Yesterday I posed the following questions for Victoria’s upcoming Parliamentary Committee inquiry into proposed work-from-home (WFH) laws.
Below I offer some answers.
Australia often positions itself as a leader on psychosocial hazards and occupational health and safety (OHS). A new proposal from the European Parliament (EP) provides a contrast.
In September 2026, I will be reporting from the Psych Health and Safety Conference (PHSCon) in Sydney. It is the pre-eminent workplace mental health conference in Australia and is it its third year.
In support of the 2026 conference, I have opened some of my PHSCon articles from 2024. These articles illustrate the high calibre of speakers this conference attracts and, hopefully, shows the worth of subscribing to the SafetyAtWorkBlog for these exclusive reports.
The reality of needing to provide psychologically healthy and safe work seems to have been widely accepted, if not still well understood, if the number of corporate work-related psychological assessment and management programs is any indication. One of the most recent is “The Psychosocial Safety Blueprint” published by Culture Plus Consulting’s Felicity Menzies. The blueprint is interesting until the document’s marketing purpose starts to dominate.
I want to be optimistic about workplace mental health in the lead-up to my reporting on a sihgnificant psychological/psychososcial conference in September – PHSCon. But reading the newspapers demoralises me, as burnout stories framed through HR ignore OHS obligations and preventive design. I suppose I could eliminate the psychological hazard by stopping reading the newspapers (like many others have), but then how would I know what others think about occupational health and safety (OHS) and what is being said and advised to employers and the community?
Recently, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers contained an article called “Hidden cost of our burnout culture” – a typical example of a Human Resources (HR) and leadership-based perspective. Burnout stories framed through HR ignore OHS obligations and preventive design.
In the movie “Working Girl”, Melanie Griffith’s character reveals how she connected merger opportunities when flipping through a magazine. Today’s Australian Financial Review (AFR) presented a similar set of thoughts on psychosocial hazards and Artificial Intelligence (AI). This connection had the added heft of quotes from prominent Australian lawyer, Michael Tooma.
Business management advisers keep calling everyone a “leader”, but the term has become so vague it obscures who actually holds the power — and therefore the accountability — to prevent work-related harm. Psychosocial hazards aren’t fixed by slogans or culture talk; they’re shaped by decisions about workload, staffing, supervision and resources.
This article is based on my presentation to the Central Safety Group members on May 12, 2026, about leadership and occupational health and safety (OHS).
