An employer's commitment to spending nearly $1 million on safety undertakings, including piloting a drone program to eliminate fall-from-height risks, is the "preferred enforcement option" over a worker's four-metre fall, a regulator has revealed.
A commission has agreed with an employer that the seriousness of unsafe conduct isn't assessed by reference to injury or damage but the risk created, but overturned its dismissal of a worker for a driving incident it mischaracterised as highly serious.
A PCBU's failure to risk assess how its work interacted with neighbouring properties, public access areas and obstructions, posed "extreme" harm to others, a court has found in convicting and fining it $300,000.
A dangerous machine's "confusing" control panel, combined with inadequate high- and low-order safety controls, contributed to the crush death of a worker that initiated a string of (ultimately unsuccessful) prosecutions, a coronial inquest has found.
All of Australia's eight harmonised WHS jurisdictions have now formally applied or committed to adopting provisions explicitly requiring PCBUs to manage psychosocial risks through a risk management process.
An electricity company has spent nearly $14 million on a safety overhaul, and committed a further $1 million to safety undertakings to avoid prosecution over an electric-shock incident that occurred just months before one of its workers died in similar circumstances.