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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 3 Hansard (13 March) . . Page.. 1099 ..

According to WorkCover's own figures, 45% of Improvement Notices issued and 82% of Prohibition Notices issued by WorkCover inspectors were for the construction industry.

(a) Is the focus on this industry adequate and appropriately resourced?

The Occupational Health and Safety Commissioner advises that, during 2001-02, WorkCover had a team of five OHS inspectors who were primarily involved in promoting and enforcing compliance in construction workplaces. During this period, approximately 30% of all workplace visits by WorkCover OHS inspectors were made to construction industry workplaces.

The direction of resources by the Occupational Health and Safety Commissioner is informed by statistical profiles and analyses obtained from workers' compensation claim data. The construction industry has a high rate of reported injury claims.

The relatively large number of notices issued in the construction industry in 2001-02 reflects the particular nature of the industry, where workplaces and contractors are constantly changing (in other industries workplaces and personnel are comparatively stable).

(5) Codes of Practice (Page 10):

The fourth dot point on page 10 talks about the 'modernising' of the Codes of Practice. Codes of Practice are generally guides that can be used as a framework for the development of company procedures. It appears that WorkCover want to turn them into "Black Letter Law"so that a breach of a Code or failure to fully follow it is a breach of the Act.

(a) Is this approach consistent with what is happening in other jurisdictions and will it really lead to improved OH&S by making processes more prescriptive;

Codes of practice are guidance documents only, that may, in some circumstances, be accorded evidentiary value by the courts.

It is possible that the content of some codes of practice currently approved under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 1989 (OHS Act) would be more appropriately included in regulations made under the OHS Act. Regulations, unlike codes of practice, can be used to set minimum legal standards that must be complied with.

Development of new regulations under the OHS Act will be informed by the views of the ACT's tripartite OHS Council and the nationally agreed OHS Strategy and supporting standards developed by the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission.

(6) AIMS Database (Page 10):

The eighth dot point on page 10 talks about the AIMS database. Given that this project has been going for some 4 years now, apart from the graphs in the Construction Industry Task Force Report and some in the Annual Report, it appears that WorkCover are keeping all the information to themselves and not releasing it for others to analyse.

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