The latest podcast by the Health & Safety Executive includes an interesting interview with the chair of the HSE, Judith Hackitt. Hackitt admits that any review of occupational health and safety needed “someone who could look beyond the remit of the Health and Safety Executive and look at what the other factors are out there that create the problems … Continue reading “Lord Young OHS review welcomed by UK’s HSE”
Rex Hoy of Safe Work Australia (SWA) spoke on 1 June 2010 at the Australian Senate Estimates hearing (around page 44) and confirmed progress on the draft OHS regulations and codes of practice. The draft Hansard reports Hoy saying: “Just to cover the areas we are working on: there will be model regulations covering administrative arrangements … Continue reading “Safe Work Australia at Senate Estimates – harmonisation latest”
Reviews of OHS legislation by governments are usually keenly anticipated as they mostly occur once a system is broken. But there seems to be considerable trepidation with the plan announced on 14 June 2010, by the Prime Minister, David Cameron. Cameron has appointed Lord Young to undertake an extensive review of OHS. According to the Prime minister’s media statement: … Continue reading “Lord Young = old approach to OHS”
Around 15 years ago, occupational health and safety law in New South Wales looked exciting. The NSW Standing Committee on Law & Justice was investigating OHS, and not just the laws. There was a potential for the inquiry to make New South Wales a leader in innovation in this sector. On 11 May 2010, the news broke that … Continue reading “Important OHS law reformer, Jeff Shaw, dies”
The Communications Division of the CEPU has been in negotiations with Australia Post for some time to establish a pathway to better industrial relations. On 18 March 2010 a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed between the two parties, committing both to progress. Of direct OHS interest is the following paragraph in the media statement about the MOU: “As a gesture of … Continue reading “LTIFRs (sort of) gone from Australia Post”
Australia’s Productivity Commission released its draft report into Performance Benchmarking of Australian Business Regulation: Occupational Health and Safety on 27 January 2010. The 432-page report will take some time to read and digest but below are the general key points of the report “This study compares inter-jurisdictional differences in occupational health and safety (OHS) legislation in … Continue reading “Business assessment of OHS”
Recently, SafetyAtWorkBlog received a long anonymous email concerning the death of David Colson, Tasmanian abalone diver who drowned in October 2007. The Coroner completed his inquest into the death and released his investigation findings in early January 2010. An earlier blog article on the findings can be found here The correspondent pointed out that Allen … Continue reading “Something fishy in Tasmania’s abalone industry”