Unions ACT boss Alex White has accused Access Canberra chief Dave Peffer of "almost maladministration" after a damning review of WorkSafe ACT found problems with its approach to policing workplace safety.
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The Barr government announced on Tuesday the watchdog will be restructured to become more independent, after an external review found the current governance model gave it a low degree of autonomy.
It recommended WorkSafe be overhauled and a single commissioner instilled with the statutory authority to regulate workplace health and safety in the ACT.
At the moment Work Safety Commissioner Greg Jones is not the regulatory decision-maker - Mr Peffer as the head of Access Canberra is.
It also found the use of improvement notices had dropped by 75 per cent since WorkSafe became part of Access Canberra and inspectors were confused about its educate and engage approach to compliance.
Mr White told ABC Radio on Wednesday morning the leadership of Access Canberra had been "called into question" by the review.
"The ACT is the second-most dangerous place in Australia to work. We’ve got 3500 serious injuries every year," Mr White said.
Mr White went further, saying Access Canberra should have provided more information to ACT ministers Rachel Stephen-Smith and Gordon Ramsay, who've both overseen the regulatory agency at different points.
“It really is almost maladministration in our view, what the review shows," Mr White said.
Ms Stephen-Smith confirmed that she was provided with sufficient information and rejected the suggestion there should be a leadership cleanout at Access Canberra.
"I don’t think this report goes to the leadership of Access Canberra at all," she told ABC Radio.
Ms Stephen-Smith said Mr Peffer was entitled to make decisions about work safety as he was the regulator.
She acknowledged there had been "teething issues" with applying Access Canberra's 70:20:10 engage, educate and enforce model to WorkSafe ACT.
"Oh look I think ... we’ve learnt quite a lot over the last year around whether or not the compliance framework that Access Canberra has adopted ... is the right one for WorkSafe ACT," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
"It’s always been the case that WorkSafe ACT had the capacity to adjust that and inspectors had the capacity to do that but that was not clear to inspectors and that was very clear in the report and it has become clear over the last 12 to 18 months within the structure of Access Canberra and within WorkSafe ACT and that has been accepted even prior to these recommendations and that’s coming down via Access Canberra."
Mr Peffer did not respond to a Canberra Times interview request.
An ACT government spokeswoman said: "We will not be commenting in response to Mr White’s comments made this morning."
She pointed out there had been an improvement in workplace safety in recent years.
"Since 2010-11 there has been a 20 per cent reduction in lost-time injuries in the ACT, including a reduction of 8 per cent in the last two years. This means hundreds more Canberrans are returning home safely each day," the spokeswoman said.
The Nous group review was commissioned in May by Regulatory Services Minister Gordon Ramsay and Employment Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith, after unions last year said folding the agency into Access Canberra in 2015 had softened its approach to work safety.
Ms Stephen-Smith said the government had agreed in-principle to all the recommendations, but was required under the enterprise agreement to consult staff about any restructure.
She also said creating the new commissioner role with statutory authority would require legislative change.
