Comcare

WHS duty extends to psychosocial hazards — workload, bullying, harassment, role conflict.

Commonwealth entities and Comcare self-insured licensees must, so far as is reasonably practicable, ensure the health and safety of workers and others.

Since 1 July 2024, a Comcare-scheme PCBU or officer whose reckless or negligent breach causes a death commits industrial manslaughter.

Questacon (a division of DISR) supplied alcohol-based hand sanitiser near plasma globe exhibits; a child visitor's hands caught fire after touching a globe in July 2022. The release says it was the sixth incident involving the globes in five months and earlier warnings were not adequately acted on.

In May 2019 contractors moving a roughly three-tonne coin blanking press by forklift let it topple, narrowly missing a worker. CDPP had filed three charges alleging no safe system of work and an inadequate SWMS for the contractor; the undertaking was accepted instead of prosecution.

A newly hired driver, trained only on flat roads in an automatic truck, drove a loaded manual vacuum truck down the South-Eastern Freeway in 2014 and collided with cars at Cross Road, killing two motorists. Comcare found driver training and supervision were inadequate. Described as the largest penalty under federal WHS laws.

Defence failed to train supervisors on psychosocial risks of its Work Plan performance-management process; a RAAF technician placed on repeated Work Plans died at RAAF Base Williamtown in 2020. First conviction of a Commonwealth employer for failing to manage psychosocial risks. Category 3 offence.