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Issue No. 158 | 25 October 2002 |
The Sirens' Song
Interview: The Wet One Bad Boss: Like A Bastard Unions: Demolition Derby Corporate: The Bush Doctrine Politics: American Jihad Health: Secret Country Review: Walking On Water Culture: TCF Poetry: The UQ Stonewall
10,000 Rally in Support of Kingham Negligent Bosses Labelled ‘Serial Killers’ Ambulance Officers Win $6 Million Back-Pay IT Outsourcing Agencies Called To Account Pay to Work Spreads to Hornsby Howard Opens Waters to Rogue Ship Boxes of Books for Good Causes
The Soapbox Postcard Month In Review The Locker Room Bosswatch Wobbly
Brooklyn Phil Says ... Here Comes the WTO From Little Finks ... The Mouth From the South! Ushering the Rusted Shield Echoes of DLP
Labor Council of NSW |
News Negligent Bosses Labelled ‘Serial Killers’
Australian Workers Union national secretary Bill Shorten is writing to each Federal and State Government seeking contributions for a $1.5 million fund for the national coronial database. Victorian Coroner Graeme Johnstone this week told AWU delegates a national database would help the Coroners' office identify trends that may prevent workplace deaths and other fatalities. The Coroner, who returned from the Bali tragedy on Tuesday, said: "The power of a national database is enormous. It will affect each one of us in our daily lives. It could save your life, your children's lives or my children's lives.'' He says 7,500 Australians die of unnatural causes, which need to be investigated each year. "A national database could give us early warnings about emerging patterns that may help us prevent deaths.'' AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten said the union would campaign on behalf of workers for government funding to permanently establish the national database. He said a database set up under the management by the Monash University National Centre for Coronial Information (MUNCCI) was in its infancy, and risked losing its funding. "If a serial killer was on the lose, everyone would be working on the case and identifying patterns to catch them. When a worker is killed in the workplace again and again that is equivalent to a serial killer,'' Mr Shorten said. "The crazy thing is we don't have a resourced-system to track down the serial killers." He said a national database could be used in a tragedy like the Bali bombings: "Part of the problem in Bali, is that it has been hard for families to get a national response. Australia is facing its single biggest atrocity since the war, and yet we have no national coronial system." Shorten says obvious areas for national investigation in the workplace included cancer rates, deaths by falls, forklift fatalities and suicides. "You all know it is possible to die at work. Badly designed machinery, stress or exposure to chemicals can kill workers. Unfortunately we have eight separate lists instead of one. That means it takes that much longer to identify trends,'' Shorten says. "About 100 years ago we become a Federation. But when it comes to trying to set up a national database we still act like a bunch of colonies,'' he says.
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