Another employer has been fined for workplace health and safety breaches affecting children, with its failures including not maintaining a safe supervision ratio of employees to customers.
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.
An employer has pleaded guilty to 16 safety breaches and been hit with $545,000 in fines, including over fire safety failures that led to staff using a flammable liquid and cardboard instead of a fire extinguisher to put out a fire on a machine and on two workers.
A controversial Bill cutting injured workers' benefits in Victoria has passed Parliament under a deal that will freeze employer premiums for at least a year.
A company director who bullied a subcontractor for four years, and abused him for raising safety concerns to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, has been convicted of workplace health and safety contraventions.
The fine imposed on an employer that failed to fully implement a mandatory safety measure, because it ran out of the required materials, has been increased more than five-fold on appeal, with a judge stressing penalties must be significant enough to dissuade others from "cutting corners".
Employers must apply the hierarchy of controls to the hazards associated with height work, which starts with not performing any such work where reasonably practicable, a regulator has advised in launching a major blitz.