The Commonwealth of Australia is a federation comprising six states (New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia) and two mainland territories (Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory) as shown on the map below.
At present, all states and territories are responsible for making and enforcing their own Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) laws, including the regulation of Major Hazard Facilities (MHF).However, the Australian Federal Government has identified occupational health and safety as a priority area and reforms are currently being implemented in order to harmonize OHS regulations across Australia.
An independent body, Safe Work Australia (www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au), has recently been created with the responsibility for developing a model OHS legislation to be implemented on a national scale. The model legislation will consist of a principal OHS Act supported by model regulations and model codes of practice that can be readily adopted by the states and territories of Australia. The principal Act, the Work Health and Safety Act 2010, was approved by the Workplace Relations Ministers’ Council in December 2009 and it is planned that the complete model OHS legislation will be developed and adopted by each state and territory by December 2011.
However, the regulation of Major Hazard Facilities in the various states and territories of Australia is already quite similar as most of these have followed the current national standard and code of practice for the control of major hazard facilities (also published by Safe Work Australia). Although differences exist, the states and territories have all adopted regulatory regimes whereby operators have the duty to reduce both onsite and offsite risks as far as is reasonably practicable and have to demonstrate to the relevant authority that they are adequately managing and preventing major accidents. The requirements from these regimes include a systematic assessment of the risks and the implementation of a comprehensive and integrated safety management system which has to be approved by the relevant public authority.