Page 2844 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 September 2014
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In essence, the workplace must be without risk to the health and safety of staff. That is this minister’s responsibility. It is a complete cop-out to say that because nurses knowingly work with volatile people they effectively have to accept that being assaulted is a part of the job.
Regarding government-run workplaces generally, The World Today radio program just this week covered the case of a Victorian school in which a teacher suffered a mental breakdown as a result of the experience of teaching a very challenging class. That teacher sued the Victorian government for not providing a safe workplace and won.
I am here today to shed more light on what is happening behind closed doors in our mental health facility and to draw the Assembly’s attention to the fact that if a minister stands by and allows assaults to occur by not providing a suitably staffed, equipped or appointed facility, then that minister is responsible.
So let us just go over the situation in our own adult mental health facility. In the 12 months from July 2012 to July 2013, staff at the adult mental health unit reported that there were 49 incidents of physical attacks, three cases of near misses, 47 cases of verbal or physically threatening behaviour. There were 13 duplicate reports made. There was a total of 112 reported incidents. This is on average one reported incident every 3.2 days.
In the 2012-13 financial year 14 staff were away from work for a combined total of 160 weeks because of workplace injury. This equates to 11.4 weeks per worker. In the following financial year the situation deteriorated. In the 12 months from July 2013 to July 2014, staff filed reports of 57 cases of physical attacks on staff. This is an increase of 10 incidents from the previous 12 months. There were 13 near misses reported. This is up from three reported in the previous 12 months. There were 37 incidents of verbally threatening behaviour and physically threatening behaviour. A total of 28 duplicate reports were made, a total of 138 incidents being reported. This on average works out at an incident every 2.5 days.
A provisional improvement notice was issued due to staff at the unit having to work in an aggressive and violent environment. Over the 2013-14 financial year there were 18 staff from the unit off work due to injury, which was defined by Comcare as a workplace injury. In the financial year 2013-14 and through to September 2014, the combined time off work for work-related injuries was 152 weeks. In the financial year so far, two staff have taken time off due to work-related injury, as far as I know.
This facility is not remotely a safe work environment. It is the employer's responsibility to provide such an environment and, with an incident of assault or threatened assault every 2.7 days, not many of us would be prepared to work in this environment.
As a result WorkSafe has issued this provisional improvement notice on the facility. Let us be clear, to have a PIN issued, there has to have been a contravention of the act. The act says that, for a PIN to be issued, there has to be a belief that there is a
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