 Each year hundreds of Australians are killed, injured or made seriously ill by work. The human and financial costs are enormous. Importantly, these events are preventable. People can and will do something about safety issues if they know what the problems are, what works and why. Safe Work Australia and our members representing governments, industry and employees can answer these important questions. But sometimes getting this information out to people is difficult. Cost-effective and efficient information dissemination is a common challenge for many public sector organisations. Like many others, Safe Work Australia traditionally publishes information on the internet but we knew that we were not having the reach and the impact that we really needed. A better approach was required. Launched in Australia's Safety Month October 2014, the Virtual Seminar Series or VSS was the new approach. This initiative provides accurate, targeted and relevant health and safety information delivered by credible voices to the widest possible audience. It is a valuable innovation in our Health and Safety Communication Toolkit. The VSS live webinars, case studies and opinion pieces supported by engaging infographics and downloadable resources brought safety stories to life. Using multiple delivery platforms, the VSS is accessible to anyone at any time, anywhere with content streamed to mobile devices as well as workstations and available on a dedicated YouTube channel. Safe Work Australia's Safety Month app was updated so that people could get easy access to the VSS content on their mobile device. When people subscribed to our event we sent them calendar reminders. We went above and beyond the government minimum accessibility requirements. Closed captions were added to pre-recorded videos to assist viewers with hearing impairments. Transcripts of all presentations meant that people who did not have good internet bandwidth could access the unique material we presented. We recognised that our members held a goldmine of safety information. We just had to share it. We also knew that others operating within the health and safety system could provide invaluable advice. So we invited experts from around the world to contribute to our seminars. Last year Safe Work Australia bought together Australian and international experts to talk about health and safety. Why did we do that? Because we know that it's very confusing, there are lots of messages and we really wanted to present the best from local and around the world. At the virtual seminar series we bought together a great array of speakers including Professor Hudson from Delft University in the Netherlands, Diane Smith-Gander who's the Chairman of Transfield and Dr Simon Blackwood who's the lead regulator in Queensland to talk about issues like leadership and the role of the regulator in helping business proactively manage health and safety. Last year was the first time we used digital technology to get our message far and wide, to workplaces, to individuals, whether they're in the country, in the city, right across Australia. Safe Work Australia wanted the seminar series to be accessible to as many Australians as possible, so we made it available for free. A sense of inclusion in any safety conversation is critical and the innovative approach of the VSS gave everyone a seat at the table. The VSS had credible voices and real safety messages with contributions from the full spectrum of opinion leaders, from academics to business leaders to workers. People immediately saw value in our fresh approach to promoting work health and safety messages. As a result, leading thinkers often gave us their time for free. It was very pleasing to be involved in this event. It was fantastic to see businesses opening their doors and others see how they deal with difficult situations, difficult health and safety situations. Small businesses in particular would have benefited from this type of access. They don't have the time to go off to seminars, etc. Online access to this nature would have been fantastic for them. The VSS has proved to be an effective catalyst for ongoing safety discussions. Because all the resources are online, it has been integrated into company safety programs, tertiary studies, for example, by the RMIT, and accessed by overseas health and safety organisations. Seminar home pages gave people links to extra resources. In the past, health and safety has tended to get a pretty bad reputation for being very paper-heavy. And I think what's happened here has been quite a change. It's been a real shift to embracing social media, embracing that the information ought to be put out in a way that can be accessed at any time, anywhere. And also a real commitment to make sure that the best of evidence from around the world is brought to play in improving health and safety in Australia. I'm proud of SafeWork Australia because it's not easy from a governmental perspective to take a lead and take risks and actually do things differently. And I think they have in this case done just that. And it's worked. It's well and truly worked. I have plenty of evidence that the materials that have been produced have been reused. They've been reused in academia. They've been reused in industry. And I think they're going to continue to be accessed throughout the coming year or years. It was really important the way that world's best practice was addressed in this series, not just relying on homegrown knowledge and experience. So at the end of the month, you really felt as though you had drawn on the best of evidence that was available around the world to improve health and safety in our own workplaces. A small but dedicated SafeWork Australia team planned and created the first VSS, operating with a modest budget and learning important lessons along the way. Despite doing things which had never been attempted before by our agency such as live interactive panel discussions, the risks were managed and they were managed well. The number of viewers was 100 times what we could have expected from a traditional conference and eight times our original forecast. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Many people commented on the value of the interactive sessions and their high quality. Digital platforms delivering content to suit diverse audiences, which they can view when it suits them, will be an important government toolkit for communication. For SafeWork Australia, our virtual seminar series was such a success in 2014 that we're going to be using this approach again during both 2015 Safety Month and on key dates during the year. We will be using this platform to more effectively communicate our data and our research so that everyone can have access to these insights and make safety everyone's business.