Queensland’s quarrying and mineral mining workers will be given free lung health checks for life to protect them from dust-related lung diseases.
Queensland’s quarrying and mineral mining workers will be given free lung health checks for life to protect them from dust-related lung diseases.
New amendments to the New South Wales work health and safety laws now include gross negligence under a category one offence.
A category 1 offence is the most serious breach of responsibility by a person who has a health and safety duty, where a duty holder recklessly exposes a person to the risk of death or serious injury.
As per the legislation, category 1 offences are subject to up to a $3 million fine for corporations, $600,000 and/or five years imprisonment for an officer or individual conducting either a business or undertaking and $300,000 and/or five years’ imprisonment for individual workers.
The 2020 amendments to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 were passed by the NSW Parliament and came to effect on June 10.
They aim to improve compliance and enforcement measures for the NSW WHS regulators.
SafeWork NSW stated that the inclusion of gross negligence under the category 1 offence makes it easier to prosecute and create a stronger incentive for duty holders to manage WHS risks.
Other amendments to the Act prohibit any insurance and indemnity arrangements to prevent duty holders from avoiding the responsibility of paying WHS fines.
The penalty for all WHS offences has also increased in the 2020 amendments, in line with the Consumer Price Index to ensure penalties retain their deterrent value.
The time in which a person can ask the WHS regulators to start a prosecution in response to a category 1 or category 2 offence has been extended from 12 to 18 months.
Category 2 offences refer to failure to comply with a health and safety duty that exposes a person to risk of death, serious injury or illness. It is punishable by a fine of $1.5 million for corporations, $300,000 for individual conducting a business or undertaking or officers and $150,000 for individual workers or others.
The Act also obliges WHS regulators to provide updates every three months to the requester until a decision to prosecute is made. This will ensure that during investigations of workplace accidents, families are kept informed and have access to an effective review mechanism for decisions not to prosecute.
Under the act, a Health and Safety Representative (HSR) can choose their course of training to avoid unnecessary delays which can affect an HSR’s ability to fulfil their role and exercise their powers.
WHS legislation provides a range of corrective processes and enforcement options, including provisional improvement notices issued by HSRs, improvement and prohibition notices and on-the-spot fines issued by the WHS regulator’s inspectors, and prosecutions that could result in heavy fines or other penalties.
The National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation has released a report that has shown home building to have the second highest drive of jobs in Australia.
The extractive industry has a key role to support Australia’s infrastructure, economy and workforce in the downturn. To fortify the sector’s contribution, the IQA’s suite of online educational materials will assist quarry workplaces to develop professional health and safety skills for their workers.
The pursuit for efficiency across the entire quarrying operation has always been a massive undertaking. As Chris van der Loo explains, the quest for better performance, courtesy of the latest integrated, holistic haul cycle monitoring programs, may finally be achievable.
Through a decade of a popular mining reality TV program, originally a team of amateur miners entertained audiences around the world with their feats in the US and abroad. Once they were back on home soil, they turned to a range of combined incline/horizontal screens to exploit their local knowledge.
Scientists from GNS Science have released interactive maps of Zealandia, an ancient continent beneath the oceans surrounding New Zealand.
Caterpillar distributor WesTrac has introduced its Elimination of Live Work (ELW) project which employs technology, tools and workplace practices to prevent safety risks to people working close to live equipment in the construction and mining sectors.
The Federal Government has partnered with state and territory governments across the country to deliver its recently announced $1.5 billion contribution towards new construction projects and road safety works in a bid to create more infrastructure jobs.
The Federal, State and Territory Governments’ social distancing measures for COVID-19 present new and unusual challenges for the extractive industry – but as Michelle Connelly explains, that doesn’t mean you can drop the ball when it comes to engaging and communicating about your project.