Mining policy platform released

The Minerals Council of Australia has released its 2019 policy platform called “The Next Frontier: Australian Mining Policy Priorities”. The mainstream media will focus on taxation and jobs data given that Australia will face an election in the first half of 2019 but there is a specific chapter on occupational health and safety (OHS)....

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Near Kill – Jim Ward speaks

Jim Ward is hardly known outside the Australian trade union movement but many people over the age of thirty, or in the occupational health and safety (OHS) profession, may remember the person Esso blamed for the Esso Longford explosion in 1998.  Just after the nineteenth anniversary of the incident that killed two workers and injured …

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David Caple provides the latest in reality-based OHS thinking

Recently David Caple gave his annual address to the Central Safety Group in Melbourne.  Caple (pictured above) is a prominent ergonomist, an adjunct professor at the Centre for Ergonomics & Human Factors, La Trobe University, a representative on several government OHS-related committees and has an enviable information network. Fresh from the Singapore OHS conference, Caple …

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Vision Zero, Zero Harm, … WTF?

The launch of a “Vision Zero” campaign about occupational health and safety (OHS) was a major element of the recent World Congress on Safety and Health at Work but it has created confusion and some alarm. The Secretary-General of the International Social Security Association (ISSA) Hans-Horst Konkolewsky told SafetyAtWorkBlog that Vision Zero “is not a Zero …

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Zero Harm evidence is “dubious”

The 21st World Congress on Safety and Health in Singapore has closed.  The next will be in 2020 in Toronto Canada. But before the closing ceremony the range of symposia continued.  One discussed best practice in occupational health and safety (OHS) and I had the chance to speak about the downside of Zero Harm. The …

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Exclusive interview with Hans-Horst Konkolewsky on Vision Zero

A major theme of the World Congress of Safety and Health 2017 is the extension and strengthening of the Vision Zero concept.  One of major advocates of this is Hans-Horst Konkolewsky, of the International Social Security Association. Konkolewsky sees Vision Zero as a “life changer”. Any safety concept that includes the word “zero” is inflammatory …

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Zero, health and people – themes of the World Congress on Safety & Health

In front of thousands of delegates and dignitaries, the 21st World Congress on Safety and Health was officially opened yesterday by the Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. There are three themes of this conference: Vision Zero – From Vision to Reality Healthy work—Healthy life People-centred prevention...

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