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Brendan: Welcome to Episode 13 of the Health and Safety Business Podcast. I’m Brendan Torazzi, director of OHS.com.au Australia's fist online training marketplace. Today I’m joined with Graham Dent. Hi Graham.
Graham: How are you Brendan?
Brendan: I’m well thanks. Thanks very much for coming on the show. Tell me a little bit about what you do Graham.
Graham: I’m a sole practitioner. My practice is called Dent Consulting and Legal. I focus solely on workplace health and safety law. I also run an online group on LinkedIn focusing on work health safety law.
Brendan: How long have you been a, do they call it a lawyer or solicitor in Australia or is it one of the funny things?
Graham: Lawyer covers both. It’s fine.
Brendan: How long have you been a lawyer for?
Graham: 37 years.
Brendan: Always in health and safety?
Graham: My first brush with health and safety back in about 1982 or 1983 where I worked for the then Department of Labor and Industry which is the forerunners of Work Safe. I was there for a few years doing prosecutions and got my hands in the area ever since.
Brendan: What was the legislation back in the early eighties to manage health and safety or was it more employment law?
Graham: It was called Labor and Industry Act. It's final descriptive and currently so there are very specific requirements about machine guarding and proper shoes rather than narrow codes of practice and general requirements and regulations about the hierarchy of controls but the fines are so low in those days that it really was just an expense of doing business. We’ve all had a great record in prosecution. There were many where defendants didn’t even turn up. That is how lightly it was treated. The big companies would turn up primarily to defend their reputation rather than worry about the fine. They would spend more defending it than the fine.
Brendan: Do you think that working back in those times, was it more dangerous or was it just different? I guess what I’m trying to get to is has the new legislation actually made workplaces safer?
Graham: I think there is a number of acts in Victoria since then. I think there are three pieces of legislation or maybe two 1985 and 2004. They’ve come a long way since then in terms of the guidances offered in support of duty and also there are all the regulations in terms of practice. I think it also meant that people can no longer try to turn up all industries across the business. There’s a lot of change in that regard. I think that has effected by reduction in injuries and also increased rate of prosecutions and return and the fines.
Brendan: Walk us through in the early days you worked as a prosecutor and where did you go after then?
Graham: After that I went to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs where I was again in the regulatory role prosecuting kind of Consumer Affairs Legislation and Managing Licensing and Standards. From there I went to one of Australia's largest law firms Mallesons Stephen Jaques. They’re now called King & Wood Mallesons. I was there because of my background with occupation health and safety. I had a predominant role in the health safety practice. I also did some environmental law again from the regulatory side which was prosecutions. From there I opened my own business called SHE Law Solutions, Safe Healthy Environmental Law Solutions. I practiced that for six years again in health safety until I was headhunted to another firm. I spent six years there while being a managing partner in the Melbourne office. Then the last two years I’ve been running my own business again.
Brendan: Running your own business is it just yourself or do you have staff helping out?
Graham: No, just myself. Working with consultants is required from time to time to give you more flexibility.
Brendan: You get to pick and choose what work you want to take on.
Graham: I don’t like turning work back. Sometimes you're working very long hours and you look forward to a patch when the work drops off a bit.
Brendan: The type of clients coming on now do they tend to, you don’t have to name names but give us a range of the types of industries that you're representing.
Graham: I represented in the past 10 years to the present I’ve done everything from large telecommunication companies, one of the big four banks. I helped them through their whole process of leading after the harmonized legislation. I’m trying to think now. I’ve acted for any small to medium businesses being prosecuted and getting some larger businesses but a lot of training. Worked for an engineering company on a national basis and handling their training, advice and also running a Coronial Inquest for them. Government research organizations again doing Coronial Inquest for them. There’s been a diversity both from the size of businesses, government sector, private enterprise and size of business in terms of small, medium and large.
Brendan: Your early career was you did a lot of prosecution. Do you do defending now as well?
Graham: Yes. I’ve done a lot of training. I still do the occasional seminar but it's an area for the small to medium business most of their response to health and safety laws is reactive when something goes wrong. There is still a bit of training and work with boards in terms of the office of the due diligence officer obligations. Most of the work is in response to Work Safe actions for an incident. The prosecutions and enforceable undertakings tend to be the main stuff that I work at the moment.
Brendan: If a company overlook something, they get an enforceable action against them and then you work with those companies to rectify those situations?
Graham: They'll get notice served on them to improve works or to stop works. The prosecution will face charges. In which case I’ll manage the defense and liaison with Work Safe. Sometimes to appear in court and try to defend the matter or on the plea in litigation of the penalty. In some cases we make the criteria to apply to Work Safe for an enforceable undertaking which is effectively a contract between my client and Work Safe. My client deposit a certain amount of money performing certain works which Work Safe consider to be a benefit to health and safety or the public interest.
Brendan: What happens with, I’d recently in the last couple of years in AlertForce with training, came across a customer that had an enforceable undertaking against them. It was to do some training but they never did anything about it. I’m not going to name names but it was a very big company. What sort of powers do the regulators actually have to follow through?
Graham: That must be one that slipped through the cracks because certainly now they've got stringent reporting requirements. To the client one where they have to report monthly on progress to Work Safe in terms of key milestones that is agreed. They have to keep all the receipts, all evidence of contribution in kind in terms of the hours the people have contributed to the work within the business. (0:08:46.8). If a person fails to meet the requirement within schedule then they could be prosecuted for breaching it. It’s much more seriously monitored. They have a (0:09:00.8) actually sealed and signed the value the Work Safe before you sign and the public interest higher criteria. They used to accept some undertakings where effectively they're only asking businesses to do what the law required them to do already. They’ve gone way beyond it now. They expect something more than above it.
Brendan: Training must be one part of an imposable undertaking. What are some of the other things that companies need to do?
Graham: One of the ones that I’m doing at the moment is where the client, there was a dust explosion during a welding operation. Dust explosions are not go well understood by the industry and certainly came as a surprise to my client. Part of the process there is that apart from internal training and things like safe work statements which are required for the work that I was taking in this case. They are also are developing in conjunction with one of the tech holders a program for the various engineering courses in welding. It goes through three of the (0:10:17.1) right through to the (0:10:20.6). That would be a unit that would be incorporated into the training program for the processes and others.
At the other end of the scale there is a range for Weldings Industries of Australia or Weld Australia, publish into that, advertise it throughout the industry more broadly and also within the support to publicized it within the sector. I supposed it's the bottom level, the middle level and the top level.
Brendan: It sounds like even though it sounds quite serious if you’re a business and you get one of these you could actually turn it around and make it an advantage for your organization if you look at it as a learning piece for the business property.
Graham: That is right. It also avoids a prosecution conviction which is important for some companies because it can affect any arrangements either with government or in the private sector where (0:11:25.3) companies are requirement people to demonstrate their health safety competence as part of retaining a contract and the conviction is a bad mark against you and sometimes can lead to not getting a job.
Brendan: All these enforceable undertakings that has been published on the regulators website when they...
Graham: Yes. In each jurisdiction they're published and gives full copies of them. They’re downloadable from the websites.
Brendan: It's like public knowledge once that happens.
Graham: Yes. In Victoria it will be in the prosecution and enforceable undertaking section on their website. You’ll get the full list of all the prosecutions that they are undertaking. The section that the prosecution is under defines if it's closed and also the enforceable undertakings are pressed firmly with downloadable copy, PDFs of the whole document is agreed and signed.
Brendan: I wanted to turn now to your LinkedIn Group because you've done an amazing job at creating a meeting place for people interested in work health and safety. Tell me a little bit about how that started and what it's become?
Graham: It started about seven years ago when I worked for one of the big four banks on helping them transition into the work health safety laws naturally. It was just one of those spur of the moment things. I was walking at the steps after a meeting with a client. I thought gee, I could start a group because of a lot of ignorance at the time and there's a lot of development in terms of discussion papers, draft codes of practice, regulatory impact statements, a whole range of issues that were going on. It was very hard for people to keep on top of them what was happening in each jurisdiction.
Brendan: Just to give me a timeframe this would be just when the model Act, Work Health and Safety Act was kind of draft...
Graham: Early 2011 when there was a lot of finalization of legislation going on and talk about implementation and still discussions for example whether Victoria would be (0:13:38.3). Victoria was heavily involved in developing codes of practice and right up to (0:13:45.7) when they just pulled out and dropped any involvement with any of the processes including codes of practice which other jurisdictions within Australia even those that hasn’t become the model laws yet still work within the codes of practice. There is a lot of disharmony around the country and stated times and different states coming into the model laws. Some of the changes were in the detail in some intervals that companies want to make sure that they were on top of what the changes were and also things like Office of Due Diligence requirements. There’s a lot of information going on, a lot of junk going on and I thought I could bring it together into one group which I named Work Health Safety Harmonization Group. It grew from small beginnings to be now the largest LinkedIn Group for health safety in Australia.
Brendan: How many members do you have now?
Graham: Just under 18,000 members and a couple of thousand followers.
Brendan: That is amazing. Is it mainly, what make up would be Australian members?
Graham: There is over 50 nations involved. The LinkedIn program used to give you better steps and breakdowns. They stopped doing that. They changed a number of functions which used to be of great value but the portion now would be health safety managers, health safety consultants, managers with responsibilities for health safety or managers generally as directors who are concerned about their position, health safety representatives, trading representatives. It’s a very broad cross section of the community in relation to health safety. There’s also reps in every regulator in Australia. The fact that we're Australian will have opportunities in it. In the early days Safe Work Australia were using it for media announcements, some changes and developments with the model laws.
Brendan: It sounds like it's a great central meeting place for people to share information.
Graham: Yes.
Brendan: Hopefully it will solve some issues.
Graham: Yes. For those who aren’t familiar thinking it's all three. There’s certainly many discussions arising there. They cover a broad range of issues and I’ve encouraged people to no question is a stupid question. For those who feel embarrassed about we have a process that they can email with the question and I’ll post it in the so that they can still get feedback and answers. With such a broad diversity of people in the group. The answer is very obviously quite often very helpful.
Brendan: Is it taking a lot of time to manage that group or is that something managing that simple?
Graham: It takes time to manage because a lot of people like to spam in it or post a business or forthcoming conferences and I tend to delete those. Conferences which as free but needing commercial or it's posted by a business which doesn’t add value to the group. It can be a promotion but as long as it adds value. It's some information and adds value and people sign off on it with their business name or their survives that is fine. Sometimes it's just a blatant advertisement.
Brendan: If it adds value to the community then it's welcome but if it's just about making money or promoting some kind of event it's probably good to go on the promotions tab.
Graham: The promotions tab was removed by LinkedIn.
Brendan: It shows you how up to date I am.
Graham: There's just a lot of promotions and spam coming in to the discussions thread which is why there's a bit of work in administering plus also I post a lot of material myself.
Brendan: Why do you think or do you think Australia kind of leads the way with health and safety legislation and managing health and safety in the workplaces or is there some other country around the world that has done a better job?
Graham: I think a lot of people look to England or the UK as an example. They were very strong framework. It’s still based on the same principles as the Australian legislation. In fact Australia copied the approach, Robens Principles it was called. Practicability from the UK. The UK has gone ahead in areas like industrial or corporate managed order and not just the concept but the way they impose penalties. It’s not just a set fine under the act but it could be based on the proportion or percentage of the company's gross turnover. When you've got companies that are worth $100 billion as we have a lot of mining companies in Australia and they're worth more. The maximum fine may not be much more than a footnote in their annual report. We need to base it on a percentage of their gross turnover. It becomes a much more serious matter for them.
Brendan: A 100%. You want to make sure you're managing your health and safety correctly.
Graham: Australia has got a good reputation. New Zealand has followed our model. I think England still has a lot for us to learn from.
Brendan: We're going to wrap up the interview now. I’ve just got a few short questions to ask you to wrap. First of all can I ask how old you are?
Graham: 62.
Brendan: What do you like to do to keep fit?
Graham: I do triathlons, the longer ones and I do in the fundraising events. AlertForce through you have assisted in it through selling some training courses online or auctioning them. Through the group I’ve managed to raise about $30,000 in a series of triathlons. It's a very welcome incentive by training and raising funds.
Brendan: Yes and doing it for a charitable cause. That is fantastic.
Graham: I’ve also got 12 year old twins I keep forgetting.
Brendan: It also keeps you on your toes as well. You said you work long hours. How many hours of sleep do you get on average per night?
Graham: I try to get seven. I used to get a lot less but I’ve been told I need to meet my minimum seven now this week and I do feel a lot better and more productive when I get it. I don’t burn the candle anymore because I’m not young anymore. Doing things like that which I used to do. Really seven hours of sleep.
Brendan: Do you have any personal goals that you're looking to achieve in the next 12 months?
Graham: Business wise or personally?
Brendan: Personal goals and then the next question I’m going to ask you about what business achievement you'd like to be most remembered for?
Graham: Personally I’d like to get back to another Iron Man. I’ve had some injuries. I haven’t done an Iron Man Triathlon for a couple of years now. I’ve put in a bit of weight I need to lose my weight and get back into that. That is my short term, it doesn’t take a couple of years to do that goal.
Brendan: Then the business achievement you'd like to be most remembered for?
Graham: It's hard to say what I’d like to be most remembered for. I always wanted to write a book but I don’t think that will happen in terms of time constraints. I just like to be remembered for someone who is pragmatic, commercially focused and get the right solution for clients which sometimes is a plea of guilty with litigation as a penalty, sometimes an undertaking, sometimes it's a successful defense and developing a relationship with clients which unfortunately for clients sometimes means repeat business. Most of them don’t want to see me again after never but we maintain basics.
Brendan: If people want to find out a little bit more about your Graham what is your website?
Graham: DentCL.com.
Brendan: AuAssist.com.
Graham: That is right.
Brendan: All right Graham, thanks very much for coming on the show today.
Graham: Okay, good to speak to you.
Brendan: Remember if you’ve been enjoying the podcast don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe. See you next time.
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TRANSCRIPT
Unknown Speaker
This is an ohs.com.au production Welcome to Episode 13 of the health and safety Business Podcast. I'm Brendan Torazzi, Director of OHS calm that I use Australia's first online training marketplace. Today I'm joined with Graham dent Hi Graham.
Unknown Speaker
Clay Brendan,
Unknown Speaker
on. Well, thanks. Thanks very much for coming on the show. Tell me a little bit about what you do Graham
Unknown Speaker
from the sole practitioner, my practice is called stem consulting and legal is focused solely on Workplace Health and Safety Law. And I've also run a an online group on LinkedIn focusing again on worker safety law.
Unknown Speaker
And so how long have you been a? Just I call it a lawyer or solicitor in Australia is one of the fun things
Unknown Speaker
that the lawyer covers? Because in barristers, so that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. And so how long have you been a lawyer for 37 years?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, my gosh, and always in health and safety? Or have you as your practice dominantly. Over the years,
Unknown Speaker
I started, my first flush with health and safety was back in about 1982 Or three, I think, where I worked for the then Department of Labor and Industry, which is the Forerunners worksites. So I was there for a few years during prosecutions. And yeah, get my hands here ever since.
Unknown Speaker
And so what was the was legislation back in the early 80s, to manage health and safety, or was it? Was it more employment law?
Unknown Speaker
No, it was called the Labor and Industry act, and prescriptive, currently. So there are very specific requirements about machine learning and other issues rather than, like get now with codes of practice in general requirements and regulations about the hierarchy of results. Yeah, the fines are so low in those days that it really was just an expensive doing business. And although we had a great record in prosecutions, there are many instances where dependency leaving turned up so long, that's how long he was treated. The big companies have turned up primarily defend the reputation rather than worry about the sign that would spin more dependent than the sign
Unknown Speaker
and save you. Do you think that like working back in those times? Is it more dangerous? Or
Unknown Speaker
was it just different?
Unknown Speaker
I guess, I guess what I'm trying to get to is, as you know, as the new legislation actually made workplaces safer.
Unknown Speaker
already live in a number of tutorials, Houston, I think about three pieces of socialism, or maybe 219 85 and 2004. And from a long way since then, in terms of the guidance of Salford supporter duty, and also the role of regulations and codes of practice. And Indian standards also meant that it wasn't can no longer fail to turn up or just treat as a cost of business. Yeah. So it's a little group that changed in that regard. And I think that's reflected by the reduction in injuries and also increased wear to prosecutions in return and the signs. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker
And so these days, as I walk us through so early days, you work for the prosecutor. Where did you go up? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker
That's that I went to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, where I was, again in race to roll prosecuting anti consumer visa legislation and managing licensing standards. From there, I went to one of Australia's largest law firms and Alison Stephen Jakes is now called King and Wood Mallesons. Near and, dear because of my background with occupational health and safety, I have a strong role in the predominant role in the health safety practice. Those edits environmental law began from the regulatory side, which was prosecutions. And from there, I've moved to my own business called Sheetal solutions. So he's helped the environmental law solutions practice up to six years ago in Helsinki, until I was headhunted to another firm. I spent six years there, including being mentioned that there's the Melbourne office, and then the last 10 years I've been running my own business again. Okay. And so
Unknown Speaker
running your own businesses or just yourself, or do you have your staff helping out? No,
Unknown Speaker
just myself. Working with consultants is required from time to time. Stability.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I was gonna say that must be you get to pick and choose what work you want to take on it.
Unknown Speaker
don't like sitting next. You can. Sometimes you're working very long hours. And you look forward to the patch when the workshops offices. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker
so the type of clients coming on now that they tend to, you know, give us some, you don't have to name names, but there's a range of the types of industries that you're representing
Unknown Speaker
have represented in the past 10 years, in my practice, I've done everything from low to communication companies, one of the big four banks, help them through the whole process of even after the harmonized legislation. Trying to think now, I've acted for plenty of small to medium businesses being prosecuted, and gain some larger businesses, a lot of training, worked for geotechnical engineering company on national basis, angling the training advice and also bring your trainees in crestfallen. Government research organization, again, didn't CareerLink this. So there's been a diversity both sides of businesses, government sector, private enterprise and sizes, businesses in terms of small, medium and large. Yeah. So
Unknown Speaker
your early career was you did a lot of prosecution do you do to defending now as well,
Unknown Speaker
as a lot of people, I mean, I've done a lot of training, and still occasional seminars. But it's an area where for small to medium business, most of their response to health and safety laws is reactive when something goes wrong. Yeah. So while there's still a bit of training, and work with, with boards, in terms of the office, or the due diligence officer obligations, most of the work is in response to worksite Actions for an incident. And incident prosecutions enforcement cycles tend to be the mainstay of our work at the moment. But our company is overlooked something they get an impossible action against them. And then then you do work with those companies. So rectify that situation, if they'll get notice served on them or send them to appeal against improve works or to stop works, there will be prosecuted and face novel charges, in which case, I'll manage the defense nowadays and with WorkSafe. And sometimes be too embarrassed to appear in court and by the defender measure or from the pre mitigation of the penalty. And in some cases, where you meet your criteria, you apply the worksite for an enforceable undertaking, which is effectively a contract between my client and workplace, to my client to fit into certain amount of money, performing certain works, which were considered to be of benefit, generally to help the safety or in the public interest.
Unknown Speaker
What happens is really, recently, in the last couple of years, and in a workforce, the training business I'm involved with came across a customer that had an enforceable undertaking against them, and there was to do some training, but they never did anything about it. Right. But it was a really, really, I'm not gonna name the name, obviously, but it was a very, very big company. What sort of powers do the regulators actually have to
Unknown Speaker
think that must be one of the slip through the cracks, because certainly now, they have stringent reporting requirements, as it has gone to one where they have to report monthly on progress to workspace in terms of key milestones is agreed. They have to keep all the receipts or evidence of contribution in kind in terms of the hours that people have contributed to the work within the business. Again, that's mostly if a person fails to meet the requirements of the undertaking, then they can be prosecuted for breaching it is much more seriously monitored, because they have to get the threshold assign the value that we're looking for in science. In the public interest, the game pipe material, they used to accept some undertakings were effectively only asking businesses to do what the law requires them to do already. So there's gone way beyond that now, expect something open about it.
Unknown Speaker
And so it's not just training that I mean, training must be one part of an enforceable undertaking. What are some of the other things that companies need to do?
Unknown Speaker
So one of the ones I've done at the moment is where the client there was a dust explosion during the welding operation. dust explosions are not well understood by the industry, and certainly came as a surprise to my clients. And part of the process here is that apart from internal training on things like safe work method statements, which are required for proper work for the workers Hang on a second in this case, they also are developing in conjunction with one of the tape coders, the program for the various engineering causes. And welding says go through three V V T stages as welding right through to diplomates. And will be a unit that we then incorporated into the training programs for the apprentices and others. And at the other end of the scale, there's an arrangement with the welding Institute of Australia or weld Australia to give publicity to that advertise it throughout the industry more broadly. And also, with unions fought to publicize it within the sector. That is, I suppose it's the bottom level, the middle level and the top level.
Unknown Speaker
So it sounds like, even though it sounds quite serious, if you, you know, your business and you get one of these, you can actually turn it around and make it an advantage for your organization. If you look at it as a learning a learning piece for you know, you need to bring the business opportunity
Unknown Speaker
is the tribe and it also avoids conviction, prosecution and conviction, which is important in some companies, because it can affect in in tendering arrangements, either with government or the private sector, their location, companies are requiring people to demonstrate the health safety competence as part of attaining a contract, and the conviction, your badness against them sometimes can lead to not getting the job.
Unknown Speaker
Right. So all these enforceable undertakings, they'd be published on the regulator's website when they have
Unknown Speaker
in each jurisdiction they're published. And you'll get a full copy of the downloadable from the websites. Right. So it's like, public public knowledge. Once that happens, yes, in Victoria, it'll be in the prosecution and enforceable undertaking six on their website, and you'll get their full list of all the prosecutions have been undertaken, the sections are prosecuted under the fines that were imposed. And also the enforceable undertaking is a brief summary, then I say, downloadable copy, the PDF of the call documented as agreed and signed.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. So I wanted to turn now to your LinkedIn group, because you've done an amazing job at, I guess, creating a meeting place for people interested in work health and safety. Tell me a little bit about how that started. And, and what it's become.
Unknown Speaker
So started about seven years ago, you know, doing a lot of work. For one of the big four banks on helping men transition into the Work Health Safety goals nationally, and was just one of those spur of the moment things I was walking out the steps after the meeting with the client, I thought, Gee, I could start a group on this. Because there's a lot of ignorance at the time. And there's a lot of developments in terms of discussion papers, draft codes of practice, or regulatory index statements, a whole range of issues that were going on, it was very hard for people to keep on top of them on each jurisdiction. So
Unknown Speaker
this just to give me a timeframe, this would have been just became when the Model X Work Health and Safety Act was issued that comment drawn golden,
Unknown Speaker
early 2011, when there's always finalization of legislation going on and talk about implementation dates, and still, that stays discussions, for example, with the Victorian will be in our house. And Victoria was heavily involved in development of codes of practice, and right up to today, when it just pulled out and dropped any involvement with any of the processes, including codes of practice, which other jurisdictions like Western Australia isn't, hasn't picked up the model was jet fuel, was everything, the clip that the codes of practice. Yep. So there's always somebody around the country and staggered times for different states coming into the, into the models and changes. Some of the changes were in the detail, some in principles, that companies want to make sure they're on top of what the changes were, and also things like Office of due diligence requirements. So there was a lot of information going on a lot of change going on. And I thought I could bring it together in the one group, which unnamed Work Health Safety harmonization group. And it grew from small beginnings to be now the largest thinking group for health safety in Australia. Wow.
Unknown Speaker
How many members do you have now?
Unknown Speaker
Because just under 18,000 members and a couple of 1000 followers. Oh, wow. Okay.
Unknown Speaker
That's amazing. And it has identity mainly. What make up would it be Australian
Unknown Speaker
members? Here there's people from over 50 nations involved Work LinkedIn program is to give you better stats and breakdowns. If they stop doing that they change the number of functions which used to be of great value. That portion is a significant portion. Now these health safety managers, consultants, managers with responsibilities, fail safety or managers generally, as directors who are concerned about their position is held, say to represent these trade union representatives. So, it's a very broad cross section of the community relations, health safety. There's also reps and every regulator in Victoria, Australia, in the faithful of Australian will have representatives units, and the early days favor of Australia. We're using it for media announcement, font changes and developments with the model laws.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, it sounds like a great central meeting place for people to share information. Yes. And hopefully, hopefully, solve
Unknown Speaker
some issues. Yes. As those who aren't familiar with thinking, it's all it's all free. And there's certainly many discussions arising here that cover a broad range of issues, and I've encouraged people to otherwise, no question is a stupid question. And for those who feel embarrassed about so I have a process where they can email me with a question, and I'll post it normally, honestly. So they can still get feedback and answers. And there's such a broad diversity of people in the group, the answer is very obscene, quite often very helpful.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, wow. Okay, so taking up a lot of your time to manage that group, or is it sort of self managing these days,
Unknown Speaker
it takes time to manage because a lot of people like to stand in little post advertisement to the business or forthcoming conferences. And I tend to delete those and conferences which are free. They'll stay in, but anything commercial, or anything that's caused by a business, which doesn't add value to the group, it can be a promotion, because as long as it adds value, you see information as to those members. And then if people sign up with their business name or their services, it's fine. Sometimes it's just a blatant advertisement.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, that's our thing. And also, if it adds value to the community, then it's welcomed that if it's just about making money, or promoting an event, some kind of event, it's probably good to go under promotions.
Unknown Speaker
Promotions tab was removed by LinkedIn. So
Unknown Speaker
all right, there you go. They go shows you how up to date. I am.
Unknown Speaker
says this resulted in a lot of promotions, and then coming into the discussion thread, which is why we've been working, administering it. So So I posted all the material myself.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. So why do you think this is sort of my last question, what do you think? Or do you think Australia kind of leads away with health and safety legislation and managing health and safety in the workplace? And so is there some other countries around the world that has done a better job?
Unknown Speaker
I think a lot of people look to England or the UK. As an example, they have a very strong framework based tool based on the same principles as the Australian legislation. In fact, Australia copied the approach of robust principles that was called practicability from the UK, the UK have gone to hidden areas like industrial or corporate manslaughter. And not just the concept that the way they impose penalties is not just a set file under the Act, but it can be based on a proportion or percentage of the company's gross turnover. So when you've got companies that are worth $100 billion, as to the number of mining companies in Australia, there was federal more, the maximum fine may not be much more than a footnote in their annual report. So when you can base it on a percentage of their gross turnover becomes much more serious now before them.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, 100%. You, you want to make sure you're managing your health and safety correctly, is
Unknown Speaker
a good reputation that New Zealand's followed our model that I think England students learn from? Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, look, we're gonna wrap up the interview now,
Unknown Speaker
but I've just got a few short questions to ask you. To wrap up. First of all, can I ask how old
Unknown Speaker
you are? 62. And
Unknown Speaker
what do you like to do to keep fit?
Unknown Speaker
I do triathlons, the longer ones and ideas and as fundraising events and alert or so you have a system that was selling some training courses online or at auction and through the group of any trade about $30,000 is using triathlons. So that we're very welcome, Cindy for me on training my racing life. Yeah, I'm doing I'm doing it for a charitable cause it's fantastic. And I've also got 12 year old twins
Unknown Speaker
kept on your toes as well, as you said that you work long hours, how many hours sleep do you get on average tonight?
Unknown Speaker
I try to get seven. And so I used to get a lot less. But I've been told I need to eat eliminated seven hours of sleep, and I do feel a lot better and more productive. And I get it. Yeah, it does go into candle anymore as young as you know, doing things like that, which I used to do. So really seven hours sleep. Now that makes sense. And then do you have any personal goals that you're looking to achieve in the next 12 months? Business owners will personally
Unknown Speaker
give personal goals and then I'll ask you the next question I'm gonna ask you about what business achievement you'd like to be most remembered for.
Unknown Speaker
Here's all personally I'd like to get back to another Iron Man, I've had some injuries, as well haven't done an Ironman Triathlon for a couple of years now. And a bit of weight, so I'm gonna lose my weight and get back into that. So it's my short term, or better take a couple of years to that goal. And then the
Unknown Speaker
business achievement you'd like to be most remembered for?
Unknown Speaker
It's hard to say says, I'd like to be most remembered for, but always wanted to write a book that I don't think that'll happen in terms of time constraints. I just like to remember being some of these pragmatic, commercially focused and gets the right solutions to clients, which sometimes is a plea of guilty with litigation as a penalty. Sometimes an undertaking, sometimes it's successful defense, and yet developing a relationship with clients, which, unfortunately, provide some of those means repeat business. Yeah, most of them don't want to see me again after another. We maintain friendships.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, of course. So if people want to find out a little bit more about you, Graham, what's your website?
Unknown Speaker
That ncl.com Wwe can see sales have gone.
Unknown Speaker
Right. And obviously no a usgs.com. It's excellent. All right, Brian, thanks very much for coming on the show today. It's okay. And remember, if you've been enjoying the podcast, don't forget to leave us a review and subscribe. See you next time.