Category: safety culture

Risk and empire building

A British coroner has reflected a common perception on occupational health and safety and how OHS is “taking all the fun out of life”.

According to an article in This Is The West Country on 11 June 2008, West Somerset Coroner Michael Rose said

“All too often, there isn’t enough challenge for people in this country – everything is under health and safety. I don’t think we’d have been the country we were if we’d have had health and safety one or two centuries ago.”

Without taking MIchael Rose to task about his knowledge of health and safety in 1808, his comments can be heard in many everyday circumstances where OHS is a bit of a wet blanket.

It is fun to have the wind through your hair while tearing down a hillside with no bike helmet on.  It is fun to spin on a shopping trolley in the aisles of a supermarket. And it is exhilarating to stand on the top of a building, looking down with no safety harness. All of these things I have done and I suspect my children will do them too. 

There is nothing to stop you doing these acts if you choose to.  But if you are injured as a result, it would be unfair to exepct soemone else to pay for your stupidity.  And yet that is what is becoming the expectations of modern western society – we do not take repsonsibility for our actions.

But then there is a time and place for everything and maybe OHS simply restricts those two elements.

Occupational Noise and Motorcycle Cops

Phil Matier spoke on KCBS radio on 9 June 2008 about the changes that Oakland Police Department is making to its motorcycles to make them louder.  There is an argument that in some way this makes the vehicles safer.

It’s a bizarre report and should be listened to while bearing in mind a new Australian report on the increase in tinnitus in young people.  Perhaps American kids need to increase the volume of their iPod earphones whenever a Oakland motorcycle cop rides by.

Public Servant Workload – Part 2

In today’s Age newspaper Dr Mirko Bagaric takes the Australian Prime Minister to task on the matter of hypocrisy and how his actions now are beginning to reveal his character.  However Bagaric, makes some comments about public servant workloads that are relevant.

“Rudd has an important project. It is to run the country in a manner that best provides an opportunity for each of us to flourish. And he is passionate about his project. Last week he boasted that frankly, he does believe in “burning the midnight oil”. And good on him. That’s his choice.

But it is not his choice to expect others to share his fanaticism. Stung by leaks relating to the FuelWatch scheme and responding to complaints of overwork by public servants, he said: “I’ve got news for the public service — there’ll be more. The work ethic of this Government will not decrease, it will increase.”

Almost universally regarded as being overpaid, lazy and inefficient, public servants evoke no public sympathy.

Yet, they too have interests. They are public servants, not public slaves. Many of them have families. Many of them have other priorities.

Rudd has spectacularly failed the exploitation test.”

Cultural change is most effective when it is introduced from the top level of management.  The Prime Minister is displaying his own work ethic but, as Bagaric, states it is unfair to impose this on others. 

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