Employers desperate for certainty amid harmonisation squabble

NSW Business Chamber boss Greg Pattison has rejected claims that union-led prosecutions have contributed to the State's improving workplace safety performance, and says employers are desperate for some certainty around harmonisation.

Pattison told the Safety Conference in Sydney yesterday that it was apparent - when he participated in a debate on the model OHS Act at the same conference a year ago - that the harmonisation process would not be smooth sailing.

He said following NSW Premier Kristina Keneally's recent threat to withdraw from the process if NSW could not retain third-party prosecutions and reverse-onus laws, it appeared harmonisation would either:
Proceed without NSW;
Proceed with NSW and an amended Work Health and Safety Act;
Collapse; or go ahead as planned.

"I'm still backing it to go ahead as planned," Pattison said. The argument that these NSW provisions produced the best safety outcomes didn't "stand up to scrutiny".

He said OHS in NSW had improved, but that this progress had "nothing to do... with these two things".

Unions NSW secretary Mark Lennon, who also spoke at the conference, disagreed, saying that union-led prosecutions, while used sparingly, had significantly improved safety in NSW and other jurisdictions.

He said that after the Finance Sector Union successfully prosecuted some of Australia's biggest banks - for OHS breaches - following a string of armed robberies, the banks invested more than $100 million in security and safety improvements nationwide.

In 2002, before the prosecutions, there were 102 bank robberies in NSW, he said. There have been four so far this year.

"Now is not the time" to remove provisions that can have such a positive effect on public policy, Lennon stressed. "We as a union movement do not walk away from reform. But reform and harmonisation are not necessarily the same thing."

Pattison warns of "jurisdictional creep"

Pattison warned that while it was still uncertain "what compliance will look like under the new system", the proposed January 2012 kick off was "starting to seem very near".

Australia's 860,000 employers need to be brought up to speed, he said. "It's a huge job."

But employers were reluctant to invest time and money in transitioning to the new system when there was so much uncertainty over what, exactly, that system would be, Pattison said.

Employers want to know "what it's going to be, not what it might be", he said.

"We've got to work this out as soon as possible."

Pattison also warned that there was a risk of post-harmonisation "jurisdictional creep" if the new laws were not applied or enforced consistently across jurisdictions.

"That [consistency] is going to be hard to achieve, but it is so critical," he said.

"If harmonisation isn't realised operationally, then it's harmonisation in name only. There's a possibility of jurisdictions drifting apart, and that has to be guarded against."