Browsing: Workplace safety legislation, regulations, standards and codes | Page 6

Two major pieces of legislation have passed the NSW and Western Australian Parliaments: a WHS Bill nearly tripling fines and doubling jail terms for category-1 breaches, and a complete workers' compensation rewrite that has been a decade in the making.

• Platform fined for 1,000 training breaches as WHS Bill progresses; and
  
• PCBU fined $440k over skier's death, safety report ignored.

Special protections for first responders with post-traumatic stress disorder are among the "urgent worker safety measures", in the Federal Government's Closing Loopholes Bill, which two crossbench senators are attempting to fast-track through four separate pieces of legislation.

PCBUs could be handed WHS fines of up to $100,000 in civil penalty cases launched by affected parties like workers, deceased workers' families and unions, under proposed reforms that have reached the consultation phase in South Australia.

• One regulator charges another with recklessness after suicide;
  
• Host fined $350k over fatal impalement of labour-hire worker; and
  
• New national dangerous goods Code taking effect in Vic.

• New strategies needed for WHS-style anti-harassment duties; and
  
• Information-gathering powers added to SWA Act.

• WHS changes commence in Commonwealth jurisdiction;
  
• Two companies fined over labour-hire safety incident; and
  
• Violence reports increasing in mining workplaces.

• New work safety laws and codes to follow major explosion;
  
• Two new WHS Codes of Practice made in ACT; and
  
• Roll-away alert quickly followed by serious roll-away incident.

The NSW Government has introduced WHS amendments tripling the maximum penalties for category-1 breaches, clarifying that officers can be prosecuted for recklessness, introducing "prohibited asbestos notices" with hefty non-compliance fines, and giving police certain enforcement powers under WHS laws.

• Climate change powers proposed for WHS committees; and
  
• WHS inspectors to wear cameras in SA.