Victoria’s Minister for WorkCover, Assistant Treasurer Gordon Rich-Phillips, obviously felt obliged to get in early for the 2012 WorkSafe Week by stating, in a media release, that: “Victoria is the safest state in Australia in which to work” Rich-Phillips quotes a range of statistics based on a recent report by Safe Work Australia (SWA) – the Fourteenth Edition of the … Continue reading “Victorian Minister claims “safest state in Australia””
The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has been under intense media pressure over an issue concerning her conduct as a lawyer around 17 years ago. It involves legal work for unions, her personal relationship at the time with a union official who has been described as “dodgy” and of most relevance to this blog, workplace safety. Missed … Continue reading “Inside Australian PM’s political problems is a nugget of workplace safety”
On Saturday morning, May 26 2012, the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and her Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, announced an inquiry into workplace bullying to be undertaken by the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment and to report to Parliament in November 2012. This announcement seems to be another that is buried or overtaken by current … Continue reading “Workplace bullying hits the national agenda in Australia”
In July 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard mentioned OHS harmonisation in an election debate. She said that OHS harmonisation was one of her achievements but less than two years later, at the Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) Congress, there is no mention of harmonisation in her speech. The only mention of safety was in … Continue reading “Motivation needed from Prime Minister on OHS laws”
Last week Professor Rod McClure of the Monash Injury Research Institute urged Australian safety professionals to look at the ecology of safety and injury prevention. By using the term “ecology” outside of the colloquial, he was advocating that we search for a universal theory of injury prevention. In short, he urged us to broaden our … Continue reading “Evidence of the need to change how and why we work”
Media reports on the 13 April 2012 Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting say that harmonisation of occupational health and safety laws in Australia has died. Some say this is the fault of the Victorian Government with its economic justification for inaction but the process was struggling as soon as the West Australian Government flagged … Continue reading “OHS is Dead. Long Live WHS.”
The Victorian Government has released the PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) assessment of the potential economic impacts of the introduction of the national Work Health and safety laws. The government media statement accompanying the report states that “The proposed laws do not deliver on the intent of the COAG reform agreed to in 2008 which aimed to reduce the … Continue reading “Victoria’s analysis of OHS law costs is unhelpful politics”