Commonwealth to ban synthetic cannabis detected in workers; WorkSafe Victoria to target employers without workers' comp cover; and Western Australian employers fined for electricity and notice breaches.
In this article, OHS Alert reports on high-risk licences, fatality reports, safety alerts, contractor guidelines that will apply from 1 July, and other OHS news from across the country.
Employers should, from January 2012, urge contractors to conduct risk assessments for every task, even if they are not obliged under harmonised work health and safety laws to do so, OHS lawyer Jacqui Hawkins told attendees at a recent webinar.
A crane driver left tetraplegic after falling 1.5 metres to the ground has failed to prove his accident, which he cannot remember and no one saw, was caused by the negligence of any of the four companies operating at a Western Australian Goldfields site.
In a case that highlights the risk of giving inappropriate instructions to subcontractors, a NSW employer that directed a non-employee to work in a "no go zone" has been fined $180,000, after he was killed by a moving vehicle.
A NSW principal contractor that failed to secure a site has been fined $250,000, following a horror incident in which a man walking his dog fell headfirst into a two-metre-deep pier hole and died of asphyxiation.
A Victorian employer that was fined $100,000 over a contractor's death has failed to convince the Court of Appeal it had delegated, and therefore discharged, its safety obligations.
