2022 CORPORATE INTEGRITY FORUM: SAFE WORK, SAFE WORKPLACE, SAFE LABOR
REMARKS BY AUSTRALIAN REPRESENTATIVE JENNY BLOOMFIELD
05 October 2022
I am pleased to join you today for this important seminar on workplace safety – “2022 Corporate Integrity Forum: Safe work, Safe Workplace, Safe Labor”.
In Australia, Taiwan, and around the world, healthy, safe and productive workplaces underpin our social well-being and continued economic prosperity.
For all of us, well-designed, healthy and safe work allows us to live more productive working lives, and good work health and safety improves long-term business productivity.
Particularly during COVID, the nature of work has changed, and it continues to evolve, in response to economic and social pressures, technological changes, and demographic shifts.
And in Australia, like in Taiwan and elsewhere, women are often the ones most significantly impacted by such changes.
These changes in the way we work bring new risks, but also new opportunities to improve work health and safety, to live healthier, happier and more productive work lives, and to enhance overall competitiveness and our economic prosperity.
We know that in this challenging environment, our businesses need to adapt to remain competitive and productive. While there are costs inherent in providing healthy and safe workplaces, the costs of not doing so are even greater.
In Australia, Safe Work Australia, a government statutory agency, is responsible for developing work health and safety and workers’ compensation policies.
Safe Work Australia recently amended Australia’s work health and safety legislation to adapt to our changing work environment, and better respond to hazards such as workplace violence. And I am very pleased that Assistant Director at Safe Work Australia, Dianah Brown, will address this important issue in her presentation later this afternoon.
Sharing insights and lessons learnt with international partners like Taiwan has been vitally important in allowing us to make continuous improvements in our own work health and safety policies, and we thank Taiwanese partners for their cooperation.
Australia and Taiwan share rich Indigenous histories, open, diverse societies, an important economic relationship and people-to-people links. We also share a commitment to good governance, transparency and human rights, and to sustainable economic development consistent with “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) objectives.
I am pleased that we are deepening cooperation in this important area, including exchanges between Safe Work Australia and Taiwan’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Ministry of Labor, and the Civil Service Protection and Training Commission, on our respective approaches to work health and safety policies.
Australia and Taiwan also work together in international fora, such as the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH). Australia was pleased to co-host, together with Italy, the ICOH online conference in February this year, focusing on emerging issues related to the impact of COVID on the workplace – including the prevention of infectious diseases in the workplace, mental health, the post-pandemic return to work, shift-work, and essential occupational health services in low- and middle-income economies.
We warmly welcomed Taiwan’s participation in this conference and value your positive contribution.
We commend Taiwan’s efforts in this area, and we look forward to continuing to learn from each other and to share our respective experiences, knowledge and expertise, including through initiatives such as today’s conference.
Thank you once again for the opportunity to join you today and I look forward to fruitful discussions.