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This major OHS Alert report reviews all the need-to-know workplace health and safety and workers' comp developments from the past few months, including the passage of game-changing Respect@Work laws, numerous WHS amendments, COVID rulings, a state-first workplace manslaughter charge, and a record-smashing reckless conduct fine.

• Everyday object causes numerous workplace fires; and
  
• Unused seatbelt linked to one of three recent work deaths.

An employer that obtains a special "benefit" from an employee's otherwise routine journey from home to work isn't necessarily liable if the employee is injured in an accident along the way, a tribunal has found.

A tribunal president has warned that "intolerable" wait times for specialist medical appointments are having a major adverse impact on workers' compensation disputes and systems, and referred the matter to a government minister.

A PCBU has been fined $134,000, and it two directors $33,000 each, for failing to "comply with their basic obligations", after a young worker was pinned under 1.2 tonnes of steel sheets when parts of a structure collapsed.

A PCBU failed to take straightforward measures that would have protected a worker from being attacked by a client known to be violent, a tribunal has found in convicting the duty holder.

• Fatigue "misalignment" events ignored prior to crash-fire death;
  
• WHS visits tumble in SA in COVID era;
  
• Inconsistent understanding of silica risks identified in ACT; and
  
• SIRA to target overservicing in the workers' comp system.

A worker's noise-induced hearing loss resulted from duties requiring her to regularly leave her laboratory and walk past noisy equipment, a tribunal has found.

• WHS dust-ban Bill with $1.5m fines progresses in SA; and
  
• Endometriosis-in-the-workplace webinar coming up.

Proposed industrial manslaughter provisions released for feedback in South Australia will, according to unions, cover suicides attributable to workplace bullying and harassment, as with Victoria's version of the offence.