Notifiable incidents under the model WHS laws: what to report, to whom, and the duty to preserve the site

The three categories of notifiable incident

A notifiable incident is the death of a person, a serious injury or illness of a person, or a dangerous incident arising from the conduct of a business or undertaking. Those three categories are defined in section 35 of the model Work Health and Safety Act and they trigger two separate duties: notify the regulator immediately, and leave the site undisturbed.

The model WHS laws are in force in the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. Safe Work Australia states plainly that "the model laws have been implemented in all jurisdictions except Victoria" on its model WHS laws page (checked August 2026). Western Australia joined that group when the Work Health and Safety Act 2020 (WA) commenced on 31 March 2022. Victoria continues to operate the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic), which uses different definitions, different paperwork and materially higher penalties.

Notification is not filtered through anything else. It is separate from a workers compensation claim, separate from an internal investigation, separate from an insurer notification, and it is owed whether or not anyone is at fault. The duty attaches the moment the person conducting the business or undertaking becomes aware of the incident — see the WHS primary duty in section 19 for the broader duty this sits inside.

Serious injury or illness, and dangerous incidents

Section 36 of the model Act defines a serious injury or illness by reference to the treatment required, not by how the injury looks. In the version currently in force across the eight model jurisdictions it covers immediate treatment as an in-patient in a hospital; immediate treatment for an amputation, a serious head injury, a serious eye injury, a serious burn, the separation of skin from underlying tissue (degloving or scalping), a spinal injury, the loss of a bodily function or serious lacerations; and medical treatment within 48 hours of exposure to a substance.

Section 37 defines a dangerous incident by reference to exposure to a serious risk, whether or not anyone was hurt. The in-force list covers the uncontrolled escape, spillage or leakage of a substance; an uncontrolled implosion, explosion or fire; the uncontrolled escape of gas or steam or of a pressurised substance; electric shock; the fall or release from height of any plant, substance or thing; the collapse, overturning, failure or malfunction of, or damage to, plant required to be authorised; the collapse or partial collapse of a structure; the collapse or failure of an excavation or its shoring; the inrush of water, mud or gas in an underground excavation or tunnel; and the interruption of the main ventilation system in an underground excavation or tunnel.

Two jurisdictional additions are easy to miss. WorkSafe ACT requires notification of a workplace sexual assault, including a suspected one, and of prescribed infections and occupational zoonoses such as Q fever, anthrax, leptospirosis, brucellosis, Hendra virus, avian influenza and psittacosis. SafeWork SA and WorkSafe Tasmania also list the zoonoses.

Who notifies, how fast, and by what means

The person conducting the business or undertaking must ensure the regulator is notified immediately after becoming aware of a notifiable incident, by the fastest possible means, under section 38 of the model Act. Notice can be given by telephone or in writing. If it is given by telephone, the notifier must supply the details requested and, if the regulator requires it, provide written notice within 48 hours of that requirement being made. Queensland's regulator confirms that where notification is made by phone, written notification is not separately required.

Every model regulator runs a notification line, and most run it around the clock:

Numbers checked August 2026 against each regulator's own notification page; Safe Work Australia also maintains a consolidated regulator contact list.

Section 38 also requires a record of each notifiable incident to be kept for at least five years from the day notice was given. That record is a standing obligation, not a case file that closes — build it into the incident and breach register rather than leaving it in an email thread.

Notification penalties differ by jurisdiction

The model Act no longer states these maxima in dollars. It uses lettered penalty tiers indexed annually from 1 July, and each adopting jurisdiction then indexes on its own basis. Failure to notify under section 38(1) and failure to preserve the site under section 39(1) both carry a tier D monetary penalty; the five-year record-keeping duty carries tier F.

Figures from Safe Work Australia's maximum monetary penalties page and its jurisdictional comparison table as at 1 August 2026 (checked August 2026). Two traps sit inside that table. The Queensland penalty unit for Work Health and Safety Act offences is fixed at $100 and is not the general Queensland penalty unit. The Victorian penalty unit for 2026-27 is $209.10, which is why the Victorian maxima dwarf the model figures. SafeWork NSW's own web page still quotes the older $10,000 and $50,000 figures; the NSW Act itself sets 121 and 607 penalty units, so cite the Act.

The duty to preserve the incident site

Section 39 obliges the person with management or control of a workplace to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the site of a notifiable incident is not disturbed until an inspector arrives or the regulator directs otherwise. There are five exceptions, and only five: to assist an injured person, to remove a deceased person, where it is essential to make the site safe or to minimise the risk of a further incident, where the disturbance is associated with a police investigation, and where an inspector or the regulator has given permission.

In practice the exceptions are narrower than people assume. Making a site safe permits the minimum intervention needed to remove the hazard. It does not permit tidying, resuming production, running a plant reset, or removing damaged equipment for testing. Photograph before you intervene, log who authorised the intervention and why, and record the time — the log is what converts "we made it safe" from an assertion into a defence. Use the WHS incident timer to pin the notification and preservation clocks to real timestamps rather than reconstructing them later.

Victoria runs a separate regime

Victoria's Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 imposes a comparable duty with different mechanics. The employer or self-employed person must notify WorkSafe Victoria immediately after becoming aware of a notifiable incident, and must then give WorkSafe a written record of the incident in the approved form within 48 hours. Unlike the model Act, the Victorian 48-hour written record is automatic, not conditional on the regulator asking for it. A copy must be kept for at least five years and made available to an inspector, the injured person or their representative, a deceased person's representative, the health and safety representative and health and safety committee members.

Victoria's site-preservation duty runs until an inspector arrives or an inspector directs otherwise. The commonly repeated "seven days" figure is not the preservation period — it is the maximum duration of a non-disturbance notice an inspector may issue after attending. Victoria's notifiable incident list also expressly includes electric shock and carries a plant-specific set of triggers introduced from 1 July 2024.

The December 2025 model amendments are not law yet

Safe Work Australia published amendments to the model WHS Act on 5 December 2025 that substantially rewrite Part 3. They add a fourth category of notifiable incident — a violent incident — and create two new reportable events: a notifiable extended absence of 15 or more consecutive days, and a notifiable suicide or attempted suicide. The amended section 39 also requires preservation of evidence, including electronic and digital records and witness details, not just the physical site.

None of this is in force anywhere. Safe Work Australia states that the changes "will only apply once they are adopted under local WHS laws", and NT WorkSafe and SafeWork SA have each published statements confirming they have not adopted them (checked August 2026). Treat the amendments as a planning input: the psychosocial reporting they contemplate overlaps directly with the psychosocial hazards code of practice obligations that already bind you, so the underlying data collection is worth building now.

The evidence that proves the duty was discharged

A regulator assessing whether the notification duty was met looks for a small, specific artefact set: the timestamped call or written notice to the regulator with the reference number issued; a contemporaneous file note of who became aware, when, and how; photographs or video taken before any intervention; a preservation log recording every disturbance, its authoriser and its justification; the witness list captured on the day; and the five-year incident record itself.

Two failure modes recur. The first is a delayed decision — the business convenes a meeting to decide whether an incident is notifiable, and the meeting becomes the delay. Notify on suspicion and withdraw later if the incident does not qualify; regulators do not penalise over-notification. The second is a site that gets cleared by a contractor or a landlord who was never told the duty applies to them. Section 39 binds the person with management or control of the workplace, which is often not the employer, so the preservation instruction has to reach whoever holds the keys. The obligations register should name that party by role for every site you operate.