A national system of workplace safety laws will be implemented in Australia after state and territory governments recently agreed to harmonise their laws.

Australian Industry Group chief executive, Heather Ridout, is pleased with the development and believes that safety is too important an issue to have the rules rewritten in every state, which she believes would make compliance a costly "nightmare".

"The decision by state and federal governments to accept the majority of the recommendations of the Review Panel appointed to report on the National OHS model laws finally paves the way for a genuinely national OHS system," she said.

"While business will continue to have difficulties with some of the recommendations we need to move forward on this and the sooner we see the draft legislation to create a national OHS system the better."

Two recommendations which will be supported by industry include provisions which qualify employer duty, ensuring that they will be required to do what is "reasonably practicable" to provide a safe workplace and the application of criminal law so that someone accused of an OHS breach will be innocent until proven guilty.

The ACTU, however, believe that a national OHS system will undermine standards and put workers at risk.

The union believes that the new laws must include stronger protections and rights for workers in several areas, including a clear onus on employers to provide a safe workplace, for the burden of proof in any prosecution to lie with the employer and for unions to be able to initiate prosecutions.

"As the proposals stand, thousands of workers in the states and territories are at risk of losing important health and safety prosecutions and that's just not good enough," said ACTU president, Sharan Burrow.