Safe Work Australia Research Summit 2025

Opening

I thank Ngunawal Traditional Custodian Wally Bell for his generous welcome to country.

It is a pleasure to be here with you in Canberra, on Ngunnawal land.

I would like to acknowledge Tony Maher, the Chair of Safe Work Australia and Marie Boland, the CEO.

And I would like to acknowledge the Safe Work Australia team for their work to organise this inaugural Work Health and Safety Research summit.

By coming together in ways like today, we ensure our policies are well-informed and evidence-based and genuinely reflect the ongoing commitment to safety and wellbeing in our workplaces.

I want to recognise the extraordinary wealth of knowledge and expertise in this room.

Today is an opportunity to share ideas, whether through sharing lived experience, or relating examples of the latest research into workplace practices, advocacy and policy development.

It’s clear, we all share a responsibility in making and keeping workplaces safe.

We all need to support research—research that helps us stay ahead of emerging risks, and evaluate the impact of work health and safety laws.

Robust evidence leads to better policy. And better policy leads to better outcomes—for workers, for businesses, and for the economy.

I’ll talk more soon about some of the action our government has taken to lift workplace safety since coming into office.

Allow me to share with you a little bit about where my journey began.

My previous professions as a union official, health and safety trainer and a clinical psychologist gave me a foundation in workplace practices and a solid grounding for my current career in Parliament.

As a health and safety trainer I was often brought face-to-face with the consequences of poor workplace health and safety practices.

I’ll never forget a young worker who was ordered to carry hot oil in a plastic bucket that ended in him suffering 3rd degree burns, leading to a SafeWork South Australia investigation and subsequent prosecution.

The painful and traumatic experience had a profound impact on their young working life and it was through difficult situations supporting workers that I came to understand WHS not just through a regulatory or organisational lens, but through the lens of lived experience and the real and immediate impact on people's lives.

Later, my work as a psychologist deepened my understanding of how unsafe workplaces can contribute to psychological injury and the consequence that injury has on every facet of a person’s life. In particular I saw cases where psychological injury at work resulted in suicidal ideation and in another case, the inability to leave the house through severe anxiety – and the major impact that had on their daily life.

These experiences stay with me and continue to inform my perspective and decisions in my role in government.

As the Minister responsible for Workplace Health and Safety in the Commonwealth jurisdiction, I am committed to building on the work done by my predecessors in our first term.

We’ll continue to act quickly when emerging health and safety issues demand it.

Since 2022, we’ve taken taken action across a number of fronts – a consistent theme has been the great contribution of research and evidence to taking effective action.

The recent Model Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work drew upon research undertaken through the People at Work project, a research collaboration involving a number of academics across Australia, regulators and beyondblue.

Safe Work Australia was able to translate this and other research, into practical guidance on how to manage these hazards. The result is that employers are now equipped with a practical, systems based approach to prevention, focused on work design and addressing hazards at the source.

Another example of taking action to prevent harm was tackling an insidious lung disease, silicosis which often progressed without obvious symptoms .

Modelling estimated that as many as 10,000 workers could have developed lung cancer and up to 103,000 workers diagnosed with silicosis if left unchecked. Using this evidence Governments decided to act early.

We joined with state and territory governments as well as industry and unions to ban the manufacture, supply, processing and installation of engineered stone benchtops, panels and slabs.

Our commitment doesn’t stop there. The Silica National Strategic Plan is a critical step in our collective commitment to eliminating silica related diseases across Australia. It drew on a range of research including the 2021 National Dust Disease Taskforce Final Report, which highlighted the emerging trend of accelerated silicosis and the need for improved control measures.

Key Highlights include, workplace risk reduction, education and awareness, health monitoring and support and research and development to improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

We are also continuing to support our Asia-Pacific neighbours with advice and leadership on managing the risks of asbestos and silica informed by our experience.

Building on this track record of collegiate and collaborative effort to achieve real outcomes for Australian workers we have introduced new penalties to deter unsafe work practices and ensure justice for the families of loved ones lost in a workplace incident.

In 2023, work health and safety ministers agreed to introduce an industrial manslaughter offence into the model work health and safety laws by agreeing model penalties. Research, such as the 2018 Senate Committe report and the 2019 review of the model Work Health and Safety (WHS) highlighted that existing frameworks lacked appropriate penalties for the most serious breaches resulting in fatalities.

The industrial manslaughter offence applies higher penalties to the most flagrant breaches of work health and safety duties—those which cause death due to a duty holder’s negligence or recklessness.

The offence came into effect in July 2024 in the Commonwealth jurisdiction.

It attracts penalties of $18 million for a body corporate and up to 25 years’ jail for an individual – someone whose negligence or recklessness leads to the death of someone else in a workplace.

We don’t and won’t accept clear breaches of the law.

Managing psychosocial risks is a rapidly emerging issue and presents a significant and complex challenge for policy makers.

In our ongoing efforts to ensure safer work environments since taking office in 2022, we have made it a top priority to address psychosocial hazards in our workplaces — including, but not limited to, bullying and sexual harassment.

Back in 2020, the Australian Human Rights Commission released its landmark Respect@Work report. The findings were sobering: one in three employees had experienced sexual harassment.

It found that that our laws placed the burden on victims to come forward and seek justice.

I’m proud to say that as a Government, we are acting on every recommendation from the Respect@Work report.

In 2022, we began by passing a law that creates a positive duty for employers and businesses.

This means that employers are now legally required to take proactive and meaningful steps to prevent sexual harassment and other unlawful behaviour in the workplace before it happens.

Another workplace relations reform we have introduced to support workers wellbeing and better balance the demands of work and home life is legislating the Right to Disconnect.

It’s been just over a year since we first gave the majority of workers the right to reasonably switch off outside of paid work hours and I’m pleased to say many employers have noted a reduction in employee stress and improvements in work-life balance, along with increased employee engagement and productivity.

Getting work health and safety in workplaces right – can not only save lives but also ensures people have better quality of life.

But getting it right involves collaboration, conversations and building an evidence base.

In 2018, a Senate inquiry recommended that when we talk about work health and safety, it’s essential we also include the voices of seriously injured workers and their families as a vital part of the conversation.

With families of injured workers in mind that, in January this year, we established the Family and Injured Workers Advisory Committee.

The committee’s six members all have lived experience dealing with serious workplace injuries or fatalities.

That Committee has already met twice this year, and will provide advice to me, and Commonwealth regulators about how we can improve support for those affected by serious workplace incidents.

I have to emphasise that along with the empirical research and the data, incorporating lived experience is so important.

Ensuring that those with lived experience have a voice in the conversation and shape work health and safety laws, will be critical to ensure we do get this right.

So I would encourage any regulators in the room, anyone who wants to engage with this lived experience committee – they are keen to do so. And I would encourage you to reach out and engage with them. They have a wealth of knowledge within them.

Looking ahead, we have an opportunity to keep building, the work of improving work health and safety is never done.

About half a million workers are covered by the Comcare scheme.

This includes Australian Government employees, the ACT Government and 39 private corporations who self-insure their workers’ compensation obligations under the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act (the SRC Act).

About 60% of employees covered by Comcare work in the private sector.

During the last term, we appointed an independent panel to review the Act and make recommendations to modernise the legislation.

The panel has been asked to consider how the scheme can respond to current and future workplace challenges.

These include the steep rise in psychological injuries and illness, an ageing workforce, and changes to working arrangements.

The panel has undertaken extensive consultation to understand the experience of injured workers and other scheme stakeholders.

The panel will deliver its recommendations to Government this month.

I will carefully consider these findings with a view to ensuring an effective person-focussed scheme that is sustainable and future-proofed for years to come as workplaces and society in general continue to evolve.

Over a decade ago Governments across the nation signed up to the ambitious goal of harmonising work health and safety laws.

Anyone who has been involved in Australian political life, public administration or workers compensation policy knows this move was a substantial achievement and a great leap forward.

The work undertaken since has produced many benefits for workers and employers across the country.

The policy area of work health and safety never stands still.

Different jurisdictions have made changes over time that can diverge.

I am resolved to advancing harmonisation while ensuring we continue to make workplaces as safe and cooperative as they can be.

The work undertaken since has produced many benefits for workers and employers across the country.

It is vital we continue to be ambitious, and we collectively pursue best practice in a harmonised way.

I am eager to work closely with other governments, regulators and agencies to improve the way we communicate WHS obligations across industry.

We need to make new efforts to translate the complexity of policy into more digestible and practical measures people can take into their workplaces.

By doing so, we can foster greater understanding, boost compliance and achieve better outcomes for everyone.

I am committed to continuing our efforts to create straightforward, practical guidance that can be understood and put into practice in workplaces both big and small, right across the country.

When we make workplaces safer, we cut down the risk of injuries, illness and even fatalities.

And it’s not just about personal safety. Strong effective health and safety practices are actually great for businesses too.

When people feel safe at work they’re more productive, we see better wages, and we all benefit from a higher standard of living.

Now, here is something to be proud of. In the last year, our national work-related injury rate was just 3.5%, roughly one-third the global rate of 12.1 per cent.

That’s a fantastic result, but of course, no statistic can ease the pain for someone who’s been impacted by a workplace injury or worse.

We can and we must do better.

The challenges we face are complex, but they are not beyond us. With collaboration across research, regulation, industry, and worker representation, we can shape a future of work that is not only productive, but safe, and healthy as well.

And over the next two days, you have a unique opportunity to share your insights, challenge assumptions, and build consensus around the most important emerging trends and research in work health and safety.

When the world of work is undergoing such rapid transformation and change it is so important to try to stay ahead of the curve, to improve safety outcomes for workers and support business and industry in compliance.

Ultimately, we are united by a shared purpose — that workers go home safely at the end of their working day.

This is what matters.

We need strong leadership and clear accountability. Work health and safety must be treated as a strategic priority in businesses and organisations.

Boards and executives have a responsibility to lead by example, set expectations, and invest in prevention and good work design, not just respond when things go wrong.

Investing in capability across the workforce means giving managers and workers the tools and training to identify and manage psychosocial risks.

It means embedding work health and safety into everyday practices all the way from induction to supervision.

And most importantly, we need to continue to listen to workers and involve them in the research, involve them in designing the path to solutions.

Ensuring Australians get a fair go through good, well-paid, secure, and safe jobs is a core value of this Government.

We want every worker to enjoy a workplace that is not only productive, but also safe, respectful, and free from harm.

That includes making real progress on gender equality, and ensuring workplaces are free from sexual harassment and discrimination.

Everyone here today has a stake in work health and safety. You all have the chance to work together, share insights, and learn from each other.

I encourage you to use this time to forge new partnerships, exchange ideas and really reflect on where we can do more, collectively, to improve.

Together, we are shaping a future where every worker is safe, every workplace is healthy, and every decision is informed by data, research, and lived experience.

Thank you for inviting me to participate today and I look forward to hearing what comes out of this inaugural Work Health and Safety Summit.

Thank you.