When I was first asked to present this paper, with a guideline to describing what was happening in Australia, it struck me as an opportunity to do exactly that in reverse, and made me wonder what, if anything we are doing in Australia that is different to anywhere else.
What a disappointment awaited. The first thing I found was that the whole world has gone accreditation mad. The second was the wide propagation of urban mythology. The third was the appalling lack of understanding of basic principles of safety, and the fourth was the disinformation given to those who have the ability to make decisions. Let me take them one at a time.
The notion of accreditation arises from Deming's work in quality control, and it has been divined as a mechanism by which you can derive comfort from knowing the person who is performing the task is adequately trained, skilled, and knowledgeable. How is this manifest in society?
The most extreme example I found was that priests have to be accredited to perform exorcisms! True! I wonder if the ghosts have to be accredited?
In the Australian world of safety, every system claims to have to train its auditors, and issues those who comply with the training requirements with some form of certification. This has aided and abetted the accreditation movement, as not only do the auditors have to be accredited by the owner of the system, the notion of auditing has to be accredited, and system by which auditors are accredited has to be accredited.
The largest of these examples in terms of numbers is the SafetyMAP system, a system written by public servants in the state of Victoria, and initially marketed utilizing the whole weight of a state Government. It dominated the market then, and continues to do so now. This behaviour is replicated in each State and territory, as well as in Industry Associations, and Unions.
In a paper delivered to this conference two years ago, Neil Dine, of CSL Australia, described the then most prominent government-sponsored system, SafetyMAP, like this:-
"SafetyMAP was created by person or persons unknown, but almost certainly by a committee. According to Williams (2000), it started in the late 1980's as a risk management audit process, targeted by the regulatory body towards poor performing industries. It was refined over the years, and eventually a "special focus group was formed to promote a more systematic approach to health and safety management within public sector agencies" (Williams, 2000). I guess it was this committee (by any other name) that produced a structured system containing 12 elements which was then used to evaluate not only government agencies, but also the worker's compensation self-insurers in Victoria, Australia.
