Melbourne Law School The Melbourne Law Masters

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Subjects 2009


Workplace Health and Safety 730664

Note

Students who have completed Health and Equality at Work may not undertake this subject.

Objectives

A student who has successfully completed this subject should:

  • Be able to apply, at an advanced level, the legal principles of Victorian occupational health and safety law in problem-solving exercises
  • Be able to analyse emerging and contemporary issues in Victorian and Australian occupational health and safety law and scholarship
  • Appreciate the industrial relations, economic and social contexts of injury and disease at the workplace, and its regulation
  • Be able to use historical, theoretical and practical perspectives to evaluate the way in which law can be used to prevent and compensate for illness and injury at work, and to rehabilitate workers suffering work-related illness and injury
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the development of Victorian and Australian occupational health and safety law in an international context.
Syllabus

Principal topics will include:

  • The problem of work-related injury and disease
  • The history of the legal regulation of health and safety at work
  • Standard setting under the Australian occupational health and safety statutes
  • State enforcement of the occupational health and safety legislation
  • Workers’ rights under the Australian occupational health and safety statutes
  • Workers’ compensation schemes in Australia
  • The rehabilitation of injured workers
  • The role and impact of the common law duty to provide a safe workplace.