Answer extracted from the Creatures of the Industry podcast — listen to the full episode below.
How did the 1985 Occupational Health and Safety Act transform workplace practices in Australian heavy industry?
The Occupational Health and Safety Act, introduced in 1985, gave workers unprecedented legal power to challenge unsafe practices. Terry Riggs, working as a health and safety representative at Shell Refinery, issued 12 pin notices on safety violations—all but one upheld by WorkSafe—forcing the company to implement major changes and make employers face real consequences for the first time.
Workers gained genuine enforcement power
Before 1985, safety violations in Australian heavy industry were largely unpoliced from the ground level. The new act equipped workers themselves with the authority to document breaches and escalate them to the regulator, fundamentally shifting the balance of power on job sites. Riggs, trained through an associate diploma in occupational health and safety at Holmesglen TAFE, became one of the first generation of safety representatives to operate under the new framework.
At the Shell Refinery during a major upgrade project involving a new cracker unit, as described in the episode, Riggs tested the act's teeth. Eleven of his twelve pin notices were upheld by WorkSafe, meaning the regulator agreed with his findings and forced Shell to correct the violations. That compliance rate was staggering in an industry where management had previously operated with minimal oversight.
A major shock to employer culture
Employers in heavy industry had never experienced this kind of scrutiny before. Riggs recalls the moment as "a big slap around the face" for companies that assumed workplace safety was their exclusive domain to manage—or ignore. The act didn't just penalise unsafe conditions; it empowered workers to name them and demand remediation in real time.
Rather than accept defeat, some employers learned a critical lesson. According to the full episode, management subsequently developed "a few paper skills which covered some of the failings of their systems"—meaning they began documenting and formalizing safety procedures to avoid future challenges. The cultural shift was real: companies moved from reactive damage control to proactive system design.
"They got a big slap around the face."
Terry Riggs — Scaffolder and Health and Safety Representative. Riggs is a rigger with decades of experience across major construction and industrial projects in Victoria and Western Australia, including the Shell refinery upgrade, Transfield shutdowns, and currently the Metro Tunnel in Melbourne. His career spans heavy industry from the 1980s to the present, with deep expertise in the practical implementation of occupational health and safety legislation from its earliest days.
The story of how one safety representative's 12 notices reshaped an entire multinational's approach to compliance is detailed further in this episode, which also explores the personal tensions and later reconciliation between Riggs and the site's industrial relations manager, Bob Matheson, who came to respect the role of safety enforcement years later.
Key takeaways
- The 1985 Occupational Health and Safety Act gave workers legal standing to identify and challenge unsafe practices, shifting power from employers alone to a worker-regulator partnership.
- Riggs' 11-out-of-12 pin notices upheld at Shell Refinery proved the act had real teeth, forcing major industrial companies to implement genuine safety changes rather than cosmetic compliance.
- The act forced a cultural shift in heavy industry from management opacity to documented systems, as employers learned to formalize safety procedures to withstand scrutiny.
- Workers trained in occupational health and safety became key enforcement agents, turning safety representatives from advisory roles into active regulators on the ground.