The Federal Department of Home Affairs and a healthcare provider have been charged with WHS breaches relating to the suicide of a detainee at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney. They could be fined a total of up to $6 million if found guilty.
An employer has successfully defended a claim that it negligently provided a dangerously unsuitable ladder to workers, with a court finding it did not leave the ladder in the unsecured position alleged by a worker and a regulator.
In convicting and fining an employer $245,000, after a worker's legs were amputated in an unfit-for-purpose machine, a judge has stressed that post-incident acts of contrition are far inferior to proactively avoiding injuries in the first place.
A second PCBU has been convicted over a worker's two-metre fall, and fined more heavily than the first PCBU, after its failure to consult and coordinate with other parties on a task it knew to be dangerous resulted in the incident.
A mobile crane hire company has been charged with two category-2 WHS breaches, which allegedly occurred after a union unlawfully attempted to shut down the relevant workplace for safety reasons.
Preventing workplace s-xual harassment hinges on WHS frameworks that shift "the obligation from victims reporting harassment to employers managing risk" - a PCBU duty receiving increasing attention from safety regulators, the review of harassment in the South Australian Parliament has shown.
Violence continues into the workplace for many workers experiencing domestic violence and it is time to challenge the "myth" that this is not a workplace issue, according to Diversity Council Australia and violence against women prevention organisation Our Watch.
In a move that should influence the workplace management of psychological injuries, a regulator has amended its expectations of insurers to require an empathetic response to psychological injury claims and the identification of any safety risks posed by recovery-at-work arrangements.
Employers should apply the hierarchy of controls to psychosocial hazards and seek to eliminate the risk of work stress "through job design and safe systems of work", according to a new WorkSafe Victoria guide to preventing and managing work-related stress.
