The Master Builders have announced their thoughts on Worksafe’s “Getting Them Home Safely” report.
Worksafe has been quick out of the blocks to disagree.
The MBA’s lack of unequivocal support for the report’s call for a 35% improvement in the local industry’s safety record is potentially a serious setback for local workers. In many senses this is a modest target. After all, if achieved it would simply bring us up to the national average, no more.
As difficult a target as this will be, however, its best chance of success lies in the united efforts of the industry, unions, the regulator and the Government to achieve it. The industry’s continuing denial of our local record, despite the MBA national office using this very same data in its own report on OHS Performance in the Construction Industry in November 2011, and the MBA referencing the national component of that data in their own submission to the Inquiry, is an impediment to change. A critical component in achieving change is an acceptance of the need for that change to occur.
My other disappointment is in the MBA’s rejection of the report’s call for them, as one of the two significant industry representative bodies here in the ACT, to show the leadership the industry needs at this point in time. The Getting Home Safely report was a damning one for the local industry, and the calls for reform and change are significant. While I understand the difficulty in accepting such criticism, the industry has to do more than sit back and call on everyone else to lift their game while rejecting the pivotal importance of their own responsibilities
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