Enforcement
On 14 and 15 July 2026 the Industrial Court of NSW fined three companies a combined $270,000, each over one of the hazards SafeWork NSW had named a 2026-27 enforcement priority a fortnight earlier. The regulator’s line each time was that the controls are well known, and it lands as the regulator says it has made its codes of practice enforceable. What it signals for duty holders nationally.
New this week
Enforcement
Between May and July 2026 the Work Health and Safety Prosecutor secured a run of Queensland convictions, the largest $310,000 over a coal mine worker's death. The fines, charted, and the national risk pattern behind them.
Hazards + exposures
Australia's exposure standards become health-based limits on 1 December 2026, but for the nine chemicals that drew the hardest fight WHS ministers reached no majority, so the current, non-health-based numbers carry over.
Safety alert
WorkSafe Queensland's 7 July alert covers tractor-mounted post drivers after a fatal mast collapse: the four ways the connection fails, the design rule that no single component should hold the mast, and the pre-start checks that find the failure first.
Law + guidance
Part 5 of the model WHS Act gives worker participation machinery: elected reps with a five-day paid training entitlement, an eight-day notice with a real penalty behind it, the cease-work direction, and a committee due two months after five workers ask.
Law + guidance
Regulation 39(3) measures safety communication by what arrived, not what was sent: the legal hook for multilingual workforces, varied literacy and young workers, and the national guidance on making the message land.
Hazards + exposures
Vehicle incidents are the largest single cause of worker deaths, 79 in 2024, and under 5 per cent of serious claims. The section 8 definition, the fatigue code's driving passages, and the truck's second law.
Hazards + exposures
The night cleaner, the community nurse and the worker at home are all isolated in law. The regulation 48 duty, the code's assessment factors, and the sentence that inverts working from home.
Hazards + exposures
The dermal route in the chemicals code, the Sk notation, wet work's two-hour rule, substitution before gloves, and the chemicals where a weekly skin inspection is regulation, not advice.
Hazards + exposures
Regulation 215 makes a forklift-pedestrian collision the plant controller's legal problem before it happens, and the warehouse guide's first fix is architectural: separation. The loading-dock rules, the traffic management plan, and the licence sighted in writing.
Hazards + exposures
32,000 serious claims a year, 8.6 median weeks off, most from no height at all. Regulation 40's floor and lighting duties, the code's inspection rule, and why a wet-floor sign is the second-weakest control on the list.
Law + guidance
Regulation 42 asks for equipment, facilities and an "adequate number" of trained first aiders, and leaves adequate to a four-factor assessment. The kit rules, the annual CPR refresher, and the 200-worker first aid room line.
Hazards + exposures
Plant covers the forklift and the power tool alike, and regulation 208 fixes the order of guards: permanently fixed, interlocked, tool-removable, presence-sensing. The isolation rules, the roll-away drill, and the plant that must be registered before it runs.
Hazards + exposures
The hierarchy of controls is regulation, not advice. The provide, select, maintain, train and ensure-use duties PPE triggers, the fit and compatibility rules, and the section of the Act that says the worker never pays for any of it.
Law + guidance
Regulation 43 asks for one plan covering fire, chemical release, natural disaster, bomb threats and violence, with testing and training written into the plan itself. The drill benchmark, and who coordinates the plan in a shared building.
Hazards + exposures
Regulation 78 has no height threshold, and it fixes the control order: ground, fall prevention, work positioning, fall arrest. The ladder rules, the rescue duty a harness creates, and falls' second place in the fatality table.
Hazards + exposures
The exposure standard is regulation, not guidance. The dose clock that runs out in 7.2 seconds at 121 dB(A), the buy-quiet duties on designers, and the audiometric testing duty that follows hearing PPE.
Hazards + exposures
No heat code, no magic number: the duty assembles from section 19, regulation 40, the work environment code and the heat guide. Heatwave triggers, indoor heat, and who can lawfully stop hot work.
Law + guidance
Section 19's four-word duty, regulation 39's suitability test, the white card at construction's door and the 29 high risk work licence classes. Plus the evidence a PCBU must sight before the work starts, and the one state whose licence table does not match the model's.
Hazards + exposures
Prolonged sitting at a workstation is the manual tasks code's own example of a hazardous posture. The workstation and seating rules, the 30-minute and 7-hour sedentary thresholds, and why the rare office claim runs 10 weeks on the medians.
Law + guidance
A safety management system is a loop, not a binder, and the law already names its working parts: officers must verify, workers must be consulted, and a culture that tolerated a breach can help prove a company's fault.
Law + guidance
The 18 kinds of high-risk construction work that demand a written safe work method statement before work starts, and the threshold that creates a principal contractor and a site-wide plan.
Law + guidance
88.9 per cent of injured workers got back to work in 2025, down from 91.6 in 2021. With a return-to-work plan the rate was 94.0 per cent; without one, 81.7. The duties behind the plan.
Hazards + exposures
The chemical-storage duties climb a quantity ladder: labels, SDS and a register at any amount, placards at 50 litres for the most flammable liquids, and a manifest plus an emergency plan lodged with the fire brigade at ten times that.
Hazards + exposures
Energised electrical work is prohibited outside four narrow exceptions, and convenience is not one of them. The isolation sequence, the eight-step lock-out process, and why a danger tag on its own isolates nothing.
Hazards + exposures
The construction code builds the exits; the emergency plan gets people to them. Who coordinates the plan in a shared building, the 12-month drill benchmark, and the staggered NCC 2025 adoption dates.
Hazards + exposures
No more than three successive nights, 12 hours between shifts, a break every five hours: the September 2025 model fatigue code names the roster patterns that create risk, and says an enterprise agreement cannot sign the duty away.
Law + guidance
The WHS worker definition never asked how someone is engaged. Who owes what to gig and labour-hire workers, and the workers' compensation gap the October 2025 national policy approach is trying to close.
Law + guidance
Comcare's national audit tool puts 79 of its 108 criteria under implementation: whether the system is used, not whether it is written down. Where gap analysis fits, and the officer duty that makes verifying it a legal obligation.
Hazards + exposures
The December review calls the world-first ban a success, then recommends six fixes: a national test for what counts as banned stone, verified labelling for "silica-free" replacements, and a repair to the legacy benchtop reinstallation rule.
Law + guidance
Queensland 2017 to Tasmania 2024, maxima from $10 million to $20 million and from 20 years to life, and a model penalty re-indexed to $21.274 million days ago. The table, cited row by row to each regulator.
Hazards + exposures
Median cost $67,400 and 35.7 weeks off work per claim, bullying and harassment the single biggest driver, and the 14 hazards plus the six-point officer checklist the 2022 code expects you to have worked through.
The data desk
Data + statistics
The accounting series behind the most-quoted number in Australian safety stopped at 2012-13. The live figures, and the 22 per cent of claims that drive 75 per cent of the payments.
Data + statistics
The top injury mechanism in every major occupation group, and the four risk factors the manual tasks code actually names. A weight limit is not one of them.
Law + guidance
Two million workers, one serious claim in five nationally, and a July 2025 code that says client care never outranks worker safety. What providers now have to show.
Law + guidance
The December 2025 incident notification amendment reaches into psychosocial territory for the first time. No jurisdiction has adopted it yet, which makes now the cheap moment to find out whether your reporting system could answer it. Plus a live example of a reporting loop that actually loops: a regulator that turns a no-injury near miss into published advice within a fortnight.
The reference shelf
One model law, nine implementations, one holdout state. PCBUs, officers and workers; what a code of practice legally is; which statute and regulator covers each jurisdiction; and the Best Practice Review about to land on ministers' desks. The page the rest of this masthead links back to.
About this relaunch. The Duty Holder is the new masthead on the long-running australianworkplacesafety.com.au domain. We assessed all 114 articles published here since 2020: the strongest topics have been rebuilt from primary sources with every claim cited, more rebuilds are in progress, and old URLs redirect to the nearest current page. The bar for everything new is on how this site works.
Seen a code change, a consultation, or an enforcement outcome we have not covered? Send a tip: identity optional, a link we can verify is worth more than a name. Corrections are checked against the cited source and logged either way.
