While public debate focuses on the threat posed by Islamic extremists, workplace fatalities in Australia are on the rise, with the death toll from employment-related accidents in some industries already higher than for the whole of 2013, government statistics show.
As of mid-September, 129 Australians have been killed at work, compared to 125 people killed to the equivalent point in 2013, Safe Work Australia statistics show. The mining sector has already exceeded the death toll for the whole of 2013, with 12 people killed, and the construction industry has already claimed 18 lives, already one more than for the whole of 2013. Transport, the biggest sector for workplace deaths, is also performing worse than 2013, while agriculture, second biggest, is tracking around the same as last year.
The rise in workplace deaths this year defies years of improved workplace safety data: the incidence of workplace deaths rose from 2003-04, peaked in 2007-08 and has fallen dramatically since then, with an overall incidence rate in 2011-12 nearly half of what it was in 2002. Even so, 186 Australians went to work in 2013 and didn’t come home — far more than the total number of Australian victims of terrorism in recent decades.
The surge in deaths in mining is particularly concerning given the number of people working in mining peaked in 2012-13 and has been falling ever since. Moreover, the industry’s problems were identified more than six months ago when the Queensland Mines Safety Commissioner warned that the “tragic loss of life in the mining industry is unacceptable and immediate steps must be taken to stop it”, noting that contractors were overrepresented in mining workplace fatalities. Like the construction industry, the mining industry — which forms much of the non-building construction sector, one of the worst sectors in the economy for workplace safety — has constantly sought to push more of its workforce out of permanent employment and onto contractor status to lower labour costs, prompting claims from unions about sham contracting. “I’m concerned that some mining operations regard these risks as not their responsibility, whereas in my view they should review and approve the contractor’s processes and procedures before the work begins, and integrate them into the site’s safety and health management system,” Bell warned.
The mining industry, however, is more relaxed about safety than the Commissioner. In a submission to the then-Australian Building and Construction Commission’s inquiry into sham contracting in the building industry, mining peak body the Australian Mines and Metals Association sought to downplay the existence of sham contracting, claiming it only happened rarely and at the lowest levels of the industry. “AMMA is not saying that a problem of sham contracting in the building and construction industry does not exist, merely that there is insufficient evidence of its prevalence at this stage on which to proceed with further regulation.”
And in a submission to an inquiry into the government’s effort to re-establish the ABCC last November, AMMA singled out what it called “alleged safety concerns” being misused by employees to engage in industrial action. “AMMA welcomes a reverse onus of proof being applied to those taking industrial action for alleged safety reasons, with the bill requiring individuals to prove their safety concerns are genuine in order for such action not to be deemed unlawful,” the body said, in words that are now a bad look given industry deaths are currently running at well over twice the rate of 2013.
Safe Work Australian is a joint Commonwealth-state and territory body that receives a total of around $27 million a year to take “primary responsibility to lead the development of policy to improve work health and safety and workers’ compensation arrangements across Australia”. The National Commission of Audit recommended it be abolished and its functions moved into the Department of Employment. As the reduction in workplace deaths since 2008 has shown, concerted government action focused on specific types of injury and particular industries, and employers who take safety seriously, can make a significant difference to the number of Australians who die at work. Getting our workplace fatality incidence back down will save far more lives than the hysterical focus on terrorism ever will.
You don’t do yourselves any favours by linking workplace deaths with terrorism. The two are completely unrelated.
Workplace deaths are a worthy story all on their own without your gratuitous swipe at the very real fear that exists in the community that a terrorist act might occur.
There has been an enormous improvement in workplace injuries and deaths over the past 3 decades and an increase this year is newsworthy and deserves analysis and discussion.
Terrorism is designed to instil fear, and it certainly has. Does your political agenda stop you acknowledging it?
I’m sure this is a worthwhile subject. We really should be looking at why workplace deaths are rising. It’s a complex issue driven by many factors: social, political and financial.
Having to put “terrorism” in the title to sensationalise it devalues the piece.
Excellent article by Bernard Keane.
The onus on those pro-Zionist, US lackey warmongers spouting “terror hysteria” is to put NUMBERS to their assertions but they won’t and for good reason – the “empirical annual probability of an Australian being killed by a terrorist in Australia” is about 1 in 109 million, this being about 5 times lower than the “empirical annual probability of an Australian being killed by a shark in Australia” of 1 in 20 million.
The “empirical annual probability of an Australian being killed by a workplace accident in Australia” (assuming for simplicity that half the population works) = 186 workplace deaths /12 million = 15.5 in 1 million = or roughly 1 in 65,000, 1,700 times greater than the annual probability of being killed by a terrorist in Australia.
The pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey, warmongering, war criminal Coalition and Labor Right (aka the Lib-labs or Liberal-Laborals) are simply LYING about the “terror threat” when they refuse to put a NUMBER to the risk.
Another example – 81,000 Australians die preventably each year, variously from all kinds of preventable causes from smoking, adverse hospital events, drinking and obesity to homicide and suicide. The present Australian population in 2014 is 24 million. Accordingly the “empirical annual probability of an Australian dying preventably in Australia” is 81,000 /24 million = 3.4 per 1,000 or 1 in 294 i.e. it is 109 million/294 = 370,000 times more likely for an Australian to die from a preventable cause (thanks to Lib-Lab incompetence and corruption) than to die from a terrorist attack in Australia (see Gideon Polya, “Australian State Terrorism – Zero Australian terrorism deaths, 1 million preventable Australian deaths & 10 million Muslims killed by US Alliance since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 23 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230914.htm ).
Decent, sensible Australians will utterly reject the PALPABLE LIES of the pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey, warmongering, war criminal Lib-Labs, vote 1 Green and put the Coalition last.
Thanks Bernard for putting this subject centre stage – it’s one that rarely gets an airing in the press, and when it does it’s usually a mention of the numbers with no exploration of trends or reasons. The figure for transport is no brighter than for mining, and we’re only just beginning the busiest part of the year for transport and freight movements. I don’t object to the standardisation across all states under the NHV Regulator, but cuts to budgets for state inspection authorities go against the rhetoric that governments mean business about cracking down on dodgy operators, poor fleet maintenance and forcing drivers to work over their daily/ weekly hours limits. I think it’s also worth pointing out that most of these workers (especially in mining, transport, construction and farming) are men – many people and families will be without fathers, sons and brothers through no fault of their own.
@ Stuart, I don’t see any “sensationalising” in the title, merely comparing the incessant rhetoric BS (and the billions suddenly found in the budget) justifying going to war on a very slender pretext with the much greater and very real risks from workplace incidents.
Bernard,
Thank you for airing this important subject. I won’t be holding my breath for the Royal Commission. Our vindictive masters only use that device for narrow political purposes.
Stuart, I disagree; the point is how readily our attitudes are distorted by media focus. Note it was the appalling murder of two journalists that precipitated action against ISIS. It’s not as if these dangerous psychopaths weren’t wreaking havoc on all in their path in the Middle East, prior to those events. The West’s reaction has given the fantasists the response they so desperately wanted.