Australia: new measures to make it easier to prosecute employers for work-related fatalities

Australia’s occupational health and safety ministers have announced that federal law reform will soon be introduced to make it easier to prosecute employers for industrial ‘manslaughter’ when an employee dies as a result of a breach of workplace health and safety legislation. Penalties will also be increased significantly. On 02 June, Safe Work Australia (Australian Government statutory agency) chief executive Michelle Baxter told a Senate estimates hearing, “Those offence provisions, in order to be invoked or relied upon, do not depend upon the death of a person at a workplace.” The long-awaited reform comes a long three years following a parliamentary inquiry into industrial fatalities. That work, led by Workplace Health and Safety expert Marie Boland, was submitted to the federal government in 2019, and resulted in 34 recommendations. Despite the delays, Industrial Relations Minister Michaelia Cash said the recommendations were a priority and that jurisdictions were working together to address all of them. This “sends a very clear message to all Australians, but in particular employers and employees, that we take these model laws and the consequences of breaching these model laws very seriously,” the minister stated.