In common with most of Europe and North America, Australian State Parliaments have responded to the problem of workplace illness, injury and death by enacting modern statutory schemes regulating certain workplace hazards.

Until the 1970s and 80s, these standards were generally detailed and technical, focusing mainly on prescriptive measures such as specifying machinery guarding measures to be adopted to prevent injury to workers operating dangerous machinery.

Reflecting the wave of occupational health and safety regulation reform that swept through Australia from the mid-1970s, following the British Robens Report, the Australian States and Territories have enacted legislation that replaced the traditional style legislation with performance based legislation imposing broad general duties, with regulations and codes generally abandoning technical, detailed, specification standards, and instead using a mix of general duties of care, performance standards and process standards. The laws generally set out hazard identification and risk identification, assessment and control procedures.

Australia ( /əˈstreɪljə/), officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent as well as the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.

For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of roughly 250 language groups. After discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing Crown Colonies were established.

Leisel Marie Jones OAM (born 30 August 1985 in Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia) is an Australian Olympic gold medalist swimmer. A participant in the 2000 Summer Olympics – at just 15 years old – and 2004 Summer Olympics, she was part of gold medal winning Australian team in the women's 4 × 100 metre medley relay at the Athens Games in 2004 and a gold medalist for 100 meter breaststroke in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

On 17 March 2012 Jones earned selection to compete at the 2012 London Olympics and will be the first Australian swimmer to compete at four Olympic games.

Jones is noted for employing a classical breaststroke technique, typified by a slow but deeper stroke cycle and also by her slow starts. Along with South African champion Penny Heyns, she is highly regarded as one of the greatest breaststroke swimmers ever.^{[citation needed]}

While at Southern Cross Catholic College, Jones used to train at the Redcliffe club in Scarborough, Queensland, and was coached by Ken Wood. Her training partners included fellow Australian team members, Geoff Huegill and Jessicah Schipper. After her disappointing campaign in Athens, Jones moved to train at the Fortitude Valley Pool in Brisbane, Australia, alongside Libby Lenton, under Swiss-born coach Stephan Widmar at the Commercial Swimming Club. Following the move, Jones began to speak openly about the depression and self-esteem issues that had plagued her following her being thrust into the spotlight at such a young age. This and the successes that followed endeared her to an Australian public that had been critical of her attitude following her failure to capture individual gold in Athens. Some, including swimming legend Dawn Fraser, believed Jones had acted immaturely and ungratefully, particularly in her indifferent displays of emotion during post-race interviews and medal ceremonies.