has received its own local focus for the #MeToo concerns about sexual harassment in the workplace. www.now.org.au is the result of a greatly increased concern in Australia, predominantly from the Weinstein issues and the Australian versions. There seems to be enough interest and expertise behind this organisation that it will move beyond awareness raising to participating in policy decision. However, there is a risk in responses to workplace sexual harassment and mental health that was summarised well by Martin McKenzie-Murray in The Saturday Paper (paywalled) on March 24 2018 and echoes WorkSafe Victoria’s workplace bullying concerns of seven years ago.
NOW.org.au
This is an edited version of my presentation to delegates at the inaugural NSW Regional Safety Conference & Expo in Newcastle, Australia on March 17, 2018.
The current approach to occupational health and safety (OHS) is that we shouldn’t separate it from business operations. One of the motivations for achieving success in business is to build a strong organisational culture that integrates safety.
Companies often start this task by developing Mission Statements or Pledges. Quite often these are done by talking to a lot of different people in the organisation. And I don’t know of any mission statement that hasn’t been already run through Legal and Marketing – they don’t always get run through Safety. What happens is that these statements can become more florid and more inexact, and more unclear. Some of them descend into Business Bullshit.
Product Safety has never been far from the quad bike safety debate in Australia.
It was Product Safety that removed the three-wheel ATV from sale in the 1970s and 80s and it seems Product Safety may achieve a safety resolution that occupational health and safety (OHS) consultation could not.
On March 22, 2018 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) issued a media statement that says the ACCC, amongst other actions:
“…is proposing a mandatory safety standard that:….requires manufacturers to integrate an operator protection device, such as a crush protection device or roll over protection device in the design of new quad bikes…..”