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World Safety Day Brings Employer Focus On Best Practice Regulation & Workplace Cultures

28 April 2010

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), Australia’s largest and most representative business and employer organisation, will next week bring together national health and safety policy experts from employer organisations to discuss ways to improve workplace safety regulation and workplace cultures, as follow-up to today's World Day for Safety and Health and this evening’s Safe Work Australia Awards.

The meeting in Melbourne of the National Employers' Health and Safety Consultative Forum (NEOHSCF) will consider how the business plan of Safe Work Australia and the well-advanced moves towards national OHS legislation can be used to improve the quality of regulation and help employers and their employees, particularly in small business, navigate their rights and responsibilities.

Members of the Forum will also recognise the entrants and finalists in the 5th Annual Safe Work Australia Awards, to be presented this evening at Parliament House. ACCI’s senior OHS adviser, Toula Papadopoulos, is a member of the judging panel for these important awards.

Although Australia is in the top performing group of nations on OHS performance, there is an ongoing need for attention to safer systems of work, especially in high risk industries.

Governments also need to adopt better legal structures and more effective approaches to education and enforcement. ACCI is a signatory with all Australian governments and the ACTU to the National OHS Strategy which sets targets and priorities for reducing workplace injuries and fatalities up until 2012. The ACCI Modern Workplace: Safer Workplace Policy Blueprint makes specific recommendations about how business organisations, unions, managers, employees, others in the supply chain and governments can respond to this challenge.

OHS frameworks must be practical and easy to apply to businesses of all size. The NEOHSCF meeting will also see the representatives of State Chambers and industry associations from around the country contribute to the OHS agenda being advanced by Safe Work Australia.

ACCI has represented employers on Safe Work Australia and its predecessor organisations since
1984, and is the Australian representative of employers in International Labour Organisation forums on health and safety.