MENTAL HEALTH —
FLY IN, FLY OUT CODE
595. Hon JACQUI BOYDELL to the minister representing the
Minister for Mines and Petroleum:
I refer to question without notice
550 asked by me in this place on 10 June regarding the ''Code of
Practice: Mentally Healthy Workplaces for Fly-In, Fly-Out (FIFO) Workers in the
Resources and Construction Sectors''.
(1) Has the minister read the code
of practice?
(2) Is the minister aware of section 9 of the code,
which states ''FIFO operations are expected to report incidents
of suspected suicides and self-injury to DMIRS''?
(3) Given the
minister's answer to question without notice 550 that ''there is
no specific mandated reporting process under the code'', does the
minister agree that this statement is contradictory to the expectations of the
code?
(4) Does the minister have any plans
to mandate the reporting process; and, if not, why not?
(5) Have there
been any reports to the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety of
suspected suicides and self-injury related to FIFO since 2015; and, if yes,
could the minister please identify how many incidents a year?
Hon DARREN
WEST replied:
On behalf of the Minister for
Regional Development, I thank the honourable member for some notice of the
question. I provide the following answer on behalf of the Minister for Mines
and Petroleum.
(1)–(2) Yes.
(3) No.
(4) No. Western Australia
is harmonising with the national model work health and safety legislation.
Proposed section 38 of the Western Australian Work Health and Safety Bill 2019
will require employers to report notifiable incidents arising out of the
conduct of the business or undertaking—that is, if it is work related. It may not be immediately apparent
whether a suspected suicide is work related, so employers should report
it, pending investigation by the coroner and the Department of Mines, Industry
Regulation and Safety.
(5) No incidents
have been reported into the department's safety regulation system since
the code has been put in place.