The Hazard Was Already Known: What a $90,000 Asbestos Fine Says About Registers, Stickers and What Happens Next
- Safety Jon
- 19 hours ago
- 12 min read
Asbestos does not always emerge as some extraordinary discovery behind a wall during demolition. Sometimes nobody knows it is there, sometimes everybody has walked past an asbestos warning sticker so often that it has become part of the scenery, and sometimes the organisation already knows asbestos-containing material is present before somebody starts pulling the place apart.
All three situations create different management problems, but they come back to the same issue. Information about a hazard is only useful if it reaches the person making the decision that could disturb it.
SafeWork SA provided a particularly useful example on 17 Aug 26, reporting that Conroy's Smallgoods Pty Ltd had been convicted and fined $90,000 after workers were exposed to asbestos risks during clean-up and demolition of its former Brompton food-processing facility.
What makes the case important is not that asbestos was unexpectedly discovered.
The company knew asbestos-containing materials were present before the work was undertaken.
What happened at Conroy's
The offending occurred between Dec 21 and Feb 23 at Conroy's former facility on Seventh Street, Brompton. SafeWork SA reported that workers were engaged to undertake clean-up and demolition despite the company being aware that the site contained asbestos-containing materials.
When SafeWork SA identified the unauthorised work, an asbestos assessment was undertaken. Friable and non-friable asbestos had been disturbed during demolition, asbestos debris was found throughout the workplace and on an adjoining property, and the assessment concluded that significant levels of airborne asbestos fibres were likely to have been generated.
Workers had therefore potentially been exposed to something far more significant than an old sheet of fibro sitting undisturbed in the corner of a building. The work itself had changed the exposure pathway.
The failures continued beyond the physical disturbance of the material. Conroy's had undertaken asbestos removal work without the required asbestos removal licence, had not established appropriate asbestos removal work areas, and had not arranged airborne fibre monitoring or clearance inspections by an independent licensed asbestos assessor.
The company pleaded guilty to a Category 3 offence under section 33 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA). Deputy President Judge Crawley described the conduct as an "egregious breach" and recorded that the company was well aware asbestos was present.
A conviction was recorded and Conroy's was fined $90,000, together with SafeWork SA's costs of $2,310 and a victims of crime levy of $424.
The practical lesson is not particularly complicated. If you know asbestos is there, the next question is what that knowledge actually changes.
I went looking at toilets and found asbestos
The Conroy's case reminded me of an inspection from my time as a WorkSafe Inspector.
My partner and I attended an older supermarket to inspect, of all things, the toilets. The toilets themselves smelt like they may not have been cleaned since the joint opened, but their contribution to occupational hygiene can remain a story for another day.
While we were on site, we walked through other parts of the workplace with the store manager. We eventually ended up inside a small cleaner's room, where I noticed a very familiar-looking sheet material on one of the walls.
It looked like asbestos-containing material, or ACM.
More concerningly, there were fresh indications that screws had recently been driven directly into it.
There was no asbestos register available for the workplace, and the manager could not tell us whether the material had previously been inspected or whether it actually contained asbestos. To the people using the room, it was simply part of the wall.
Notices were issued requiring an asbestos inspection and report, together with an asbestos register if the inspection confirmed ACM was present.
It did.
There was nothing remarkable about the room. It was not an abandoned factory, demolition site or dusty boiler room where everyone entering would naturally start thinking about asbestos. It was a small cleaner's room inside an operating supermarket.
Workers could enter it. Cleaners could enter it, contractors could enter it, managers could enter it, visitors could enter it, and two inspectors had just wandered into it while looking at something entirely unrelated.
Someone had also recently screwed into the wall.
The issue was not whether the person with the screwdriver should have possessed some magical ability to identify asbestos by sight. The issue was that somebody had apparently been able to undertake intrusive work on an older building material without an effective system first determining what they were about to disturb.
That is how easy it can be.
Sometimes the warning is literally stuck to the door
I have also experienced the other end of the spectrum, facilities where the possibility of asbestos was anything but hidden.
Over 20+ years at Defence facilities, including RAAF Williams at Point Cook and Laverton, RAAF Base Richmond, and Puckapunyal Military Area, to name a few, I became very familiar with the little stickers indicating asbestos was present.
Sometimes the warning was literally stuck to the door as you entered the building.
You saw the sticker, walked inside, put your gear down and got on with whatever activity had brought you there. After enough time in those environments, the sticker could easily become part of the scenery rather than something that fundamentally altered the way people interacted with the building.
There is an added dimension when some of the people using those facilities are Australian Defence Force Cadets.
I have been in Defence facilities used by cadets where damage to old wall linings was hardly unheard of. Kids punch holes in walls, equipment gets knocked into things, fixtures are installed and buildings designed decades earlier continue to be used for modern activities.
If the wall contains ACM, apparently minor building damage suddenly becomes something quite different.
On one occasion, when asbestos was raised, an older staff member told me words to the effect of:
"Don't worry, you're all on the asbestos register."
It was intended to be reassuring.
Once I started digging, it was not.
I could not establish that we had actually been registered as people who had potentially been exposed.
There is also an important terminology problem buried in that comment. An asbestos register records identified or assumed asbestos-containing material and its location.
It is not ordinarily a list of everybody who has spent time in a building containing asbestos.
Defence now operates a separate Defence Asbestos and Hazardous Chemicals Exposure Scheme, or DAHCES, through which current and former Defence employees, including cadets, can register where they believe they were exposed to asbestos or another hazardous chemical during a Defence activity or undertaking.
Current Defence guidance also demonstrates the difference between knowing asbestos is somewhere on an estate and controlling what people do to it.
Defence's current induction material for RAAF Base Point Cook and RAAF Williams Laverton expressly states that some buildings contain asbestos, that this is recorded on the asbestos register, and that no work is to be performed without authorisation.
Where suspected asbestos is discovered, access is to be restricted and the relevant support service contacted.
Puckapunyal's current induction similarly states that anyone undertaking work on buildings is to check the asbestos register before commencing that work.
Defence also maintains an estate-wide Asbestos Management Plan. Its current public guidance states that Defence manages asbestos on its estate under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 and Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011, with personnel and contractors undertaking work on the estate having responsibilities under the plan.
The plan separately addresses potential exposure. It provides for reporting where personnel believe they may have been exposed and refers to DAHCES for current and former Defence employees and cadets.
That distinction matters.
A sticker can tell you asbestos exists.
A register can tell you where identified or assumed ACM is located.
Neither one prevents somebody from putting a screw through it.
Identification is only the beginning
The supermarket, the Defence facilities and Conroy's sit at different points along the same information chain.
At the supermarket, the material had not been properly identified and communicated before somebody apparently screwed into it.
At Defence facilities I stayed in, asbestos warnings could be obvious, sometimes literally displayed at the point of entry. The question then became what that information meant for the people occupying the building, what happened when the material was damaged, and how a potential exposure would actually be recorded.
At Conroy's, according to the sentencing outcome, the company already knew asbestos-containing materials were present before clean-up and demolition work proceeded.
Those are three quite different circumstances, but simply knowing that asbestos exists does not finish the job.
Identification has to trigger something.
The asbestos register is evidence, not the control
An asbestos register is important because it allows information about identified or assumed ACM to be available when work is planned.
Its safety value collapses fairly quickly if nobody looks at it before maintenance, installation, refurbishment or demolition is authorised.
The same applies to asbestos surveys, risk assessments, procedures, contractor prequalification systems and warning labels. They are mechanisms for getting information into a decision, not controls that somehow act independently once the document has been completed.
A contractor arriving to install shelving should not discover halfway through drilling that the wall contains asbestos.
A maintenance worker should not be expected to recognise every historical building product before penetrating it.
A facilities manager should not regard an asbestos survey as an archival document that only becomes interesting when an inspector asks for it.
The system needs to connect identification to planning, planning to control, and control to verification.
That last part matters because the absence of visible dust does not prove that everything went swimmingly.
Twenty years after the ban does not mean the asbestos disappeared
Australia completely banned asbestos from 31 Dec 03. The national prohibition did not, however, require all ACM already installed throughout the built environment to suddenly vanish at midnight.
The Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency notes that the complete ban did not apply to asbestos-containing materials already in situ, meaning substantial quantities remained in Australian buildings and infrastructure after the prohibition took effect.
That is why older workplaces continue to require asbestos management.
The question is not simply whether the building was constructed before 2003.
Organisations need to know what is actually present, what condition it is in and whether proposed work could disturb it.
This is particularly important because maintenance and demolition actively change the state of materials.
Drilling changes things. Cutting changes things, breaking things changes things, grinding changes things, and pulling an old building apart definitely changes things.
A material remaining intact for decades does not mean it will remain harmless while somebody attacks it with a reciprocating saw.
Decommissioning can turn a contained hazard into an exposure pathway
SafeWork SA published another useful prosecution only a week before the Conroy's outcome.
On 10 Aug 26, the regulator reported that AGL Torrens Island Pty Ltd had been convicted and fined $60,000 after workers were exposed to lead during decommissioning of the Torrens Island A Power Station.
The work involved large quantities of paper insulated lead covered cable being de-energised, cut into approximately one-metre lengths and placed into drums for disposal.
Cutting the cable generated dust and debris containing lead.
Workers undertaking the task had been supplied with long clothing, boots, safety glasses, hard hats and gloves, but respiratory protection suitable for preventing inhalation of lead dust had not initially been provided. Testing subsequently identified lead in workplace dust and five workers were found to have elevated blood lead levels.
Deputy President Judge Crawley said he had difficulty understanding how the risk created by cutting large quantities of lead-covered cable had not been recognised.
His observation that risk assessment protocols are only as effective as the way they are implemented is worth keeping.
Asbestos at Conroy's and lead at Torrens Island are different hazards and different prosecutions. What ties them together is the work.
Decommissioning, demolition, refurbishment and major clean-up can turn materials that have remained relatively contained for decades into active exposure pathways.
The risk assessment therefore cannot stop at:
"Does the building contain hazardous material?"
It needs to ask:
"What are we about to do to it?"
Devil's Dust, and why the history still matters
Australia does not lack evidence about the consequences of asbestos exposure.
The 2012 Australian miniseries Devil's Dust dramatised the James Hardie asbestos story. Screen Australia describes the two-part production as dealing with the corporate asbestos scandal and its consequences, and the series drew heavily on journalist Matt Peacock's work on James Hardie.
The circumstances surrounding James Hardie and the Conroy's prosecution are plainly different. They should not be collapsed into the same allegation or treated as equivalent conduct.
The reason Devil's Dust belongs in this discussion is broader.
Knowing that a substance can cause devastating occupational disease achieves precisely nothing if that knowledge fails to change how people are allowed to work around it.
Watch: Devil's Dust official extended trailer
The historical connection becomes even stronger through Matt Peacock's account of Jeremy Tear.
Tear was a university student who spent part of the 1973 to 1974 summer working for a contractor cleaning the James Hardie asbestos insulation factory. Peacock later described Tear's account of working among extensive asbestos contamination without having been warned of its dangers.
That history is particularly relevant to the Conroy's case because Tear's job was clean-up work.
Different decade, different organisation, different circumstances, but the work activity remains instructive. Cleaning, dismantling and decommissioning can disturb material that normal occupation may have left alone.
What should happen before somebody reaches for the drill
The first control is competent identification.
Before intrusive maintenance, refurbishment, demolition or decommissioning starts, the organisation should establish what hazardous materials are known or reasonably likely to be present. Existing asbestos registers, surveys, hazardous-material reports, building information and previous assessments need to be checked against the proposed work.
Where the available information is incomplete or unreliable, further competent inspection or sampling may be required before the job proceeds.
Then the work itself has to be examined.
What material will be disturbed? What method will be used, and could it generate fibres, dust or contamination? Is licensed removal required, are specialist occupational hygiene controls necessary, and what needs to happen before the area can safely be returned to normal use?
Contractor engagement does not remove those questions.
A contractor's insurance certificate does not tell you whether somebody checked the asbestos register. A generic SWMS does not prove that the specific wall, ceiling, service duct or plant insulation has been assessed, and a toolbox talk delivered after work commences is a slightly late point to discover that everybody has been drilling into the wrong material.
The system also needs an effective stop-work trigger.
If suspicious material is found or existing ACM is unexpectedly damaged, workers and contractors need to understand that stopping and obtaining competent advice is the expected response. Production pressure, programme deadlines and the fact that somebody has already drilled three holes are not particularly impressive reasons for drilling the fourth.
Exposure records are a different question
The Defence example also raises a point that organisations should understand before an incident occurs.
Managing an asbestos register and managing potential exposure records are separate functions.
Where an event may have resulted in exposure, the organisation needs a process for determining what occurred, who may have been affected, what monitoring or assessment is required, what WHS reporting should occur and what records need to be retained.
Defence's current arrangements demonstrate that separation. Its asbestos management plan provides for asbestos information and management on the estate, while DAHCES separately allows current and former employees, including cadets, to register suspected hazardous chemical exposure.
That is considerably more meaningful than telling somebody they are "on the asbestos register".
If an organisation cannot clearly explain where potential exposure is actually recorded, who is responsible for following it up and what happens to that information over the long term, there is still a gap in the system.
A sticker is not an asbestos management system
Warning stickers are useful.
Registers are useful, surveys are useful, procedures are useful, and site inductions are useful.
None of them independently controls asbestos.
The supermarket I inspected demonstrates how easily ACM can exist in an ordinary workplace without being recognised, while somebody goes about a completely normal maintenance task.
My experiences on Defence establishments show that even when asbestos is clearly identified, the warning can become part of the background of an ageing facility occupied by workers, contractors, visitors and, in some circumstances, cadets.
The Conroy's prosecution then demonstrates the most serious progression of the problem. The material was known to be there, yet work proceeded in circumstances
SafeWork SA found exposed workers to asbestos risks and lacked the required licensed removal arrangements, monitoring and clearance processes.
The lesson is not simply "have an asbestos register".
It is to make the information operational.
Identify the material before it is disturbed. Get that information to the people planning and authorising work, prevent uncontrolled intrusive work, verify licences and specialist controls where required, stop when conditions change, and have a proper process for recording and responding to potential exposure.
A sticker on the door does not stop a drill bit.
Neither does a register sitting in an office.
The system has to work before somebody makes the hole.
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