Taking safety into your own hands

During the inquest into the deaths of three young men electrocuted while installing roof insulation in 2009 and 2010, the issue of safety switches was thrust into the spotlight. At the time of the accidents, there was some legislation in place in just Queensland and Western Australia regarding the retrofit of safety switches.

Sadly, more than four years on, there has been no action whatsoever to upgrade any legislation regarding the retrofit of these lifesaving devices, in any state or territory in the country.

No action is being taken, despite the fact that 15 Australians are killed each year in electrical accidents in the home and as many as 300 are hospitalised with serious electrical injuries and burns. And despite the fact that Commissioner Ian Hanger QC, when handing down his findings into the Royal Commission into the botched home insulation scheme, said they could have saved the lives of 16-year-old Rueben Barnes, 25-year-old Matthew Fuller and 22-year-old Mitchell Sweeney, and that they have the potential to save hundreds of lives in the coming years.

These tragic deaths had two common elements, the first being that in each case, the integrity of the insulation around the electrical circuit had been compromised by a metal object completely unrelated to electrical work - it wasn’t a result of working with electricity but as a result of other general activities that these young men lost their lives. The second common element was the flow of electricity through their bodies. It continued long enough for them to suffer fatal harm. There was no mechanism in place to cut the power supply and stop them from dying.

Master Electricians Australia has worked tirelessly over the last four years to effect legislative changes, something reiterated by the commissioner when he handed down his findings on 1 September. Commissioner Hanger called on both state and federal governments to stop sitting on their hands and to take action in relation to mandating the issue.

As contractors, we already know that a safety switch is designed to cut the power to an electrical circuit in as little as 0.03 of a second in such an event, but our clients may not. We know that the benefits far outweigh the costs, but our clients may not. I know the benefits far outweigh the costs as a safety switch saved my life - as a teenager investigating the impact of wires clashing together, I made contact with a bare wire, only to end up flat on the floor. Alive, because the safety switch kicked in.

So in the meantime, while we sit and wait for governments to intensify legislation across the country, we will continue to campaign at a grass roots level to make sure that as many homeowners as possible understand the very serious nature of not having safety switches installed in their home, so we can all contribute to reducing preventable deaths.