The Role of the Regulator

Health and Safety Committee Refresher Course

Topic 6 The Role of the Regulator

Who are the safety regulators and what do they do?  Well every state or territory has their own regulator and they are usually called Worksafe or Safework.
Below you will see a list of their names.

For all of them, their main roles include to:

• provide information, advice and assistance to industry.
• promote and sometimes provide education and training
• collect and publish safety statistics
• enforce the safety laws.

To this end, a lot of safety information, guidance material and codes on a variety of safety topics are available from their website.  Therefore, it is in any organization’s interest to check out their website on a regular basis and subscribe to their email service in order to stay up to date on the latest safety information, including legal requirements.

But of course, the regulators are also the safety enforcer.  And if an individual or an organization is in breach of the law, then the regulators have a range of enforcement tools available to ensure compliance with the Safety Act

These enforcement tools include prohibition notices, improvement notices, non disturbance notices and on the spot fines just to name of few.
Each of these notices require a person or organization to take action and if they fail to do so, then prosecution through the courts may become the next step.

So what are the main offences and penalties under the Act?
Well, in most jurisdictions, the offences are categorized in three different categories and these are:

• Category one – reckless conduct or gross negligence.
• Category two – failure to comply with a health and safety duty that exposes a person to a risk of serious injury of death
• Category three – this is also about a failure to comply with a health and safety duty but in this case no level of risk arising from this breach is specified

In Victoria, they do not categorize the main offences, they simply have

• reckless conduct and
• failure to comply with a health and safety duty

In most jurisdictions there is also the offence of industrial or workplace manslaughter.  This offence targets both the organization and the most senior management of organizations.
Depending on the seriousness of the breach, organizations and individuals can be exposed to significant fines which can be in the millions of dollars.  Individuals can also be sentenced to lengthy jail sentences for serious offences.

In addition to these main offences, there are also prescribed fines under the Safety Acts.
They apply to breaches of specific requirements under the safety act for instance: a failure to consult with workers or a failure to notify the regulator of a notifiable incident.

But of course, the consequences of an incident do not stop with fines or jail sentences.
There is the human suffering of the victims and their families and of course the workforce at large will also be affected by such trauma and the effect an incident has on a business can also be disastrous.
Therefore the value a Health and Safety Committee can bring to the table in helping the organization create a safer workplace and therefore a better business can not be overstated.

Safety Committees are GOOD for Business