PADI RTO First Aid Student Manual

HLTAID008 MANAGE FIRST AID SERVICES AND RESOURCES • Responding to workplace incidents (even if they have caused no injury) • Responding to concerns raised by workers, health and safety representatives or others in the workplace; • Required by the WHS regulations for specific hazards It is also important to use the risk management approach when designing and planning products, processes or places used for work, because it is often easier and more effective to eliminate hazards before they are introduced into a workplace by incorporating safety features at the design stage. Subdivision 2 – What is reasonably practicable? Tooma, Michael, Tooma’s Annotated Work Health and Safety Act 2011, Thomson Reuters (Professional) Australia Limited, 2012, Pyrmont, Sydney, p36 Section 18 In his Act, reasonably practicable, in relation to a duty to ensure health and safety, means that which is, or was at a particular time, reasonably able to be done in relation to ensuring health and safety, taking into account and weighing up all relevant matters including: (a) The likelihood of the hazard or the risk concerned occurring, and, (b) The degree of harm that might result from the hazard or the risk, and, (c) What the person concerned knows, or ought reasonably to know, about: (i) The hazard or the risk, and (ii) Ways of eliminating or minimising the risk, and (d) The availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or minimise the risk, and (e) After assessing the extent of the risk and the available ways of eliminating or minimising the risk, the cost associated with available ways of eliminating or minimising the risk, including whether the cost is grossly disproportionate to the risk. “Reasonably practicable” is a key concept in the Act. It is a qualification to almost all duties and obligations under the Act, including the primary duty of care of a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU): s19. Section 18 codifies the definition of reasonably practicability in relation to the duties imposed by sections 19-26. However, the concept is almost as old as the law itself. Reasonable practicability does not go so far as to require that you have done everything physically possible. It was considered by the High Court (2001) that reasonably practicable requires consideration whether the time, trouble and expense of the precautions are disproportionate to the risk involved. Occupational Health, Safety and Welfare Act 1986 (SA) in Slivak v Lurgi (Australia) Pty Ltd [2001] HCA 6. In that case, Callinan, J cited with approval a passage from Lord Oaksey’s judgement in Marshall v Gotham Co Ltd [1954] AC 360. Reasonable practicability implies some element of reasonable foreseeability. However, caution should be exercised in importing such common law concepts as reasonable foreseeability in section 18. What is required, however, is the balancing of the nature, likelihood and gravity of the risk to safety constituting the offence (s 19(a)-(c)) with the costs, difficulty and trouble necessary to avert it (s 19(d)-(e)). In that context, it would not be reasonably practicable to take precautions against a danger which could not have been known to be in existence. Cost is the last step in the recoverable practicability assessment. The cost deliberations must include a consideration whether the cost is grossly disproportionate to the risk: s 19(e).

PADI RTO VIII-12