Page 3270 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 21 August 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations) (11.09): I am pleased to present to the Assembly my annual update on the territory’s workplace safety performance.
Before commencing, I would like to reaffirm this government’s ongoing commitment to protecting the health and safety of workers. Safety must be everyone’s priority and it is everyone’s responsibility. Working together, we can make sure everyone gets home safely. At the end of the day, this is the most important thing.
I am pleased to inform the Assembly that, in the private sector, workers compensation data indicates that the number of lost time injuries experienced in 2017-18 reduced by around 17 per cent compared to the previous year. Improvements in lost time claim levels were visible in most industry sectors, with significant reductions achieved by the construction, healthcare and social assistance and education sectors.
While these results are heartening, the construction and healthcare and social assistance sectors remain the ACT’s two highest risk industries in which to work. Together, they accounted for more than 43 per cent of all lost time injuries in the private sector. The most common causes of injury were body stressing, slips, trips and falls, being hit by moving objects and vehicle incidents.
Much more needs to be done to make ACT industries the safest in Australia, and I will shortly outline what we are doing to help make sure ACT workplaces are safe. In the ACT public sector there have also been some significant improvements in performance. The government has expressed its support for the national workplace health and safety strategy and has adopted annual public sector industry reduction targets designed to achieve the strategy’s objective of reducing the rate of serious work-related injury by 30 per cent by 2022.
In 2017-18 not only did the ACT public sector achieve its required annual rate of improvement but I am pleased to advise the Assembly that it exceeded it by more than 20 per cent. I expect further improvements in public sector performance will flow from it becoming a workers compensation self-insurer during 2018-19 by introducing provisional liability for medical services, for example. This will allow for medical and rehabilitation support to commence immediately after a work injury is notified and it should help prevent injuries from becoming more serious.
We are also working closely with public sector unions to improve return-to-work outcomes, in line with our commitment from the 2017-18 budget, which provides $1.4 million over four years to fund new injury prevention initiatives, including training and early intervention health services.
For the private sector, the government is implementing a multifaceted approach to improving safety outcomes. In addition to pursuing improvements in safety laws, we are undertaking an independent review of the enforcement and compliance activities and systems that support WHS laws. WorkSafe ACT has continued to be proactive, with a particular focus on young workers, retail, light rail safety, aged and health care, electrical safety, falls from heights and winter safety over the colder months.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video