Hazards + exposures
Safe Work Australia's December review calls the world-first ban a success, then recommends six fixes: an urgently needed national test for what counts as banned stone, verified labelling for the "silica-free" products replacing it, and a repair to the rule that currently stops a legacy benchtop being reinstalled. What still binds every duty holder, date by date.
Law + guidance
Queensland 2017 to Tasmania 2024, maxima from $10 million to $20 million and from 20 years to life, and a model penalty re-indexed to $21.274 million days ago. The table, cited row by row to each regulator.
Hazards + exposures
Median cost $67,400 and 35.7 weeks off work per claim, bullying and harassment the single biggest driver, and the 14 hazards plus the six-point officer checklist the 2022 code expects you to have worked through.
The data desk
Data + statistics
The accounting series behind the most-quoted number in Australian safety stopped at 2012-13. The live figures, and the 22 per cent of claims that drive 75 per cent of the payments.
Data + statistics
The top injury mechanism in every major occupation group, and the four risk factors the manual tasks code actually names. A weight limit is not one of them.
Law + guidance
Two million workers, one serious claim in five nationally, and a July 2025 code that says client care never outranks worker safety. What providers now have to show.
Law + guidance
The December 2025 incident notification amendment reaches into psychosocial territory for the first time. No jurisdiction has adopted it yet, which makes now the cheap moment to find out whether your reporting system could answer it. Plus a live example of a reporting loop that actually loops: a regulator that turns a no-injury near miss into published advice within a fortnight.
The reference shelf
One model law, nine implementations, one holdout state. PCBUs, officers and workers; what a code of practice legally is; which statute and regulator covers each jurisdiction; and the Best Practice Review about to land on ministers' desks. The page the rest of this masthead links back to.
About this relaunch. The Duty Holder is the new masthead on the long-running australianworkplacesafety.com.au domain. We assessed all 114 articles published here since 2020: the strongest topics have been rebuilt from primary sources with every claim cited, more rebuilds are in progress, and old URLs redirect to the nearest current page. The bar for everything new is on how this site works.
Seen a code change, a consultation, or an enforcement outcome we have not covered? Send a tip: identity optional, a link we can verify is worth more than a name. Corrections are checked against the cited source and logged either way.
