A major employer with previous fatality-related convictions has been fined $160,000 for failing to take the non-burdensome steps required to prevent serious crush injuries. Meanwhile, Queensland has issued a fatality alert, and opened its WHS and return-to-work awards.
A WHS regulator's investigative function will receive a $390,000 boost, after South Australia Police (SAPOL) was handed a record-equalling fine over the death of a worker in a freezer at a training facility.
A "world-first" study conducted for the National Transport Commission, which will inform new safety laws, has confirmed the ability of alertness monitoring technology to identify fatigue-related impairment in truck drivers.
In an important and much anticipated case, an appeals court has found a worker can't "combine" his impairments from a back injury and from being over-prescribed opioid medication to increase his lump sum payment.
> Anti-bullying laws locked in for WA's IR overhaul; > New regulations tackle emerging electrocution risk in Qld; and > Gas safety and work health laws pass in Qld.
A company director failed to exercise due diligence by failing to, among other things, ensure his company had a system to alert him of near misses, a court has found in convicting him and the company for WHS breaches.
A company secretary has been fined for the most serious OHS offence of reckless endangerment for forklift breaches, in one of several new cases showing regulators are willing to prosecute unsafe entities even where injuries haven't occurred.
In this comprehensive report, OHS Alert reviews all the major WHS and workers' comp developments from the first quarter of 2019, including the unprecedented jailing of company directors, the outcomes of the national WHS review, and significant legislative changes in every jurisdiction.
