A cost-saving measure and a supervisor's complacency contributed to a worker dying in a six-metre fall, while the lack of regulatory action in such cases could be encouraging poor safety cultures, a coronial inquest has found.
In this major report, OHS Alert examines all the important work safety and workers' comp developments from the second quarter of 2018, including unprecedented regulatory action against a safety officer and eight other parties after a fatality, the High Court agreeing to determine the reach of the WHS Act, and numerous legislative changes.
Workers can suffer from hypothermia affecting their physical and mental coordination in temperatures as high as 15 degrees, and are particularly susceptible to work-ending slips, trips and falls in winter, regulators have warned.
A company that controlled a work site where three fatalities occurred within six weeks has successfully challenged the admissibility of components of an "expert's" report in a coronial inquest into the deaths.
In an ongoing fatality-related WHS prosecution, a superior court has found that the prosecutor's defective charges aren't invalid because other documents reveal the true nature of the alleged offence. It has also ordered the prosecutor to provide a "confidential" report to the defendant, in a ruling on legal privilege.
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