Australia Model Code of Practice Managing Noise and Preventing Hearing Loss at Work 1.2-CONSULT: Consult workers directly affected by noise, including contractors, labour hire and others who work for the PCBU, with their elected health and safety representatives given access to noise exposure and emission data and control options, and engage the health and safety committee

What does 1.2-CONSULT require?

Section 47 of the WHS Act obliges the PCBU to consult, as far as is reasonably practicable, the people who do work for it and who are, or may be, directly affected by a health and safety matter. Worker is a wide term here: employees, contractors and subcontractors and their staff, labour hire workers, outworkers, apprentices, trainees, students on placement and volunteers all count. The basis for the duty is that worker input sharpens decisions and reduces injury and disease. Workers may join consultation themselves or through the health and safety representative their work group elected; HSRs need access to the relevant material, including noise exposure and emission figures and the control options under consideration, and where a health and safety committee exists it should be brought into the process.