Improving health and safety in the cane industry

Abstract

The sugar industry is a large contributor to the agriculture industry and economy in Queensland. Managing risks, including the requirement to do so under the various workplace health and safety (WHS) legislation, is a core part of business practice. Effective WHS practices do a number of things including making workplaces safe and thereby improving the health and wellbeing for employers, employees, and, as a function of the sugar cane location relative to the home, family members. Currently the voluntary Smartcane Best Management Practice (BMP) program has eight modules, of which the first three are core. There is a WHS module (Module 7) which is not required for accreditation nor a core module.

The aims of this project were to validate the BMP resources for WHS, highlight resources that exist which can be used to enact WHS practices and adoption and explore the barriers and enablers to WHS (including the completion of the BMP module).