A major work health and safety Bill has passed in Queensland, with amendments aimed at facilitating a plan that could extend industrial manslaughter provisions to bystander deaths, and ensure multiple duty holders can be charged with manslaughter after a fatality.
A judge has highlighted the critical roles elected health and safety representatives play in achieving the objectives of WHS laws, and making it feasible for PCBUs to comply with their consultation duties, in fining a Qantas subsidiary for "shameful" WHS discrimination.
The powers of elected health and safety representatives and protections against safety discrimination in the offshore sector have been stepped up and aligned with those in WHS laws, in a Bill introduced some six years after a parliamentary inquiry warned the changes were needed to combat a "culture of fear and reprisal".
The attitudes of workplace health and safety representatives towards the "momentous" legislative changes creating new duties for psychosocial risks will be crucial to the successful implementation of the laws, a study has found.
A major employer's failure to consult workers on a controversial WHS mandate created a "paradigm of opposition" in the workforce and led to a large number of workers being unfairly dismissed, a commission has ruled in a 529-paragraph judgment.
A WHS regulator will enforce the utilisation of risk assessments for psychosocial hazards in psychologically dangerous workplaces, under one of 18 recommendations from a parliamentary inquiry into NSW's workers' compensation system.
Provisions for health and safety representatives and entry rights could be amended by a new Queensland WHS Bill, while a WHS blitz has found that every targeted business in one industry was breaching its health and safety obligations.