November 17-23, 2019 
Each year Cancer Council Australia and the Australasian College of Dermatologists come together for National Skin Cancer Action Week.
With two in three Australians diagnosed with skin cancer by age 70, the action week is an important reminder to use sun protection and of the importance of early skin cancer detection for all Australians.

Each year on this day Australians observe one minute’s silence at 11am, in memory of those who died or suffered in all wars and armed conflicts.
On 11 November 1918, the guns of the Western Front fell silent after four years of continuous warfare. With their armies retreating and close to collapse, German leaders signed an Armistice, bringing to an end the First World War. ​
​In the four years of the war more than 330,000 Australians had served overseas, and more than 60,000 of them had died. The social effects of these losses cast a long shadow over the postwar decades.
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November is Asbestos Awareness Month which is focused on encouraging Australians to protect themselves and their staff or families from exposure to dangerous asbestos fibres.
Asbestos kills over 100 people every year in Australia and the dangers are ever-present as materials degrade and old properties are demolished or renovated, often releasing asbestos fibres which are known to cause the deadly cancer, mesothelioma.
Asbestos was commonly used in construction until 1987 and was not restricted to fibro housing. It can be found in one of three Australian homes, anywhere from cement floors, walls, ceilings, fences, sheds, as building insulation, around pipes and buried in the ground by previous builders.

A man has died after falling six metres while working on an air-conditioning system at a civic centre. Workplace Health and Safety Queensland (WHS Queensland) believes he may have fallen from a ladder; however, the regulator is still investigating. WHS Queensland said that falls are a major cause of death and serious injury at workplaces. Often, they are caused by unstable ladders, movement on or off the ladder and certain types of work, with height and the surface below dictating the injuries’ severity.
To prevent similar incidents, workers and persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) must take a risk management approach to falls from heights. Additionally, PCBUs must comply with several regulatory provisions, including Part 4.4 of the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (the regulation) and the Managing the Risk of Falls at Workplaces Code of Practice 2018.

In an incident that should resonate with most employers, a hospital worker in Victoria received a severe electric shock when they touched a power cord which had damaged protective outer insulation.
WorkSafe Victoria, who investigated the matter, issued a safety alert given the widespread issue of the need for employers to test and tag electrical cords.
In this case, the power cord for the electric hospital bed had been damaged over time by the wheels of the bed which trailed along the floor during patient transfers.
Due to the damage, electrical wires were exposed and when the worker plugged the cord into a power outlet, they received a large electric shock requiring immediate medical treatment. The worker had not noticed the damaged cord.

Reporting dangerous work practices and risks to workers’ safety is now easier than ever with the NSW Government’s new mobile reporting system ‘Speak Up. Save Lives’.
Minister for Better Regulation and Innovation, Kevin Anderson, said the new mobile reporting tool will make it easy for workers who see workplace risks which could lead to injury or death to send photos of dangerous conditions they see straight to SafeWork NSW.
“The new Speak Up reporting tool will give workers an easy, protected, and fast way to report any work health and safety problems they may be facing, direct to SafeWork NSW from their mobile device,” Mr Anderson said.

A Brisbane building company has been fined $110,000 after a worker fell and was impaled on a steel bar while constructing a Balmoral house.
Val Eco Homes Pty Ltd was sentenced recently in the Brisbane Magistrates Court, charged under section 32 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, regarding a failure to comply with its work safety duty as a person with management and control of a workplace. The company is under external administration and working towards winding up. There was no appearance for the company at court and the prosecution proceeded ex parte.
The charge followed an incident at a housing construction site at Balmoral in February 2018. The site was very steep, sloping away from the street frontage towards a gully at the rear of the block.

Building practitioners and contractors are reminded to be on the alert for non-conforming soffit insulation as some importers and merchants try to liquidate obsolete stock. 
Under Australian Standard AS 5637.1, soffit insulation installed as an exposed lining has since NCC2016 been required to undergo an AS ISO 9705 standard full room fire test, with materials installed on both the walls and ceiling of the test room. 
The 2015 edition of Australian Standard AS 5637 Part 1, Determination of fire hazard properties — Wall and ceiling linings, was referenced in the National Construction Code 2016 Volume One (NCC) from 1 May 2016 with a three -year transition period. That Standard requires the test specimen to be fixed to three walls and ceiling of the test room rather than wall or ceiling alone. The transition period (set out in the NCC) allowed the use of test reports indicating the group number of wall and ceiling linings determined under versions of the NCC applicable before 1 May 2016, could be used up until 1 May 2019. ​

Sydney has won the battle of the cranes adding another nine to the skyline, with a focus on commercial projects – while Melbourne has seen a decline of the same number.
The total number across Sydney increased by nine to 319, while Melbourne saw a decline to 213, according to a count undertaken by surveyors Rider Levett Bucknall.