The Duty Holder https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/ A national work health and safety masthead for the people who hold the duty: safety managers, WHS advisers and small business owners. It reports the model WHS laws and their movement, the nine regulators' codes, guidance and published enforcement outcomes, and the national fatality and claims data, plainly and apolitically, with every factual claim linked to its primary source. Free to read; funded by clearly labelled advertising. en Australia's biggest industry finally has its own safety code, and it names aged care on nearly every page https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/aged-care-workplace-safety/ https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/aged-care-workplace-safety/ Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Healthcare and social assistance is Australia's largest industry and its largest source of serious injury claims, at 19.9 per cent of the national total. In July 2025 it got its first consolidated WHS code of practice, and aged care is named throughout. What the code requires of providers. Eighteen months into the engineered stone ban, there is still no agreed test for engineered stone https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/asbestos-and-silica-in-australian-workplaces/ https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/asbestos-and-silica-in-australian-workplaces/ Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Safe Work Australia's December 2025 review says the engineered stone ban is working as intended, and then lists six things still broken: no agreed test for what counts as engineered stone, unverified silica-free claims, and a legacy benchtop reinstallation gap. Industrial manslaughter is now law in all nine WHS jurisdictions. No two penalty regimes match. https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/industrial-manslaughter-law-in-australia/ https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/industrial-manslaughter-law-in-australia/ Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Every Australian WHS jurisdiction now has an industrial manslaughter offence. They commenced across a 20-year span, the maximum penalties differ everywhere, and the model penalty was just re-indexed to $21.274 million. The full table, cited to each regulator. Body stressing is still the way Australians get hurt at work: 50,600 serious claims last year https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/manual-handling-and-musculoskeletal-injuries/ https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/manual-handling-and-musculoskeletal-injuries/ Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Body stressing caused 50,600 serious claims in 2023-24, the most common injury mechanism in every major occupation group. The Hazardous Manual Tasks code defines exactly four risk factors, and none of them is a lifting weight limit. What the data and the code actually require. Suicide, violence and extended absences: what the model law now says you must report https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/near-miss-reporting-and-incident-investigation/ https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/near-miss-reporting-and-incident-investigation/ Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT In December 2025 the model WHS Act's notification rules were expanded to cover violent incidents, extended worker absences and work-related suicide. No jurisdiction has adopted the change yet. What is notifiable now, what is coming, and what a working reporting loop looks like. Mental health claims are up 161 per cent in a decade, and the code that answers them is already on your desk https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/psychosocial-hazards-and-mental-health-at-work/ https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/psychosocial-hazards-and-mental-health-at-work/ Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Mental health claims are up 161 per cent in a decade and now cost a median $67,400 each. The model code of practice that answers them has been in force since 2022, names 14 hazards, and gives officers a six-point due diligence checklist. What a duty holder actually has to do. That $61.8 billion injury-cost figure is 13 years old. Here is what the current numbers actually say. https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/true-cost-of-workplace-injury-in-australia/ https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/true-cost-of-workplace-injury-in-australia/ Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT The $61.8 billion cost-of-injury figure still circulating in board papers is from 2012-13, and the series that produced it ended there. The current, dated numbers: 188 deaths in 2024, 146,700 serious claims, a $28.6 billion a year GDP estimate, and the 22 per cent of claims that drive 75 per cent of the payments. Who holds a WHS duty, and under which Act: the plain-English map of Australia's safety laws https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/whs-laws-explained-rights-and-responsibilities/ https://australianworkplacesafety.com.au/whs-laws-explained-rights-and-responsibilities/ Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Who holds a WHS duty, under which Act, in which state: the plain-English map. PCBUs, officers and workers, what codes of practice legally are, why Victoria is different, and the review of the model laws about to land on ministers' desks.