Articles

Australia’s positive duty requires every employer to take proactive steps to eliminate workplace sexual harassment and sex discrimination — not simply respond after an incident. Two years into the Australian Human Rights Commission’s enforcement role, the Commission has four active inquiries running and is scrutinising eight major retailers, with the retail and hospitality sectors squarely…

Keep pedestrians safe around forklifts by physically separating people from powered mobile plant — exclusion zones, barriers, one-way traffic flows and safe systems of work — backed by trained, licensed operators. Regulators have now named mobile plant a formal 2026 enforcement priority, making forklift–pedestrian separation a frontline compliance issue for every site. Key facts at…

From 1 August 2026, the amended Heavy Vehicle National Law replaces the National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme (NHVAS) with the new Heavy Vehicle Accreditation (HVA) scheme, built on a documented Safety Management System. NHVAS stops accepting new applicants that day; existing accreditations stay valid, and operators have up to three years to transition to HVA.…

Yes — employers can be prosecuted for failing to manage psychological injury, and now even the Commonwealth has been. In December 2025, the Department of Defence was convicted and fined $188,000 after a Royal Australian Air Force technician died by suicide while on duty — the first Commonwealth psychosocial conviction in Australian history. This article…

Under the Heavy Vehicle National Law, every party in the chain of responsibility must ensure schedules, requests and contracts don’t cause or encourage a driver to speed or drive fatigued. Breaching the “prohibited requests and contracts” provisions currently attracts a maximum fine of about $13,310 — and from 1 August 2026, that roughly doubles to…

The Industrial Court of NSW has fined Real Juice Company Pty Ltd $240,000 — and its sole director $9,600 personally — after a reversing forklift struck a worker at the company’s Griffith bottling plant, causing injuries that led to the amputation of all five toes on her left foot. The court also ordered the company…

Managing psychosocial hazards is not a wellness initiative a business can opt into — it is an explicit legal duty. Every PCBU (person conducting a business or undertaking) in an adopting jurisdiction must manage psychosocial risk so far as is reasonably practicable — the same standing as physical hazards. Enforceable codes of practice now set…

WorkSafe Queensland has commenced a targeted 2026–27 audit of Queensland workers’ compensation insurers, examining whether they take “all reasonable steps” to stop a worker’s physical injury developing into a secondary psychological injury. Findings are due in December 2026. The message for employers: regulators now treat psychological harm after an injury as preventable — and expect…

Under Chain of Responsibility (CoR) law, liability for a mass, dimension or loading breach is never limited to the driver. The consignor, packer, loader, scheduler and operator can each be prosecuted if their part of the chain contributed to the breach — with penalties reaching into the millions, and enforcement tightening once the HVNL reform…