The New South Wales Occupational Health and Safety Act 2000 will be enacted next month, with Experts still uncertain what impact it will have.

Law firm Freehills said the Act is focused on employee participation and responsibility through consultation and increased community awareness. But it also introduces a new player into the industrial workplace in the form of the industrial health and safety representative, which may be drawn from Federal or State industrial employee organisations.

“The industrial issues, if any, that may flow from this introduction are difficult to predict,” Freehills said. The wording of the consultative provisions of the Act requiring employees to “value” and to “take into account the views of employees” may prove difficult, they said.

“The provisions’ language does not sit easily within an Act that creates criminal offences.”