The jailing of an operations manager, the passage of right-to-disconnect laws and significant WHS and workers' compensation amendments were among the highlights of the first quarter of 2024. This major report covers all jurisdictions and looks at everything you need to know from the start of the year.
Unclear wording, hard to navigate digital systems and time-consuming processes are preventing many workers from reporting safety concerns, near misses and incidents, a landmark Australian study has found.
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.