National safety campaigns
Contents
1. National campaigns
In 2002 a national strategy was developed in 2002, targeting industries with high incidence/severity rates. Western Australia has participated in a number of national occupational health and safety campaigns
Five priorities and five strategies
Five national priorities were agreed on:
- reduce high incidence/severity rates;
- improve the capacity of business operators to manage occupational safety and health effectively;
- prevent occupational disease more effectively;
- eliminate hazards at the design stage; and
- strengthen the capacity of government to influence occupational safety and health outcomes.
The plan adopted the following five broad strategies for targeted industries:
- improving regulatory frameworks;
- guidance, information and awareness programs;
- targeted compliance and enforcement programs;
- evaluating best practice interventions; and
- engaging with industry to encourage the adoption or setting of targets.
The national approach has been proving successful. The cooperation means regulatory authorities across Australia can share information and resources, such as published materials and the compliance activity crosses state and territory boundaries, as do many industries and companies.
Each regulatory authority has a coordinator who links up with interstate colleagues regularly to determine the approach to each project, timelines and the communication strategy.
At a State and Territory level the State/Territory representative co-ordinates the stakeholder engagement in that State and assembles and trains and instructs available inspectorate staff.
When the fieldwork gets underway, inspectors visit the targeted industries in relation to the targeted issues right across the country in the same time period.
This approach greatly increases the impact of the campaigns and awareness of the issues and solutions.
2. Campaigns planned for 2008/09
The dates for the next round of coordinated activity (managing aggressive behaviour in healthcare, new and young workers in hospitality, and manual tasks and moving objects in retail wholesale, transport and storage industries) are currently being negotiated.
The Western Australian contacts for the 2009 / 2009 National Intervention Campaigns are:
- Managing aggressive behaviour in healthcare
Ms Jean Mangharam
Principal Scientific Officer
Health Hazards and Plant Safety Directorate
- New and young workers in hospitality
Ms Carla Van Ijzendoorn
Manager, Services Industries
Manufacturing, Transport and Service Industries Directorate
- Manual tasks and moving objects in retail wholesale, transport & storage
Sue Collins
Inspector
Manufacturing, Transport and Service Industries Directorate