Productivity Commission: National Worker's Compensation and
Occupational Health and Safety Frameworks
Points from a verbal submission on behalf of the Safety Institute of
Australia by Institute President David Skegg CFSIA P5P(Aust), in Hobart,
Tuesday, 10th June, 2003.

Introduction
1. The Safety Institute of Australia is the professional body representing safety practitioners. It has been in existence since 1947, and is a National body. It has Divisions in each State, and has Chapters for special interests, such as Aviation Safety.

2. The Safety Institute has a number of membership levels, from Affiliate for those with an interest in safety generally, Associate, for the new, inexperienced graduates, Member, for the appropriately qualified and experienced practitioner, Fellow, as the senior practitioner, and Chartered Fellow, a grade by examination, for the senior professionals. Our Patron is His Excellency, the Governor-General of Australia, who
confers our Fellowships in person at a ceremony each year in Canberra.

3. The Fellows of the Institute form a College, headed by a Dean, and supported by a Scientific Board, to set and safeguard the standards of the Institute, and to advance the science of safety.

Background
4. In August of 1964, a popular Australian magazine, the "Australian Post", published an article "safeguard in a factory". A copy of that article is attached.

5. What that article tells us is that, in the intervening 39 years, nothing has changed Industrial safety is still seen largely in terms of human error, which is comforting to managers, as it implies that there is little they can do about it. At best, it leads to the notion that all problems of injury and consequential compensation can be avoided by simply telling people to be "more careful".

6. This is at odds with the legal model in Australia, and leads to successful prosecutions in civil litigation, which, in the present day, has become a focus for those who cannot see any other solution to prevention, the industry that surrounds tort actions, and the opportunistic victim-mode mentality activity so often referred to in public discussions on compensation.

7. Many stakeholders have conveniently forgotten that there is a science to safety. The notion of physical reality in accident causation stems

from work in the 1950's, and the basic techniques, such as fault tree analysis, arise from that same era. There have been courses at tertiary institutions for at least the last 25 consecutive years, but still, the practice of safety is often left to the unskilled and unqualified, but well intentioned worker, given the job by the employer, and encouraged by the statutory creation of Workplace Health and Safety Officers, or Safety Representatives, existing in State legislation.

8. That industry will accept advice from an unrecognized practitioner, which, if wrong, could cost them their company, is a testament to how wrong we have got the politics of safety, and how we follow urban mythology instead of science.

Structure of the event process, and how it impacts on compensation
1.	There are essentially two aspects to the way in which an "accident" (more correctly an event) evolves;

•	the series of events prior to losing control, or the preventive mode, and

9. Compensation is peculiar to the reactive mode, and yet arises from the failure of prevention.

10. At present, there is no real feedback loop between the two that has any meaning or significance. I agree totally with Dr. Wigglesworth in his submission to you, in that, without proper data collection, we have no real idea of what we are doing, and that must lead us to ignoring what should be the targets for action. Dr Wigglesworth's comparison of performance (at p3) is the ultimate story of how we have got it so wrong. How else could we go from a ratio of 5:2 (deaths from infectious disease v accidental injury) to 5:16?

The law in Australia
11. Under the present Australian safety legislative systems, or more correctly, the way in which the concepts have been implemented, the science of safety has been disenfranchised to the point that, on present trends, there will be NO research into what is costed in the industrial sphere alone as a $21 Billion a year problem!

12. The best way of describing the situation is by allegory. We have legislation based on the Robens report in the United Kingdom. As we have implemented those lofty aims, if tion, and adjusts premiums according to the balance of activity and outcomes in both sides of that equation. I urge members of this inquiry to make those investigations, and form an opinion.

25. There are obvious inequities in the way in which compensation is paid to injured parties around Australia. More worrying, however, is the restriction and removal of the common law mechanisms to determine values ascribed to various conditions, and the "Liberace" scenario canvassed some years ago is still valid. (What is a finger worth?) I subscribe to the argument that, if you restrict or remove the ability for values to be set by the common law, you have removed society's ability to determine !those values, and the alternative is that you end up with a Table of Maims, set by a bureaucracy, that must of necessity fail to recognize the individualistic effects of loss.

26. Any compensation scheme that does not support continuing research into the causes that give rise to the need for compensation as of right

is flawed. If the prevention of injury and disease does not form part of the compensation mechanisms, then it must ultimately fail.

27. My submission is not a fully referenced academic paper. It is meant to be a wake-up call to look at some fundamental issues affecting the lives and well-being of those who are lucky enough to live in our country, and to direct your minds to the reality of managing risks, as opposed to appealing to the platitudes so prevalent in today's world of safety.

28. There is a science to safety. It has been largely ignored. It needs to be funded. Recognizing that the lack of attention to the science is what gives rise to the need of compensation must be fundamental to your considerations.