An article in the Australian Financial Review (not available on line) on 16 October 2009 provided some additional legal opinions on the implementation and aims of Australia’s draft Safe Work Bill. Other than Michael Tooma’s well established thoughts on the draft law, Liberty Sanger of Maurice Blackburn, a law firm with strong trade union links, … Continue reading “OHS model law remains divisive”
Andrew Douglas, an Australian OHS and employment relations lawyer, has followed up some his points made in a podcast on 2 October 2009 in an article available on his firm’s website. Part of the article says So what is different about the Model Act and how will it be interpreted? When interpreting an Act you always turn to … Continue reading “Harmonised OHS laws – winners and losers”
On 25 September 2009, Australia’s Workplace Relations Ministers Council (WRMC) agreed to release the draft legislation for public comment. According to one media report, the New South Wales Finance Minister, Joe Tripodi, “…moved at the [WRMC] meeting to have union prosecutions included in the new laws and was defeated by eight votes to one.” The documents are now available for download HERE. … Continue reading “Harmonisation documents available but path is far from settled”
Firstly there is an apology for having statistics dominate SafetyAtWorkBlog this week however everything became available all at once. An earlier article mentioned some recent OHS statistics that have been released by the Australian Council of Trade Unions. Below is the SafetyAtWorkBlog interpretation of the survey report. The survey was undertaken by an independent research … Continue reading “Australian survey on attitudes to OHS and laws”
Australian Standards have two, almost, distinct categories of standards – technical and management. A safety colleague reminded me of the distinction recently, a distinction that greatly helps the debate of Australian Standards’ authority. Perhaps there continues to be a role for some Standards, such as construction-related standards, that deal specifically with the environmental climate … Continue reading “More thoughts on Standards”
SafetyAtWorkBlog has written elsewhere of how the global financial crisis has caused OHS related programs to be revised. The latest bulletin from Standards Australia indicates the impact of the financial pressures on its plans and the reduction in the value of their investments has come at a time of other worrisome changes. (In this article … Continue reading “The future for Standards Australia will be hard”
Australia is undergoing a process of national harmonisation on workplace safety legislation. The government has played down the chances of State jurisdictions creating exemptions to, or variations of, OHS law. The message was that we are all “singing from the same song sheet”. Even before model OHS legislation has been approved, the New South Wales … Continue reading “Farmers creating dis-harmony in OHS legislation”