Yesterday Australia opened its National Workers Memorial in Canberra. The Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, spoke at the ceremony with, largely, an edited and reduced version of the speech he presented in Brisbane earlier last week. The Canberra speech dropped all the ANZAC Day references and spoke about the importance of remembering. “By erecting this monument, we tie the … Continue reading “National Workers Memorial opens”
At many occupational health and safety seminars and conferences in Australia there is often an OHS professional in the audience who says that jail time is the only real and effective deterrent for those breaking safety laws, usually in the context of gross negligence, reckless endangerment or industrial manslaughter. The threat of imprisonment is indeed … Continue reading “Safety change through rape?!”
Recently a safety professional told me he was investigating an incident on a work site and asked his first question “What do you think caused the incident?” The response was “safety culture”. Of course the next question will always be “what do you mean by safety culture?” and in most cases at this point the … Continue reading “Where are the Codes for establishing a safety culture?”
For the last few weeks WorkSafe Victoria has been running new injury prevention advertisements based on a game show theme of playing the odds on injuring a worker. The curiosity of this campaign is that humour and a little bit of shame has been employed to communicate. It is refreshing for an OHS regulator to … Continue reading “WorkSafe Victoria tries humour in safety advertising”
In July 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard mentioned OHS harmonisation in an election debate. She said that OHS harmonisation was one of her achievements but less than two years later, at the Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) Congress, there is no mention of harmonisation in her speech. The only mention of safety was in … Continue reading “Motivation needed from Prime Minister on OHS laws”
Overall the Safety In Action Conference, currently occurring in Melbourne, has been consistent but without any standout moments. However there have been nuggets of interest from the speakers and insight from some of the participants. Andrew Douglas of M+K Lawyers was blunt in describing some of the actions between State Governments and the Federal Government over the harmonisation of occupational health and safety laws as “extortion” … Continue reading “Zero Harm is a “fallacious deception” – thoughts on the 2012 Safety In Action Conference”
In January 2011 WorkSafe indicated its intention to prosecute the Department of Corrective Services and others in relation to death of Mr Ward. A $A285,000 penalty was imposed on 7 July 2011. SafetyAtWorkBlog reported on the WorkSafe actions at the time but an excellent clearinghouse for information on this case is the website of the … Continue reading “Government department fined $285k over prison van death”