Safe Work Australia also attended Senate Estimates late last month. COVID19 is an unavoidable focus but we learnt that the latest fatality report will be released early this month, obtained more details on the response to the Boland Report, heard more about the gig economy but the climax was accusations of a coverup with Senator …
Occupational health and safety (OHS) popped up in the Australian Parliament this week in odd, oblique ways. OHS was tied to asbestos imports, the Ensuring Integrity Bill, a construction company owner in Western Australia, and sexual harassment. Question and Answers On September 19 2019 several questions were put about the importation of asbestos containing products. …
This weekend the Australian people voted for the conservative Liberal Party to be the next Federal government. Workplace safety has been largely absent from the pre-election campaign but when it has been mentioned it has almost always been couched in terms of productivity. In the next few years, workplace safety issues must be couched … Continue reading “New political challenges for OHS in Australia”
The lower house (thanks, Rex) of the Australian Parliament has passed amendments to its industrial relations laws, the Fair Work Act, to allow for matters concerning workplace bullying to be heard in its Commission, once the laws pass the Senate.. But recent media and parliamentary discussion on this action seems to forgotten the welfare of … Continue reading “Legal changes on workplace bullying are forgetting the workers”
Australian research has provided an important additional element to discussions on the safety of using quad bikes as work vehicles on Australian farms. According to a media release to be published on 3 April 2013 from the Australian Centre for Agricultural Health and Safety (ACAHS): “Two new papers released today in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health ….indicate that the costs … Continue reading “Quad bike fatalities cost an average of at least $2.3 million”
On 19 October 2012 in a video address to an Australian forum on quad bike safety, the US Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Robert Adler stated “We at the US CPSC are monitoring your activities closely with the hope that what you learn can help us back here in the United States.” That places considerable attention on the … Continue reading “The world looks to Australia for quad bike safety changes”
Yesterday Associate Professor Tony LaMontagne spoke at the monthly networking meeting of the Central Safety Group in Australia. His presentation was based around his research into job stress and its relationship with mental health. LaMontagne was talking about the dominant position in personnel management where negative thoughts generate a negative working environment, one of stress, dissatisfaction and lower productivity. SafetyAtWorkBlog … Continue reading “Behavioural-based safety put into context”
