A dangerous machine's "confusing" control panel, combined with inadequate high- and low-order safety controls, contributed to the crush death of a worker that initiated a string of (ultimately unsuccessful) prosecutions, a coronial inquest has found.
A PCBU, with a "haphazard" approach towards its safety duty, has been handed a pre-discount fine of $600,000 after a precariously balanced 800kg excavator bucket fell from the back of a truck and fatally crushed a labourer.
The Federal Government has highlighted the link between low pay - along with the threat of "deactivation" - and poor safety outcomes in the gig sector, in announcing "world-leading" laws giving new powers to the Fair Work Commission.
An employer ignored its own alternative "rehabilitative" paths to termination for alcohol and drug breaches, which, if applied, would "very likely" have prevented a worker's death, a coronial inquiry has found.