Browsing: Authority/inspectorate (QLD) | Page 5

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.

An organisation's WHS risk manager breached safety laws by failing - over a period of more than three years - to finalise a risk assessment for an infectious disease, a prosecutor has revealed.

• Employers alerted on risk-eliminating controls after fatality; and
  
• Employer failing to ensure guarding was as difficult as possible to bypass charged.

A range of WHS Codes and amendments, covering psychosocial hazards and other issues, have taken effect in two jurisdictions, while certain WHS exemptions have been reapplied in one of them, and duty holders in a third jurisdiction have been warned that driver-distraction cameras have been "switched on".

A teacher threatened with violence on multiple occasions has won an injury compensation dispute, with a commission stressing, in a scathing judgment, that her claims should never have been contested by authorities.

• Dog-attack death triggers call for high-level WHS controls; and
  
• Transitional arrangements for HSRs expiring under WA's WHS Act.

A worker has lost her appeal for compensation for a major depressive disorder, with a commission questioning her honesty and the evidence of her witnesses, including a relative who was not forthcoming about her connection to the worker.

• Workplace justice warning issued for WHS Code commencement;
  
• New permanent impairment guide made under Comcare scheme; and
  
• SWMS guidance note issued in ACT.

The assistance a manager provided to a worker has helped quash the worker's claim that she was unreasonably performance managed - and injured - over issues stemming from her employer's inadequate resources.

Employers in the highly hazardous mining sector could be compelled to adopt better leading indicators of safety performance, subjected to more unannounced regulatory inspections, and targeted by new laws aimed at protecting workers who raise safety concerns, under recommendations from a parliamentary inquiry.