Presented by Robert Clark MP		www.robertclark.net

The last WorkCover safety campaign?

News Release - 17 January 2000

At the same time as the Minister for WorkCover, Bob Cameron, is launching WorkCover's latest workplace safety advertising campaign, the State Government is pressing on with its plans to strip the Victorian WorkCover Authority of its role in workplace safety, putting the future for these campaigns in doubt.

The Shadow Minister for WorkCover, Mr Robert Clark, said the Government's plans were a step backwards for workplace safety and a caving in to trade union militancy.

"Dismembering the Victorian WorkCover Authority and re-establishing an inspectorate under direct government control will play into the hands of union militants seeking to use occupational health and safety as a cover for industrial action.

"In the same week as the CFMEU and ETU are threatening walkouts, bans and limitations on building sites across Melbourne, and demonstrating a bloody-mindedness that is threatening to return Victoria's international reputation to that of the late 1980's, the Bracks Government is proposing to provide those unions with further weapons against employers in the form of an inspectorate that employers will justifiably fear is no longer impartial and independent.

"Unions have an infamous record of using alleged safety issues and the threat of site shutdowns to extract concessions from employers, and this looks set to take off again.

"A successful inspectorate needs to have the respect of both employers and employees, and it will not have the respect of employers if it is seen to be a tool of the trade union movement."

Mr Clark said that in terms of achieving better workplace safety, removing occupational health and safety responsibility from the Victorian WorkCover Authority was like stopping the Transport Accident Commission from running its "bloody idiot" and other advertising campaigns.

"The Transport Accident Commission has been achieved outstanding road safety results by looking at all the information available to it on accident rates and patterns, identifying the problem areas, and responding with targeted and hard hitting advertising and other measures.

"In the same way, with workplace safety the VWA should be responsible for all aspects compensation and safety in the workplace, including advertising and education campaigns," Mr Clark said.

"If there are two organisations with overlapping roles, neither organisation will have the information or the ability to fully tackle safety issues. Expertise will be divided, and there will be buck-passing of responsibility.

"WorkCover in the past has run outstanding campaigns such as "Safety - Think It, Talk It, Work It" and its campaigns on tractor roll-bars and trucking industry safety.

"Taking this role away from WorkCover will put those successful campaigns at risk and threatens a return to the failed arrangements that the previous Labor government set up under WorkCare, and which were abolished by the Coalition government in 1996.

Mr Clark said that Victoria has achieved dramatic improvements in occupational health and safety over the last decade or so:

• Claims reported (on a standardised basis) have fallen from 64,768 in 1986-87 to 31,340 in 1998-99. [Source: VWA Annual Report 1998-99, Statistical Report 1997-98]

• Work related death claims peaked at 262 in 1988-89, but have been reduced to 125 in 1998-99.

• A report by the Labour Minister's Council of all Australian jurisdictions in May last year showed that in 1997-98 Victoria had more workplace safety inspections than any other State (58,189, compared with 50,314 workplaces visited in NSW). [Source: Labour Ministers' Council, Comparative Performance Monitoring, Comparison of Occupational Health and Safety arrangements in Australian jurisdictions May 1999, ISBN 0 642 32444 1, pp.38-39]

• The same report showed that Victoria had 236 inspectors and investigators, compared with 254 inspectors in NSW. Subsequently, VWA announced in July that the number of staff in the field would be increased by the end of 1999 to 255.

"Just as with the road toll, we always need to be looking for ways to improve workplace safety and to target any problem areas that are identified.

"However, the measures that are taken have to be ones intelligently directed at solving the problems, rather than having problem areas used as an excuse for other agendas.

"The lack of bona fides on the part of some unions is shown by the fact that their industrial action is not directed at employers with poor safety records, but against whatever employers they want to intimidate and win concessions from," Mr Clark said.

Mr Clark said that it was also ironic that when in Opposition, Labor had promised to slash $30 million from the State Governments total advertising budget of $48 million, which would have required drastic cuts to safety advertising including $8 million per annum by WorkCover and $12 million per annum by the TAC.

"Now Labor have recognised the importance of safety advertising by WorkCover, but what does that do to their proposed $30 million saving," Mr Clark said.