Tag: government

Australian OHS experts call for a single OHS regulator and a unified insurance system

Some of Australia’s top work health and safety experts have stressed, to Safe Work Australia, the need for a single national OHS regulator.  Many also called for a radical overhaul of workers’ compensation and insurance structures to achieve a combined insurance/compensation similar to that of New Zealand, the Accident Compensation Commission (ACC).

These calls were made in a  whole day workshop, conducted by Safe Work Australia on 30 August 2011, on the development of the next ten-year national OHS strategy.  This was the latest of around ten consultative sessions whose notes will be summarised and posted online.  The notes from an earlier seminar list the following discussion topics:

  • “The need to focus on work health and safety prevention.
  • Engagement with target groups and industries to ensure advice and support is relevant to enable them to effectively respond to hazards.
  • Engineering hazards out through good design.
  • Influencing the supply chain inside and outside Australia.
  • Prioritising key work health and safety hazards and focusing national attention.
  • Creating opportunities for innovation in work health and safety particularly within the regulatory framework.
  • Enhancing the culture of safety leadership (promoting highly reliable organisations).
  • The importance of safety culture.
  • Enhancing the capability of workers to return to work following accident or illness.
  • Influencing or assisting academia to undertake research – focusing on intervention effectiveness.
  • Developing a shared communication strategy to promote the new principles of the new Strategy.”

These echo many of the comments in today’s seminar and illustrate what was a major missed opportunity.  The theme of today’s workshop was to imagine what OHS (or work health and safety or work health safety & environment, as some suggested) will be like in 2022 but there were few futuristic suggestions.  This was the opportunity to extend some of the practices currently undertaken by ten years. Continue reading “Australian OHS experts call for a single OHS regulator and a unified insurance system”

Santos slapped with stale celery over near-miss

More often than not people are disappointed by the sentences handed out by Courts on OHS breaches.  Even with sentencing guidelines, the ultimate decision rests with the judgement of the Court.  Today’s $A84,000 fine against Santos Ltd appears low considering that the incident had the potential to be catastrophic and the company has just  reported “half-year profit up 155% to $504 million”. (ABC News provides a good pocket description of the incident with The Age discusses the corporate impact at the time)

The 2004 incident involved a near miss but a near miss that was just a second away from a catastrophe.  The fact that no one was directly injured has been mentioned in many media reports but not being injured is not the same as not being affected.  Industrial Magistrate Ardlie’s decision records that some employees had to run through the gas cloud to reach the muster point.  Some had difficulty breathing.  One worker was knocked off his feet by the blast and had the fireball travel over him burning the exposed parts of his body.

Dr John Edwards of Flinders University is quoted in Industrial Magistrate Ardlie’s decision that, without prompt evacuation, “the exposure dose [to hydrocarbons] could have been considerable and life-threatening”. Continue reading “Santos slapped with stale celery over near-miss”

Concerns increase as Australia’s OHS law changes loom

Conference organisers IQPC started its two-day Safety in Design, Engineering and Construction conference on 16 August 2011.  The most prominent speaker on day one was Barry Sherriff of law firm, Norton Rose.  Sherriff spoke about OHS harmonisation‘s impact on the Australian construction industry.

Over time Australian labour lawyers generally have moved from saying that Victorian companies have little to worry about from the new laws expected on 1 January 2012 to quite alarming suggestions of challenges to do with contractor management and consultation.  Part of this modification of advice may be due to the increased analysis of company OHS systems.  Sherriff said that he has been surprised how many companies ask for advice about compliance under the new laws and yet are not complying under the existing OHS laws.

On the issue of consultation, Sherriff identified the “coordination of activities” and managing the “flow of information” as a critical element in the new OHS model laws.  But he stressed that such obligations have existed in OHS laws in many Australian States for sometime but are now more overtly stated. Continue reading “Concerns increase as Australia’s OHS law changes loom”

Similarities between the regulation of environmental and workplace safety

In June 2011, Victoria’s Environment Protection Authority (EPA) released a revised Compliance and Enforcement (C&E) policy.  There seemed to be some similarities to WorkSafe’s C&E policy, developed in 2006, so SafetyAtWorkBlog spoke this afternoon to John Merritt, who became the CEO of the EPA in early 2010 after many years as the executive director of WorkSafe Victoria.

In an exclusive podcast with SafetyAtWorkBlog Merritt, a major participant in the development of both policies, provides a useful insight into

  • Why a revised C&E policy was necessary
  • The similarities of environmental and workplace safety enforcement
  • How WorkSafe enforcement lessons can be applied to environmental protection
  • The cooperation between government agencies
  • Balancing transparency and information provision
  • EPA’s use of social media
  • Maintaining a local focus in a world of global environmental challenges

The podcast should be of interest to those professionals who need to manage the, often competing, business elements of environmental, safety and health obligations.

Kevin Jones

Workplace bullying statistics remain muddy

A recent article on workplace bullying by the CEO of Diversity Council Australia, Nareen Young, is a good introduction to the issue but, as with many other articles on the issue, the content requires careful consideration.

One statistical resource used on workplace bullying articles is the very important and influential March 2010 Productivity Commission (PC) report – Performance Benchmarking of Australian Business Regulation: Occupational Health & Safety.  Predominantly, this report lumps together “harassment”, “occupational violence”, and “fatigue” with “workplace bullying” under the term “psychosocial hazards”.  This means it is impossible to extrapolate data from any specific workplace issue in this category, however the PC report does devote some sections of Chapter 11 specifically to bullying, but even then the statistics are tricky.

Young’s article states that

“Estimates of its [bullying’s] prevalence in the workplace vary, but one study outlined in the Productivity Continue reading “Workplace bullying statistics remain muddy”

New quad bike poster establishes a safe operation benchmark

In July 2011, it was noted that the quad bike manufacturers had revised the wording of  their poster about quad bike safety.  The website that provided an online version of that poster is now under redevelopment.  However Australia’s Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities (HWSA) has released its own poster outlining the basic elements of quad bike safety in Australia and New Zealand.

The poster advises that:

BEFORE YOU BUY

Find out whether a quad bike is the best vehicle option for your farm.

Politics slows the safety regulation process in Australian oilfields

On 8 August 2011, the Australian Financial Review (not available online) reported on a letter from the head of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety Agency (NOPSA), John Clegg, that criticised the Western Australian government’s regulatory regime for offshore petroleum exploration.  The crux of the letter was that WA does not require energy companies to develop a “safety case” for their offshore operations.

The letter referred specifically to the Varanus Island pipeline explosion under the control of Apache Corporation.  The AFR paraphrased the letter:

“…Clegg said….that given WA legislation at the time of the Varanus Explosion it was “doubtful” that Apache Corporation, the US operator of Varanus, had any obligation to adhere to a “safety case”, the crucial tool for management of oil and gas field safety.”

The “safety case” requirement for complex processing industries originated after the inquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster of 1988 and has become a default safety management process in many jurisdictions around the world. (UK’s Health & Safety Executive has some excellent background resources on this)

The political arguments between State and Federal jurisdictions will be a major impediment to safety reforms in this industry sector – a tension to which few in the Eastern Australian States may give adequate attention.  The tension echoes the continuing conflict over OHS harmonisation laws. Continue reading “Politics slows the safety regulation process in Australian oilfields”

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