Australian safety pioneer dies

Pioneering OHS professional Dr Eric Wigglesworth died on the weekend, just days short of calling for systemic change to the profession he helped found.

Wigglesworth was due to present a paper to the Safety In Action Conference on 1 April calling for greater research into workplace health.

In his conference abstract, Wigglesworth said he intended to show "... how health research in the 20th century has benefited Australians in all aspects of their life — except at work, where it has been neglected."

Dr Geoff Dell, Dean of the Safety Institute of Australia College of Fellows, said that Wigglesworth was a driving force behind formal education for safety professionals.

"Eric was the doyen of the Australian safety profession, a former President of the Safety Engineering Society (now the Safety Institute) and former executive director of the Menzies Foundation," Dell said.

"He led the push in the mid-1960s to get the first formal safety education curriculum in Australia in place and was also pivotal in getting the first tertiary program started in Australia in the late 1970s — a Graduate Diploma at the Ballarat College of Advanced Education (now the University of Ballarat).

"The Ballarat program now produces significant numbers of graduates who are making a real difference across industry, both in Australia and overseas," he said.

"There are many people, myself included, who owe much of their professional standing to Eric's vision and the tenacious way he made the vision a reality.

"Australia has lost a lateral thinker and the safety profession a mentor. His legacy literally is the Australian safety profession."

Dell will present Wigglesworth's paper — Using Injury Research to Underpin Safety Education — on day two of the Safety In Action Conference, which runs from 31 March to 2 April at the Melbourne Convention Centre.