Employer groups have heaved a collective sigh of relief after the Federal Government announced that businesses in some sectors would be given an extra 12 months to transition to the harmonised Work Health and Safety Regulations.
"The transition arrangements for business under the new Work Health and Safety legislation... are a very important part of this harmonisation process and will be key to the success of the new laws in the workplace," Ai Group chief executive Heather Ridout said.
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive, Peter Anderson, said the "need for these transitional arrangements is profound".
As reported by OHS Alert yesterday, Federal Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans announced that under transitional principles developed by Safe Work Australia, businesses in sectors where the Regulations introduced "a new or significantly different set of duties" would not be expected to comply with the new laws from 1 January 2012.
Shadow Workplace Relations Minister, Eric Abetz, said that nearly every employer in the country would fall into this category.
Safe Work Australia confirmed that affected businesses were likely to include South Australian and Tasmanian construction companies, and employers engaged in electrical or diving work in some jurisdictions.
"It is our understanding that each jurisdiction will determine which regulations these transitional arrangements should be applied to and include these provisions in their respective regulations," Ridout said.
"We believe these arrangements will allow companies to implement these important laws in a logical and practical way."
ACCI CEO Anderson told OHS Alert that transitional arrangements were particularly important for the resources sector, which had a "large and complex" body of regulations to comply with, and smaller businesses in the housing and construction industries.
"More generally, there are literally hundreds of thousands of businesses needing to be informed as to whether or not there are changes affecting them," he said.
"Businesses don't want to be in breach of their health and safety obligations. Ignorance of the law is no defence, and in those circumstances there needs to be transitions that provide not just the opportunity to get the laws right, but the opportunity to get information about these laws out."
Anderson said that Evans' announcement was a "message of good faith", and that being flexible on the starting dates of the new laws was key to progressing "the political negotiations that need to occur" between the state and territory governments.
Ridout said it was "disappointing that Victoria and Western Australia have not committed to a 1 January 2012 commencement date so we can finally achieve a single national standard on workplace safety".
