This major user-friendly report looks back at all the major and most interesting workplace safety and compensation developments from the start of the calendar year, including the ministerial vote on industrial manslaughter, multiple manslaughter charges, the widespread introduction of new psychosocial risk regulations, and a major WHS case involving the deaths of overseas students.
A government employer has failed in its latest challenge against a finding that it is liable for a worker's psychological injury caused by a colleague's racist taunts, this time arguing the courts ignored an "admission" of a pre-existing mental illness diagnosis.
A PCBU that unsuccessfully battled against its "prolix" WHS charges been fined $425,000, in relation to an incident where a confined-space worker fell into perlite powder and died from suffocation.
Six of Australia's eight harmonised jurisdictions have now implemented regulations explicitly requiring PCBUs to tackle psychosocial risks through a risk management process, with the latest, the Northern Territory, choosing to mirror the national model clauses instead of opting for variations adopted by two jurisdictions.
An equipment hire company and its director have been handed record-shattering WHS fines totalling more than $1 million, after a worker was killed inside the "strike radius" of mobile plant. Meanwhile, a regulator has confirmed it is still prosecuting a business and an officer over another fatality, despite the withdrawal of an industrial manslaughter charge.
A business owner who allegedly recklessly disregarded safety complaints at a work site could be jailed for decades, after being charged with the industrial manslaughter of a worker in a fall. Meanwhile, a regulator has released a workplace fatality toll including deaths from disease and suicide.