Celebrating safety heroes: 2019 National Safety Awards of Excellence

The winners of the NSCA Foundation/GIO Workers Compensation 27th Annual National Safety Awards of Excellence were announced during a gala luncheon in Sydney on 17 October, National Safety’s Editor, Dr JOSEPH BRENNAN, reports.

“We’re all here today because we have a part to play, no matter how big or small, in keeping Australian workplaces safe,” NSCA Foundation Chief Executive Officer Jamie Burrage said in opening the awards and setting the tone for the event. “Safety requires a myriad of considerations, which is why at these awards we can all be proud to hear of the fantastic initiatives, the great stories and the wonderful impacts that many of you have made. The positive side of safety is inspiring and very encouraging; an indication that so many employees are making huge steps to ensure their workers return home safe to their families.”

Jamie Burrage, Chief Executive Officer, NSCA Foundation

This year’s National Safety Awards of Excellence saw winners across 10 categories and a safety ambassador and former professional footballer, Shane Webcke, in both the master of ceremonies (MC) and keynote speaker role. “I am both the keynote speaker and the MC today,” Webcke said from the outset. “Once I start the MCing, they’re gonna be sorry that they got me to do both, I can assure you. I’ll be reasonably ordinary at both.” This statement proved to be a classic case of Australian, self-deprecating modesty, as Webcke proved himself adept in both roles. In fact, the dual role of this year’s awards lent the event an integrated feel that was appropriate for the occasion. In Webcke’s own words, this event is about “celebrating safety heroes” — at a gala lunch in Doltone House on a sunny Sydney harbour day — but it is also underscored by a seriousness, and a call to action to take heed of the lessons to be learnt from the achievements of those being recognised for their safety leadership. Webcke navigates these two aspects with skill, keeping the proceedings running smoothly while also offering a heartfelt account of how he came to find himself “in this safety world”.

This account forms his keynote, and is used as an opportunity to share Webcke’s journey to becoming a safety ambassador. It is a journey that all began with the workplace death of his father 25 years ago, when Webcke was in the fledging stages of his Brisbane Broncos career. The story is delivered with a level of candour that meant you could not help but take note — especially during his recount of a near miss event involving his son on his family farm. It was a personal keynote. And one that served as an example of the harrowing stories those engaged professionally in the safety space so often hear, but that was also underscored by a sophisticated understanding for the complexities of the issues of workplace health and safety. “Safety is far from simple,” in other words, to quote from Jamie Burrage’s opening remarks.

Shane Webcke, both master of ceremonies and keynote speaker

The keynote also conveyed a lingering sense of loss that results from a workplace death, and the lasting impacts such deaths have on families. “Now think about this, and this makes it even harder for me,” Webcke says at a critical point in his story. “My father was killed the morning after the second State of Origin, 1994. So imagine every second State of Origin, that I used to watch number one, but number two, when I started playing them, always in my mind was that night that he was killed.” Webcke narrates, in graphic detail, the manner in which his father was killed — in a wool press following a catastrophic hydraulic failure.

“Now you might wonder,” he adds following an audible gasp from those present, “and people ask me when I talk about this, why would I say that in that detail?… the reason I say it in that detail, particularly to the people who I generally speak to, is: the great enemy of safety is complacency, the ‘she’ll be right’.” This point rings true during one of the more poignant chapters of Webcke’s story, when he recounts the point at which his father’s death could have been averted. In the lead-up to the accident that claimed his father’s life, Webcke notes (anecdotally) that his father had expressed to his family concerns about the safety of the machine that would kill him. But it was one remark in particular that continues to haunt Webcke today, his father dismissing his mother’s concerns with: “Yeah, but she’ll be right.”

As Webcke surmises, “There is one man who could have saved my father that night… he could have saved himself, and he didn’t.” Webcke describes this aspect of his story as the “inconvenient truth about what had happened”. The story serves as a reminder of the role that attitude plays in keeping those in dangerous workplaces safe. For, as he explains, although the sudden and violent nature of the accident meant his father “felt nothing, because of the way that it happened. Can I assure you of this, at that time that my dad was feeling nothing — and that is the only piece of comfort we take out of any of it — at that time where he felt nothing, that’s where our pain started. And has continued unabated over the last 25 years.”

Webcke’s role as a safety ambassador was due in part to the attention of large extractive industries, “who saw me as a unique opportunity, given the popularity of rugby league, to go and talk to the very people who love rugby league — the people at the coal face, if you like — they love rugby league, and here’s the bloke who can talk about what happens when it all goes wrong”. But more crucially, Webcke recognises that it is the perspective that he gained in visiting workplaces to talk about safety, and in listening to stories himself, which instilled in him the importance of a key message for those engaged in dangerous workplaces. “The one thing I tell them is this,” he said, “if you want to get home every day, if it means something to you, then it’s up to you. You and you alone… Unless [workers are] engaged, unless it means something to them, all the rules in the world will not keep them safe. If they don’t buy into it, if it isn’t something that is important to them, well, they won’t be safe.”

Following this thoughtful keynote, the awards presentations began. GIO Workers Compensation was once again the major sponsor for the awards, while Actrua, Ansell, Greencap, Pro-Visual Publishing, Safe Work Australia, Sentis and Stowe Australia were category sponsors. Award recipients represented a broad spectrum of sectors that included mining, construction and health care. But Teys Australia emerged as the ultimate winner of the coveted Pinnacle Award, which they received for a safety leadership program that focused on frontline leadership, adopting a ‘tripartite relationship’ that engaged academia, industry and government. “We’re very proud, and very thankful for this award,” Julia Teys, Group Manager Workplace Health and Safety at Teys Australia, said on acceptance. “We’ve done a lot of work in safety leadership and promoting safety culture within our business and we’re looking forward to ensuring we keep that going, and promoting that throughout our business in the future.”

Bernie Doyle, President and Chairman, NSCA Foundation

NSCA Foundation President and Chairman Bernie Doyle closed the awards, and he used the occasion to announce that the NSCA Foundation will host the 2022 Asia-Pacific Occupational Safety and Health Organization (APOSHO) conference in Melbourne. “We were absolutely delighted to be given this opportunity to host it,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve been given the opportunity since 1996.” Doyle confirmed that the conference will run 23–26 November 2022 and, “for that year and that year only”, that the awards will be incorporated: “so it’s all going to be a big safety week”. Congratulations to all the winners, highly commended and finalists of the 2019 National Safety Awards of Excellence.

Dr Joseph Brennan is Editor of National Safety.