Australian business is outraged over OHS changes but is it all piss and wind?

Australian business groups have written an open letter to the New South Wales Government protesting about the decision to continue with some OHS processes specific to New South Wales regardless of previous commitments to support the harmonisation of OHS laws.  As the letter was published as an advertisement  (Page 6 of  The Australian on 20 October 2010), it is not readily available online but the letter needs a little bit of deconstruction to better understand the politics and ideologies behind the letter and the business associations.

The letter says Australian industry signed on to the national harmonisation process because of the need for an effective way of improving safety, fair legal processes and national consistency.  Yes, to some extent but more often industry groups have been calling for a reduction of red tape for the purpose of reducing administrative costs.  Reducing the injuries and fatalities of workers is not the same as “improving the safety of Australia’s workplaces”.

The ideological gap is shown in the argument against the national imposition of “reverse onus of proof”.  The letter uses Victoria as an example of a jurisdiction without the reverse onus of proof and says

“Victoria, which was used as the model for the new national laws and which does not have union prosecutions or reverse onus, has between 30% and 50% better safety outcomes than NSW depending on the measurement used“. (my emphasis)

What is a “better safety outcome”?  Less deaths?  Less cost to business?  Is it fair to compare NSW to Victoria?  And can the variation in “safety outcomes” be directly related to reverse onus of proof?   Continue reading “Australian business is outraged over OHS changes but is it all piss and wind?”

Safety website says OHS association is heartless

Safety In Australia has posted an extraordinary article questioning the decision of the Safety Institute of Australia to proceed with a process to consider the expulsion of one of its members regardless of the member recently suffering a heart attack.

The article says that the SIA has received a doctor’s letter saying that Phil Kamay, the member in question, should not attend the special general meeting on health grounds but the SIA has decided to proceed regardless. Safety In Australia questions this decision on the grounds of fairness. It is unclear who, if anyone, will be presenting Kamay’s rebuttal of the accusations against him that have led to the expulsion moves.

On an unrelated note, it is understood that the SIA has two tables booked for Worksafe Victoria’s Safety Awards late next week and that Phil Kamay is a guest at one of those tables.

Kevin Jones

Computer simulations of quad bike risks do not reflect reality

Guest contributor David Robertson discusses the  differences between risk simulations and real risk data in relation to quad bike safety:

“The motion picture blockbuster “Avatar”, for the time we are in the cinema, would have us believe that Sam Worthington can turn into a giant blue man on a faraway planet.  James Cameron used computers to deliver us this illusion. In science (and particularly with safety) we must be able to distinguish between computers that are valuable tools and computers that don’t represent reality.  Dynamic Research, Inc.(DRI) chose 113 actual quad bike (ATV) accidents to simulate in a computer model.

The first table below shows the injuries DRI record as what really happened from all the 113 cases, but represented as approximate normalized injury cost (ANIC)*.   When DRI’s computer runs the same cases, one would expect a similar result.  The results are shown in the second table (ANIC), note the scale on the left has had to be changed (table 2 should be about 10 times taller if the same scale in table 1 was used) because head injuries rose from 360 points to well over 3000. Equally astonishingly is that abdomen injuries have vanished altogether and chest injuries dropped from 266 to a next to nothing (23). Asphyxiation was not even included in the computer model. Continue reading “Computer simulations of quad bike risks do not reflect reality”

Powerful short OHS films and long-term safety promotion

The Australian OHS regulators struggle each year to make their annual safety week events last beyond the nominated week, the events and the newspaper advertisements.  Queensland’s Workplace Health & Safety (WHSQ) has released two short films focussing on workplace incidents.

The McGuane film provides a chronology of Gavan McGuane going to work for 30 minutes and remaining in hospital with serious facial and eyesight problems for over 50 days. 

There are telling comments from the McGuane family and his doctor about the personal cost of this workplace injury.  Continue reading “Powerful short OHS films and long-term safety promotion”

Major rethink on Australian Standards needed

A recent download of a “free” guide from the Victorian Building Commission on retrofitting a home for bushfire protection raised the ongoing nonsense of Australian Standards costs.  Sure enough, this free guide is only notionally so; if you don’t hand over $100  then the guide has limited use.

The guide I got, “A guide to retrofit your home for better protection from a bushfire”, is packed with useful info, up to the point you need the nitty-gritty.  Time and time again the reader is sent off to AS 3959 – Construction of buildings in bush-fire prone areas.  Being in OH&S-World we get used to that little double-blind.  Happens all the time with regs and codes and all sorts of guidance stuff.  And it is ridiculous. Its gotta change.

As best as I know a massive cost of development of Australian Standards is born by the participating development organizations.  They are the ones that foot the salary bill to have their staff go off to meetings to formulate the Standards.  Sure, there is going to be lots of other costs, but from what I can see this critical contribution to the development of Australian Standards is a cost to the businesses and government agencies taking part (ultimately a community cost) and the double whammy comes when you want to buy a Standard.

The fact that such an important bit of guidance on protecting homes from bushfire is essentially diminished by the need to spend $100 to get the Standard really slams home the point that change has to happen.

For mine, all PDF downloads of Australian Standards should be free.  A cost recovery cost for a hard copy seems fair enough. I don’t know about the experience of others, but it borders on embarrassing to be giving a punter help on this or that OH&S issue and then have to add “Oh and I think you have no choice but to fork out $XXX for this Standard.”  I hate that, and where I can I avoid it.  But clearly there’s times when it’s impossible.

Perhaps it’s time to get fair dinkum about improved standards of safety, and fair dinkum in way that truly cuts the bullshit?  And that means nationally developed Standards become the nation’s product; PDF copies free to anyone who needs to use ‘em.

Col Finnie
col@finiohs.com

The Safety Institute discovers the media

For many years the Safety Institute of Australia has been uncertain in its media relations. On most of the important OHS issues in the last 10 years the SIA has either been silent for the fear of being “overtly political” or been too slow to react.  Its past media releases have almost always been to promote upcoming conferences.  Finally, the SIA has made a media statement within 24 hours of an OHS issue AND it was a political issue.   Perhaps the SIA is finally showing some understanding of how to work with the media instead of being suspicious.

On 15 October 2010, The SIA issued a media release on the matter of NSW Premier Kristina Keneally’s refusal to play to the rules on harmonizing OHS laws. In a carefully worded statement, the SIA has come out on the side of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.   No surprise there as Keneally’s government is considered by almost everyone as a certainty to lose power in the March 2011 election.   But the SIA’s inherent conservatism is on show when it says the proposed federal law changes remove “any justification for a union’s right to prosecute.”.  The SIA has always been uncomfortable with the OHS role of unions and has had a fractious relationship with the union movement. Continue reading “The Safety Institute discovers the media”

Harmonious fragility or fragile harmony – OHS and politics in Australia

Less than 24 hours after mentioning the fragility of Australia’s OHS harmonisation process, confirmation comes from an unexpected source, Kristina Keneally, Premier of New South Wales (pictured right).  It would seem that Keneally’s decision to change her stance on OHS is more to do with a general package of industrial relations and, union-friendly, reforms, as reported in the Brisbane Times on 14 October 2010  (video available HERE). Yet she has stated that

“”We will not therefore introduce the model OHS legislation as it is currently drafted.”

The media has been quick of highlighting this new tension between State and Federal agendas.  Prime Minister Julia Gillard was asked about Keneally’s statements and responded:

“….I think the Keneally Government should honour the agreement it made. It had an extensive period of time to raise issues of concern – and indeed it did, through its Minister at the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council table. Issues were raised, issues were discussed. When you are reaching uniform laws, it is obvious that states and territories come with different perspectives. They’ve got their own laws. If no-one moves then you never get national uniformity.

So, yes, New South Wales raised issues along the way, but it accepted the outcomes and it signed the deal. We require the deal to be delivered.” Continue reading “Harmonious fragility or fragile harmony – OHS and politics in Australia”