Victoria is continuing to frustrate the Federal Government’s attempts to roll out its planned workplace health and safety harmonisation legislation, despite it being based on Victorian law.

 

The Australian Institute of Company Directors’ (AICD) Communication and Public Affairs General Manager, Steve Burrell, told Lawyers Weekly that the Victoria’s hesitance to sign on to the laws on the grounds that the Government would gain negligible benefits from the $3.4 billion required to roll out the scheme over five years.

 

“They argue their law is superior in many respects to the model law and that they’re being pushed into an inferior position,” Mr Burrell told Lawyers Weekly.

 

“Harmonisation shouldn’t be a case of the lowest common denominator … dealing with three jurisdictions rather than seven or eight is probably a better outcome and I don’t think it fatally undermines the entire system.”