Browsing: Workplace safety legislation, regulations, standards and codes | Page 6

• Workplace harassment bystanders advised to take four steps; and
  
• WHS exemption applied to WA mines, department changes name.

• Senators seek to fast-track work safety provisions;
  
• SWA launches interactive WHS tools for two industries; and
  
• New review aims to reduce injury premiums in NSW.

The Commonwealth has become the latest WHS jurisdiction to explicitly ban the uncontrolled processing of engineered stone products, under one of a range of changes made by a new legislative instrument.

Australia has taken a big leap towards banning engineered stone products, with the country's WHS ministers agreeing to release a "powerful and compelling" Safe Work Australia report that recommends the ban, and warns there is no evidence that alternative measures can curb the alarming rate of silicosis in engineered stone workers.

• Weak exclusion-zone controls increased fumes risk; and
  
• WHS exemption applied and Code remade in WA.

• WHS prosecutions promised, other initiatives having little impact;
  
• Fatigue and remote-work alerts issued after fatalities, violence; and
  
• WHS consultation and s-x work Codes amended and made in ACT.

• Industrial manslaughter timetable announced in NSW; and
  
• WHS activities to "beef up" under new NSW arrangements.

Two major pieces of legislation have passed the NSW and Western Australian Parliaments: a WHS Bill nearly tripling fines and doubling jail terms for category-1 breaches, and a complete workers' compensation rewrite that has been a decade in the making.

• Platform fined for 1,000 training breaches as WHS Bill progresses; and
  
• PCBU fined $440k over skier's death, safety report ignored.

Special protections for first responders with post-traumatic stress disorder are among the "urgent worker safety measures", in the Federal Government's Closing Loopholes Bill, which two crossbench senators are attempting to fast-track through four separate pieces of legislation.