WHS for Health and Safety Committees – SA Edition
Lesson 1 – Topic 5: SafeWork SA
The Role of SafeWork SA
- to advise and make recommendations to the Minister and report on the operation and effectiveness of this Act
- to monitor and enforce compliance with this Act
- to provide advice and information on work health and safety to duty-holders under this Act and to the community
- to collect, analyse and publish statistics relating to work health and safety
- to foster a cooperative, consultative relationship between duty-holders and the persons to whom they
owe duties and their representatives in relation to work health and safety matters - to promote and support education and training on matters relating to work health and safety
- to engage in, promote and coordinate the sharing of information to achieve the object of this Act, including the sharing of information with a corresponding regulator
- to conduct and defend proceedings under this Act before a court or tribunal
- any other function conferred on the regulator by this or any other Act
SafeWork SA is the WHS regulator in South Australia and their services include:
- advice and education on work health and safety
- provide licences and registration for workers and plant
- investigate workplace incidents
To this end, a lot of safety information, guidance material and codes of practice on a variety of topics are available from their website. It is in any organization’s interest to check out their website on a regular basis in order to stay up to date on the latest safety information, including legal requirements.
They also have an advisory service that offers a free service to help you better understand your responsibilities and keep yourself and your workers safe. Their advisors can also come to your workplace and tailor the advice to suit your industry, size, risk and complexity.
Organizations should make use of these services. They have a lot of knowledge and experience and can therefore be a valuable resource to any business.
Safework are also the safety enforcer. And if an employer or an individual is in alleged breach of the law, then Safework SA have a range of compliance and enforcement tools available to ensure compliance with the WHS Act
These enforcement tools include
- non disturbance notices
- prohibition notices
- improvement and infringement notices.
Each of these notices require a person or organization to take action.
In case of alleged breaches of the law, Safework may also refer matters to the director of public prosecutions.
Safework inspectors do have a lot of power when they visit your workplace and it will be to an organization’s interest to fully cooperate with them. Always remember, good safety is good for business
Main Offences Penalty Structure (Maximum penalties)
| Category 1 Gross Negligence or Reckless conduct. The person, without reasonable excuse, exposes an individual to risk of serious injury or death and the person engages in the conduct with gross negligence or is reckless as to the risk. |
|
| Category 2 Failure to comply with a health and safety duty. The failure exposes an individual to risk of serious injury or death. |
|
| Category 3 Failure to comply with a health and safety duty. |
|
Categories 1 & 2 apply when the person has a duty under the WHS Act and fails to comply with that duty. This failure then exposes an individual to a risk of death or serious injury. In other words, these penalties may apply even if NO injury or death has occurred.
For a category 1 (Reckless Conduct) to apply, the person exposed an individual to a risk of serious injury or death and engages in the conduct without reasonable excuse and was reckless in doing so. An example may be when a manager requires an operator to operate a forklift with faulty brakes and the manager knows that it’s brakes are faulty.
A category 2 applies when the person exposed an individual to a risk of serious injury or death, but the action is not deemed to be reckless.
Category 3 may apply when a person simply fails to comply with a duty but as a result, does NOT expose an individual to risk of injury. For example, a PCBU may have a policy that requires workers to always wear safety glasses whenever on site. If a worker then enters site without wearing safety glasses, he/she would fail in the duty to cooperate with reasonable policies and procedures, even though there was no immediate risk of eye injury at that time.
Prescribed fines
In addition to Categories 1, 2 and 3 offences, there are also prescribed fines in the WHS Act.
For example:
- A failure to consult could attract a fine of up to $20 000 for an individual or up to $100 000 for a corporation.
- A failure to notify of a notifiable incident could mean a fine of up to 10 000 for an individual or up to $50 000 for a corporation
It is important to understand that these offences and penalties apply to ALL workers in the workplace, regardless of the level they are at within the hierarchy of the organization.
It is also important to understand that these laws are triggered when just the risk exists. It does not require an accident to occur.
Industrial Manslaughter
In July 2023, the South Australian government has introduced the Work Health and Safety Industrial Manslaughter Amendment Bill. If this Bill is passed it will bring South Australia in-line with other states such as Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and the ACT, who have already made industrial manslaughter a crime.
Industrial manslaughter applies when there is a gross deviation from the reasonable standard of care from a PCBU or Officer of the PCBU, leading to the death of a person.
AND the PCBU or officer of the PCBU is grossly negligent regarding the risk of death to a person.
Should this bill pass parliament, it may also lead to the category 1 offence to include “gross negligence”.
The industrial manslaughter offence carries up to 20 years in jail for an officer or an up to $18M fine for corporations.
