A major employer that has received two record-high workplace health and safety penalties, and could be fined millions of dollars over two road deaths, has been charged with more WHS contraventions, this time in relation to an ACT incident.
An injury-causing crane was in such poor condition that a critical component fell off it while it was being examined under a WHS investigation, a magistrate has noted in handing the owner a pre-discount penalty of $400,000.
From next week, employers in Canberra will have a duty to report "actual or suspected" incidents of workplace s-xual assault to a WHS regulator, under new laws that also ban insurance against WHS penalties.
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.
A tribunal has been tasked with determining whether recent legislative amendments apply to a worker with cancer and benefit or hinder his disease claim, in a test case that is expected to have a "persuasive effect" on the approach to presumptive workers' comp provisions in all Australian jurisdictions.
A "policy maze" inhibited the staff of a school from properly categorising and risk assessing a regular off-site activity, and led to the death of a boy in a game, a coronial inquest has found.