Safety committee chairman flags greater alignment with WHS laws
Looming Chain Of Responsibility (COR) legislative changes must be prepared for as they will affect the whole transport and logistics industry, industry leaders have been told.
The new laws that are expected to commence in 2018 and are expected to bring about a greater alignment between COR and work health and safety (WHS) laws.
“It represents a paradigm shift to CoR and will affect all parts of the supply chain,” ALC safety committee chairman and DGL Australia managing director John West says.
“One of the most important changes will be to impose a duty of ‘due diligence’ on people such as directors.
“It will require them to ensure that all reasonably practicable steps have been taken to ensure that CoR obligations have not been breached.”
Addressing the Australian Logistics Council’s (ALC’s) annual Supply Chain Safety & Compliance Summit, West notes that work on industry codes of practice will need amendment to be officially accepted.
“Running in parallel with this legislative change are changes to framework governing codes of practice,” he says.
“The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator will shortly be publishing guidelines for the preparation of industry codes that must be met by a code if it is to be registered.
“Discussions with NHVR lead ALC to believe that ALC’s codes of practice, or any other industry code of practice, may not satisfy the published guidelines, which anticipate codes of practice similar in nature to those published under workplace health and safety law.
“As a result, ALC’s codes will need to be restructured to meet the guidelines set down by the Regulator.”