A second duty holder has been fined over the death of an 80-year-old workplace visitor in a disused stairwell that posed an obvious risk of falling or entrapment, while a business has been fined over a fatality that followed its failure to identify the qualifications and competencies required for high-risk tasks.
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.
In the latest of a recent series of WHS prosecutions involving failures affecting vulnerable people like children, a teacher based in another country has been sentenced over the deaths of two teenage students in Australia.
A PCBU has lost its last-resort bid to block its WHS prosecution over the drowning deaths of a father and son, with a superior court describing its latest jurisdictional challenge as an "unacceptable fragmentation of the criminal proceeding".
A crane operator who failed to maintain a line of sight with a pedestrian colleague has been fined over the man's death. A PCBU and a manager have been charged with the industrial manslaughter of the colleague.