Occupational Health and Safety Acts – performance and prosecution in the Australian minerals industry

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, there has been a 90+% reduction in lost-time injuries and fatalities in the Australian minerals industry to levels that now rival many other industries. The rate of improvement, however, has started to plateau. Further improvement is dependent on achieving human behavioural change founded on trust and transparent communication between all levels of the workforce and between industry and the regulators. An ‘automatic’ prosecution policy under OH&S legislation in some states is impacting negatively and severely in moving off the plateau and towards the goal of zero harm because:

(i) It impedes collaboration between the regulators and industry to determine root causes of incidents and optimum improvement measures.

(ii) Learnings from serious incidents are not being disseminated due to privilege considerations associated with pending prosecutions.

(iii) It is discouraging near-miss reporting and, hence, the free learnings to be had from these events.

(iv) It is failing to generate a ‘continuous improvement’ safety culture and may, in fact, be encouraging a return to a ‘compliance’ mindset.

(v) It is a major disincentive for young persons inculcated in health and safety values to seek a management career in the minerals industry.

It is timely to consider whether further improvements in workplace safety can be better gained through sanctions which focus on promoting improvement, such as ‘enforceable undertakings’, rather than through longer punitive adversarial processes.