Australia's biggest industry finally has its own safety code, and it names aged care on nearly every page

The scale of the problem the code was written for

Safe Work Australia's CEO put the sector's record plainly in the code's foreword: the industry has the highest number of work-related injuries in Australia and a compensation claim rate more than twice the national average, with musculoskeletal injury, slips, trips and falls, and mental stress carrying large shares. The workforce is predominantly female, older than the national average, and includes a high proportion of workers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds; nationally, workers aged 55 to 64 and 65 plus record the highest serious-claim frequency rates of any age group, so the sector's age profile compounds its exposure.

The sentence that changes arguments in aged care

The code confronts the sector's oldest cultural problem head on: the belief, which the foreword says many workers report, that injury is simply part of the job and that the client always comes first. The code's position is that patient or client care, support and preferences do not take priority over worker safety, and that worker safety is good for patients too. In a dementia ward that translates concretely: the violence risk cannot be eliminated, so it must be minimised, with staffing models, de-escalation training and incident debriefs, rather than absorbed by staff as unavoidable.

What it asks of providers, concretely

• People handling. Any activity where a person is physically moved, supported or restrained is people handling, and the code's hard line is that no worker should lift or restrain a person, other than a small infant, alone. That standard implies equipment that works and rosters that allow two-person assists, which is why the code's own illustrative example pairs broken hoists and understaffing as one failure, fixed with a maintenance budget, roster review and a health and safety committee.
• Fatigue is a hazard, not a rostering by-product. The code's worked example is a nurse on backward-rotating shifts working extreme monthly hours until a medication error forces a review; the fix is a documented safe-hours policy with forward rotation, capped night shifts, minimum days off and escalation cover for unfilled shifts.
• The workplace includes the client's home. The code applies to in-home care, which pulls lone-worker planning, home hazard assessment and communication procedures inside the WHS system rather than leaving them to individual judgement.
• Compliance with care regulation is not WHS compliance. The code states that meeting the NDIS Code of Conduct or the Aged Care Quality and Safety Standards does not of itself discharge WHS duties, and vice versa. Providers juggling both regimes need both evidenced.

Where this connects to the rest of the national picture

The sector sits at the intersection of the two fastest-moving files on this masthead. Its manual handling load is the largest single piece of the national body stressing problem, with community and personal service workers claiming at more than twice the all-industry frequency. And its exposure to violence, aggression and emotional load makes it a primary audience for the psychosocial hazards code, whose officer due diligence checklist the healthcare code repeats almost word for word. Safe Work Australia has flagged an online interactive version of the healthcare code with additional case studies for 2026; when it appears we will cover what it adds.