Victorian Political News		www.robertclark.net

WorkCover Health and Safety Week shows Labor folly

News Release - 6 April 2000

The Shadow Minister for WorkCover, Robert Clark, has welcomed the new Government's continuation of the highly successful annual Health and Safety Week run by the Victorian WorkCover Authority.

As part of Health and Safety Week, the Minister for WorkCover, Mr Cameron, is announcing a farm safety subsidy program at Bendigo tomorrow.

However, at the same time as the Minister is announcing this subsidy, his Government is proposing to take up to $7.5 million a year from the farming community in increased WorkCover premiums.

As well, the very success of Health and Safety Week in raising awareness and reducing accidents shows the folly of the Labor Government's decision to require the VWA to cut its advertising budget by 25% and its policy to strip the VWA of its role in occupational health and safety.

The $2 million cut in the VWA's $8 million advertising budget was imposed by the new Government soon after taking office.

Under its election policy 'The future for Victorian workplaces', Labor is committed to

Ensure a clear organisational separation of workers' compensation from occupational health and safety. (p.13)

Mr Clark said that removing occupational health and safety responsibility from the Victorian WorkCover Authority would be like stopping the Transport Accident Commission from running its 'bloody idiot' and other advertising campaigns.

"Both TAC and VWA have been achieving outstanding safety results by looking at all the information available to them on accident rates and patterns, identifying the problem areas, and responding with targeted and hard hitting advertising and other measures.

"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 threaten a return to the failed arrangements that the previous Labor government set up under WorkCare."

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

• 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).