"The harmonisation of Australia's OHS laws has given health and safety a place in the sun. How we take advantage of that is a question safety professionals need to answer." This will be WorkSafe Victoria director Stan Krpan's message to delegates gathered at the Safety in Action Conference.

During his April 22 presentation at the Melbourne Convention Centre, Krpan will offer some rather pointed suggestions and report on Victoria's progress towards the National OHS Strategy's 2012 targets.

"It's time to convert the energy from the controversy of the harmonisation debate into making better safety outcomes," he said.

Many of those in the audience will be members of peak OHS professional body, the Safety Institute of Australia, which is presenting the Conference, and Krpan says they should be confident that Australians now put a higher value on workplace safety.

"WorkSafe urges safety professionals to hold the faith that safety is important and the community is behind you," he said.

"Now is the time to start preparing for the introduction of the new laws. The indicators are that the economy is recovering and when business begins to invest again, it should be in safe outcomes. This has an enormous impact on attracting the right workers."

Krpan attributes the growing awareness of workplace safety to WorkSafe Victoria's social marketing and repositioning of inspectors' roles.

While workplace safety is yet to garner the same media attention as car crashes, Krpan says WorkSafe Victoria's advertising campaigns have been effective.

"Workplace safety incidents are generally less public and less graphic than the aftermath of a car crash and, at the same time, the workplace toll is about one-tenth of the road toll, so media coverage is more muted," he said.

"We have learnt a lot from the TAC and our advertising positions the importance of safety in terms of family and the community.

"The redefinition of inspectors' roles, which began in 2000/01, lowered workplace injuries, said Krpan.

"Hardly any business WorkSafe comes across today is unaware of what we do but, in 2001, the role of the inspector was ambiguous; people didn't even expect us to enforce the law."

“An inspector is someone who can help and, ultimately, enforce the law. The effectiveness of enforcement by inspectors is gauged by whether people take action in response.

“Every year, for the last few years, injuries have been the lowest on record despite a growing workforce.

“The national targets for 2012 were aspirational but Victoria is the best-positioned state to meet them. The need to push harder to improve safety has worked very well for us and challenged the health and safety community."

Krpan denied claims made by some employer groups during last year’s harmonisation debate that the threat of prosecution could stifle safety.

"All courts understand that fixing a problem is not an admission of guilt and it's only ever an issue in a very small number of cases. A regulator may come in after an incident and require action to be taken, but employers should not defer making safety improvements fearing they could jeopardise their legal position."

While Krpan concedes the court system fell outside the scope of OHS harmonisation, the national enforcement and compliance policy based on Victorian Department of Public Prosecution guidelines would bring greater uniformity to the regulators' approach.

He also says the drafts of the 100 or so model regulations that direct specific areas of safety, like work at heights, will be completed midway through 2010.

Although harmonisation of Australia’s workplace safety laws revealed deep passions in the community, Mr Krpan is optimistic about the timetable for reform.

"The regulations still have some basis for commonality, particularly where there are national standards in place," he says.

"Safe Work Australia's tripartite structure will make all-concerned aware of the differences where they exist.

“There's a lot of goodwill surrounding harmonisation and an expectation that we will deliver. That will overcome any parochialism.

"Victorian legislation was largely adopted in the new national Model Act but Mr Krpan says that was because it was only introduced in 2004.

"The Maxwell review of Victoria's legislation in 2004 was the largest ever undertaken in Australia and had a big impact on OHS in our state, so it's no surprise that our many elements of our very up-to-date Act were adopted by the national model."

Leading professional body, the Safety Institute of Australia will hold the Safety in Action Conference from April 20 to 22 at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

For more information, contact www.safetyinaction.net.au, email safety@aec.net.au or phone Australian Exhibitions & Conferences on 03 9654 7773.