Safety Bulletin - September 2023
Australia – Updates to model WHS offences and penalties released
Safe Work Australia has released amendments to the model WHS laws to clarify that an officer can be convicted of a Category 1 offence (gross negligence or reckless conduct), and to add provisions for attribution and aggregation of conduct for body corporate PCBUs. The changes also enable jurisdictions to create or retain their existing industrial manslaughter provisions, instead of including those provisions in the model law, and recommends maximum penalties for the offence. Additional changes overhaul penalties through increased monetary penalties, creating a mechanism to annually index penalty amounts in line with the Consumer Price Index, and using penalty tiers. Each jurisdiction is yet to adopt the amendments into their state or territory legislation.
More Read more from Safe Work Australia here.
South Australia – Registration scheme for engineers proposed
The South Australian Government is proposing a registration scheme for engineers working in building and construction sector to ensure it is well regulated, and is inviting industry and community feedback. The proposed scheme is planned to expand to other areas of engineering in the future.
Read more from Consumer and Business Services here.
Australia – Broadening of incident notification framework proposed
Safe Work Australia has published a consultation paper for improving the framework for notifying WHS incidents to regulators, and is seeking public feedback. Proposed changes to the framework would capture psychological injuries and illnesses, track psychosocial hazards, and introduce periodic reporting for incidents where immediate reporting is not needed. The types of harm under discussion include violence, sexual assault, suicide, bullying, harassment, exposure to trauma, exposure to substances that cause long latency diseases, head injuries, bone fractures and crush injuries.