What law applies
In order to understand the workplace health and safety requirements for diving and your obligations under the law you must consider and understand relevant legislation and codes of practice.
General health and safety obligations
What you must do
Specific regulations for diving
Specific codes of practice for diving
General health and safety obligations
To understand your obligations and safety requirements you must be familiar with the:
- Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995 (PDF, 766 KB), which imposes obligations on people at workplaces to ensure workplace health and safety
- The Workplace Health and Safety Regulation 2008 describes what must be done to prevent or control certain hazards which cause injury, illness or death
- Codes of practice, which are designed to give practical advice about ways to manage exposure to risks common to industry.
Every Queensland employer must have workers' compensation insurance. Most employers insure with WorkCover Queensland, while a small number of large organisations have their own insurance. This insurance coverage ensures that employees injured at work receive financial support.
What you must do
It is a requirement of the Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995 that risks must be assessed and control measures then implemented and reviewed to prevent or minimise exposure to the risks.
If the regulation describes how to prevent or minimise a risk at your workplace you must do what the regulation says. If there is a code of practice that describes how to prevent or minimise a risk at your workplace you must do what the code says or adopt and follow another way that gives the same level of protection against the risk.
If there is no regulation or code of practice about a risk at your workplace you must choose an appropriate way to manage exposure to the risk. People must, where there is no regulation or code of practice about a risk, take reasonable precautions and exercise proper diligence against the risk.
See the Risk Management Code of Practice 2007 for further information.
Specific regulations for diving
Part 14 of the Workplace Health and Safety Regulation 2008 places requirements on operators, employers and self- employed people in the recreational diving/snorkelling and occupational diving industries.
For example:
For recreational dive operators, the regulation requires that:
- all people on board a vessel are counted
- dive workers are medically fit to dive
- potential divers receive advice about medical conditions
- dive logs are kept
- divers or snorkellers are appropriately supervised and
- a risk assessment is carried out.
For occupational dive operators, the regulation requires that:
- a risk assessment is conducted
- dive logs are kept
- divers are competent and qualified, and medically fit to dive.
Specific codes of practice for diving
Codes of practice offer practical advice to employers, self-employed people and workers in the diving industry about how to meet these requirements and make diving a healthier and safer activity.
Codes of practice specific to the diving industry are:
- Compressed Air Recreational Diving and Recreational Snorkelling Code of Practice 2005
This code covers employers, self-employed persons and workers who conduct recreational diving or recreational snorkelling as part of a business or undertaking, other than diving or snorkelling in a swimming pool.
- Occupational Diving Work Code of Practice 2005
This code covers employers, self-employed persons and workers who conduct recreational diving or recreational snorkelling as part of a business or undertaking, other than diving or snorkelling in a swimming pool.
- Industry Code of Practice for Recreational Technical Diving
Occupational diving covered in this code is where a person conducting a business or undertaking, including an employer or self-employed person conducts occupational diving as part of his or her undertaking. Types of occupational diving covered includes underwater work using compressed air for the purposes of harvesting, construction, object retrieval, photography, science, research and aquaculture.
However, you may adopt other processes and methods that are more suited to your business or work activity as long as they give the same level of protection against a risk.
The regulation and code may not outline every risk at your workplace, so read these guidelines in conjunction with the Risk Management Code of Practice 2007.
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