National Uniformity - For better or is it for worse?

I've followed the sheep on the issue of national uniformity of OHS Legislation over the years believing it will be better for everyone if we ever developed a uniform safety system accross the country.

However when you look at it from an outside perspective you can see the problems national uniformity would cause.

At present we have numerous states and territories delivering their own legislation and if you read through the states legislation it is all pretty uniform anyway! The good part of this is it promotes competition amongst the states as each govt department of each state believes they have the best, most concise legislation!

This competition is good for the worker and safer work environments, keeping each enforcement agency (except those run by insurance companies) on it's toes and motivating them to improve their legislation so they feel they have it better than the other states.

What we have seen since a number of enforcement agencies have been taken over by insurance companies and states have moved towards a more uniform system is a lack of competition!

This has led to the legislation becoming stagnent, for example if you read through the QLD Act you will notice it is very similar to the legislation brought into Victoria in the mid 80's!

So the lack of competition has led the states to be stagnent and not pushing for worlds best practice but only pushing to keep the Federal Govt happy.

The opposite can be said for compesation legislation in all it's forms! Competition amongst the states has left the worker with very little support and protection if they happen to be injured in the workplace. This has also had a negative effect on safety in that there is no financial incentive to make the workplace safer becuase employers do not face the finacial burden once placed upon them if they injured or killed workers. So competition in the compensation field has led to a legislative approach to watering down protection for workers from common law claims.

So I would believe it healthy to have competition amongst the states on OHS legislation with each state pushing the others for best practice. However the opposite could be said for compensation legislation accross the country with competition forcing each state to rip off the workers to encourage business to move to their states due to less costs associated with injuring or killing workers. And when you get a bad workplace all the other organisations in that industry sector cover the costs for the poor performer in safety, hence destroying all incentive to actually make the workplace safer for that poor performer and destroying incentive for those that want to move to best practice safety managment becuase they will still be paying for that poor performing organsition through their premiums.

Regards
Daniel