Browsing: Authority/inspectorate (VIC) | Page 53

Employers are being urged to consider replacing quad bikes with safer vehicles for Farm Safety Week, while a regulator has outlined injury-prevention strategies that could apply to all industries. Meanwhile, a new report shows Australia's work-related fatality toll for the first quarter of 2017 was 36 per cent higher than the same period last year.

In the first WHS penalty handed down in the South Australian Employment Tribunal, an employer has been fined after a worker was struck by a forklift. Meanwhile, three Victorian employers have been fined a total of $110,000 after a spate of incidents, including one where a worker was struck by an object that fell 13 storeys.

• Man hindered WorkSafe after second man seen on fire;
  
• New WHS Code coming to ACT, safety videos released; and
  
• Electrocutions add to work-related fatality toll.

• NSW and Qld target treatment times and common law claims; and
  
• Ineffective isolation injures worker, glass injures child.

A series of workplace fatalities and a sudden spike in the national death toll have highlighted the importance of effective vehicle maintenance, traffic management, remote-work controls and other safety strategies, according to regulators and a coroner.

Employers are entitled to gather new medical evidence to clarify how an injured worker's condition has changed with time, an appeals court has ruled in a cancer case spanning a decade.

A second PCBU has been fined after a young excavator operator's skull was pierced by a flying steel bar because his supervisor neglected to instruct him to close the vehicle's window.

• Employers fined for SWMS and secure-storage breaches;
  
• Proposed FIFO safety code extending to all industries; and
  
• SAET to deal with WHS prosecutions soon.

New OHS and equipment Regulations have commenced in Victoria, while other reforms and legislative instruments are expected to take effect within the next two weeks and later this year.

• Anti-violence initiatives launched in Vic and WA;
  
• Harmonisation "architect" appointed OSH Commission chair;
  
• Average premium rate and "apprentice discount" announced in Qld; and
  
• SafeWork NSW responds to LPG explosion with blitz.