A company director charged over a fatal fall has been sentenced to the longest term of imprisonment ever imposed for a work health and safety offence in Australia, while his Western Australian company has received a State record high fine of $605,000.
An employer with a "useless" safe work method statement has been fined for five workplace safety breaches, after a young worker was killed by an unsecured concrete panel.
A worker who was observed driving a forklift dangerously in a shared car park, and then refused to cooperate with safety inspectors, has been convicted and fined for safety breaches. Meanwhile, regulators have issued warnings after a storage-racking fatality and on the increasing number of serious incidents on non-isolated machinery.
An appeals court has rejected an employer's claim that it wasn't negligent in failing to instruct workers on a safe system of work or obvious risks because it would have been patronising to do so, given the workers' high level of experience.
The Department of Defence has been fined $350,000 for failing to implement simple safety measures that could have prevented a worker's leg amputation, while a company has been fined $150,000 after a work vehicle with incorrect load-capacity signage crashed.
A court has examined the scope of a principal contractor's safety duties to the employees of subcontractors, in rejecting an injured worker's claim that the principal should have prevented his employer from requiring him to work in cramped spaces.
