The Victorian government has commenced its Royal Commission into the Integrity of Major Public and Civil Infrastructure Construction Projects in Victoria. Occupational health and safety (OHS) was mentioned on Day 1 in the opening statements of Counsel Assisting the Commissioner, Chris Young KC, indicating that OHS may feature in the investigations over the next year.
Like many other countries, Australia’s political debate seems dominated by immigration issues. This week, after Federal Minister Tony Burke announced the government’s revised immigration policy, Queensland primary producer Joe Moro linked migration to occupational health and safety (OHS) and labour availability.
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.
Based on mainstream media reports of the working-from-home (WFH) debate in Victoria over the last few weeks, Victorian politics has fractured over the proposal to give most employees a right to work from home two days a week. The politics of the WFH initiative came to the fore, even if occupational health and safety (OHS) didn’t.
Day Two of PHSCon was likely to be uncomfortable. Day One covered context, community and curiosity. Day Two asked a more difficult question. Now that employers know more about psychosocial hazards, are they prepared to change how work is designed, managed and measured? The broad answer from the speakers and case studies was “not really”. Genuinely managing psychosocial hazards and psychological safety is not a wellbeing campaign, a mindfulness app, a webinar series or another glossy page on the intranet. It is occupational health and safety (OHS), and it requires the same attention to hazards, controls, governance, and review that employers claim to routinely apply to physical risks.
Day one of PHSCon felt less like the unveiling of a new paradigm and more like a reminder that the fundamentals of good work have been obvious for a long time. The opening session positioned the conference as part of a broader push to move beyond bare compliance and towards more humane, evidence‑based ways of organising work. Conference chair and author Dr Kat Page set the tone by describing how her book Good Work emerged from watching COVID‑era decisions about job design, workload and leadership either amplify or buffer psychological harm. She framed both the book and the conference as an attempt to offer collective agency and hope, a space where practitioners, leaders and academics could connect stories, research and practice in ways that make better work design feel possible rather than theoretical. Conference delegates received a free copy of the book.
Day 1 of FlourishDx’s Psych Health and Safety conference ended this year with a flourish, featuring a Family Feud-style contest between Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and Human Resources (HR). It was a raucous conclusion to a day of mixed safety messages.
