Officer due diligence is one of the more misunderstood parts of Australian WHS law, which is impressive given safety legislation already contains enough plain English avoidance to power a small Canberra department. At its core, due diligence means an officer must take reasonable, active and informed steps to ensure the organisation complies with its health and safety duties. It is not the same as doing every safety task personally, and it is not satisfied by hiring a safety m

A worker is dead, a company has been fined $472,500, and another Australian prosecution has landed squarely on the same recurring issue seen across heavy industry for decades, hazardous plant interacting with inadequate systems of work. This time it involved a green waste grinder in New South Wales. The underlying failures were neither novel nor technically complex. That is what makes these incidents so frustrating from a safety perspective. According to SafeWork NSW, Northwe

A Victorian residential builder has been convicted and fined after WorkSafe found contractors working more than three metres above ground level without fall protection. Desbo Industries Pty Ltd was sentenced in the Geelong Magistrates’ Court on 05 Mar 26 after pleading guilty to failing to ensure a workplace under its management and control was safe and without risks to health. The company was fined $40,000 and ordered to pay $4,422 in costs. The facts are not complex, which

Australia-wide, national data and regulator trends show prosecutions and penalties trending upwards, with a significant body of new data available for analysis. Safe Work Australia’s national prosecutions dashboard captures prosecutions under WHS laws recorded since 01 Jan 20, and indicates 317 prosecutions in 2024 alone, with total penalties of about $164 million issued across 1,373 matters between 2020 and 2024. Construction, manufacturing and transport, postal and wareho