Browsing: Jurisdiction (ACT) | Page 13

• Workplace COVID plans urged as restrictions ease in NSW;
  
• Commonwealth WHS Regulations amended for GHS 7; and
  
• Thirty-two WHS notices issued to ACT childcare centres.

A worker with serious strain and lifting injuries has been awarded $1.3 million in damages, with a court finding his employer, a major joint-venture company, could have prevented the risks through simple precautions, including one involving a $400 spend.

An employer that responded sluggishly to a series of improvement notices and then failed to preserve the scene of a serious incident, resulting in head-crush injuries, has been handed multiple workplace safety fines. Meanwhile, a WHS regulator has expressed disappointment at the results of a follow-up blitz.

• Vic retains remote-work rules, expands workers' comp pilot; and
  
• WHS regulator "alarmed" by need to issue 58 notices.

• Workplace forced by govt to close for COVID-19 breaches; and
  
• New WHS Minister and safety chief announced in ACT and Tas.

This article examines all the must-know workplace safety, workers' compensation and COVID-19 developments from July, August and September 2020, with highlights including a new WHS Code for the pandemic, the Dreamworld judgment, a record double-fatality fine and gross negligence cases.

• West Gate Bridge anniversary sends work safety message;
  
• PCBU failed to enforce exclusion zones; and
  
• Safety blitz moves to next Canberra suburb, issues 31 notices.

A company and its director have been handed maximum OHS penalties, totalling more than $466,000, after a truck with poorly maintained brakes crashed and killed its young driver, while a safety regulator has issued a string of notices in the latest phase of its Canberra blitz.

• Employers targeted in new COVID-19 testing regime in Vic; and
  
• National Safe Work Month kicks off tomorrow.

A worker has failed to convince a commission his acts of road rage and dangerous driving were "proportionate" to the unsafe situation he was forced to react to and didn't warrant his dismissal.