Canadian safety professional, Eldeen Pozniak, has been touring the Australian and New Zealand occupational health and safety conference over the next few weeks. I was able to have a coffee with her earlier this week in Melbourne where we talked about
This week in Australia, the Senate Education and Employment References Committee inquiry into industrial deaths conducts public hearings in three States in three days. Transcripts will be available shortly but it is worth looking at the record of the last public hearing from August 7 2018 to see the type of questions the panel are asking and how some of Australia’s business and occupational health and safety organisations are responding.
Mark Goodsell of the Australian Industry Group (AiGroup) seemed to struggle at times but this may have been partly due to his choice not to repeat the content of the AiGroup submission and instead comment on some of the other submissions. Goodsell points out:
“We made the point in our submission, and a number of the other submissions also made the point, that industrial deaths have decreased in absolute terms in Australia over the last decade or so. As a proportion of the workforce, that’s a broad pattern across all states and most industries—in fact, all industries but not all to the same degree. That’s not widely acknowledged in a lot of the submissions. It is in the employers’ submissions but most of the other submissions appear to either not acknowledge that or just jump over that.” (pages 36 & 37)
This Senate Committee is looking at industrial deaths so the focus on fatalities is understandable.
Twelve months after the NSCA Foundation resurrected its occupational health and safety (OHS) conference program, SafetyCONNECT has settled into to a comfortable niche. This year’s conference, in an established Brisbane location has attracted around 140 delegates and almost 20 exhibitors. Perhaps most importantly is they have been able to attract entertaining and challenging local and international speakers. Continue reading “Power in simplicity – SafetyCONNECT”
The Governance Institute of Australia hosted a discussion about “Corporate culture and people risk — lessons from the Royal Commission”. The seminar was worthwhile attending but there was also moments of discomfort.
The reality was that The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry was not discussed in any great detail as it was treated as a ghost hovering behind the discussion but not a scary ghost, almost a ghost of embarrassment.
And it seems that “People Risk” is what the Human Resource (HR) profession calls occupational health and safety (OHS) when it can’t bring itself to say occupational health and safety.
Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews announced a State-supported program to install solar panels on an estimation of 65,00 homes if his Labor Party is re-elected this November. This election campaign announcement immediately reminds voters of the last government-sponsored “green” program, the Home Insulation Scheme which, amongst other results, lead to the deaths five workers.
Unsurprisingly,
The Independent Review of Model WHS Laws being conducted by Marie Boland released a Public Consultation Summary on August 17 2018. Boland lists the concerns raised with her as including:
“the blurring of lines between WHS [work health and safety], public safety and public health”
“The length and complexity of the Regulations and Codes”
It is always good to see researchers assessing issues related to workplace health and safety rather than relying on overseas data. Recently researchers from the Australian Catholic University and St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne looked into “measuring the effectiveness of workplace health management programs” . The research adds to our understanding of these programs but the relevance to occupational health and safety (OHS) is limited.
The researchers,