ACT government prepared to 'go it alone' in banning engineered stone if national agreement isn't reached

It's not really reasonable to expect workers to be able to make this decision for themselves every time, unfortunately. If there aren't laws mandating provision of PPE by the employer and use by employees, people will skip it because "oh I usually wear it" or "I'll just man my way through it" or whatever. Employers may encourage this to save time or money. The only way to ensure everyone gets adequate protection is to mandate it.

Sometimes people have to be protected from themselves. If not for purely altruistic reasons don't do it for you then at least to prevent a generation of skilled workers to turn into a drain on society later just because their boss unnecessarily encouraged them to use unsafe materials for a quick buck.

doesn’t that mean that they are harmful to themselves if they don’t wear the PPE or the employer is harming them if the PPE is not provided and wearing it is not enforced?

It does, and in an ideal world you wouldn't need such regulations because people would realise the dangers and act appropriately. The ACT gov recently changed their WHS rules around high silica content material to explicitly require wet cutting for engineered stone and dust management/PPE for stuff like concrete, that should help but actually enforcing it is difficult.

I can see why they'd prefer an outright ban looking at silicosis as the rising public health issue that it's becoming. You know people are going to be giving themselves a disease that'll show up in ~10 years and require a lung transplant but it's difficult to convince people/companies to do everything required to avoid that disease and hard to enforce correct procedures - a blanket ban on the material that's causing most of the problems is much easier to enforce.

Think of it like subsidised medication.

If your medication costs $10 a month, and easily accessible at any pharmacy due to being subsidised and controlled by government regulation, it's unlikely the average person will skip medication, prescribed by a doctor, intended to improve your health and wellbeing. There is a low barrier to compliance.

Now if that medication isn't subsidised, and costs you $80 a month, or only available at very few pharmacies, there is now a high barrier to compliance. It's more likely the average person will skip a month's medication here and there simply because of the cost of complying. People have to exercise high levels of personal responsibility and clear-headed, logical decision making, weighing a tangible immediate loss ($80) that may put other essentials at risk (food, housing, etc) vs an intangible possibility of future health deterioration. Individual health suffers, and national overall health and wellbeing decrease as well.

A mandatory law or regulation banning, or restricting access to a good, (like engineered stone) creates a low barrier of compliance to the individuals exposed to the potential health risk. Customers are not allowed to demand they use the product. The product is not easily available as a cheaper alternative to other products. A boss can't demand an employee use it. The question and decision making over its use is taken away from the individual.

Whereas if the produ t is legal or unregulated, and you're a tradie, and a customer demand its use, or it's significantly cheaper to purchase, and/ or highly available in the supply chain, there's a high barrier to compliance, since all that decision making is on the individual tradie to resist a tangible, immediate and easily accessed financial benefit, over the intangible potentiality of severe health issues 10-20+ years into the future.

Humans are generally not good at weighing tangible immediate vs intangible future issues against each other, especially when subject to immediate stress or strain from financial, housing, medical, customer service, boss/company expectations etc.