Australia has taken a significant step towards the blanket ban of certain silica-containing workplace products, with the Australian Labor Party declaring the ban "necessary" under an amended WHS resolution.
Qantas has failed in its second attempt to stay proceedings, which include alternative charges, involving its alleged discriminatory conduct against an elected health and safety representative in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
PCBUs will soon be: required to proactively facilitate the election of health and safety representatives; banned from blocking WHS entry permit holders through technicalities or impractical induction requirements; and handed on-the-spot fines for failing to provide adequate toilets, under review recommendations accepted in Queensland.
Unions have welcomed the NSW Labor Opposition's new policies to ban certain engineered stone products and crackdown on dusty workplaces in the tunnelling industry, while one senior unionist has reiterated plans to ban engineered stone through WHS cease-work provisions unless all Australian governments follow Labor's lead.
A range of WHS amendments, including some improving harmonisation, are set to follow the root-and-branch review of SafeWork SA, but they won't include the softening of an entry rule pertaining to health and safety representatives, with the State Government emphatically rejecting a recommendation around this area.
A Sydney Trains health and safety representative, who claimed he was exercising his WHS rights when he detained a customer during a COVID-19 lockdown, has failed to overturn his dismissal.