Section
The model WHS Acts, Regulations and codes of practice tracked as they move: what changed, who it binds and from when, each cited to the primary instrument.
Law + guidance
Safe Work Australia has opened a national consultation on Part 7.2 of the model WHS Regulations, the lead regulations, conceding they may not be adequately protecting workers. The three changes on the table, including a lower blood lead threshold and health monitoring for every lead worker, and how to have your say by 24 August.
Law + guidance
Part 5 of the model WHS Act is machinery, not sentiment: section 48's four requirements for real consultation, elected health and safety representatives with a five-day paid training entitlement, the eight-day provisional improvement notice, the cease-work direction, and a committee due within two months of a request by five workers.
Law + guidance
Regulation 39(3) requires safety information, training and instruction to be readily understandable by any person who receives it: the legal hook for multilingual workforces, varied literacy and young workers. The consultation code's literacy expectations, and the November 2024 national guidance on making the message land.
Law + guidance
Regulation 42 requires equipment, facilities and an "adequate number" of trained first aiders, scaled by the work, the hazards, the site and everyone on it. The kit rules, the annual CPR refresher, the 200-worker first aid room line, and the assessment that decides all of it.
Law + guidance
Regulation 43 requires one written plan providing for response, evacuation, notification, medical treatment and communication, built on the workplace's actual hazards: fire, chemical release, natural disaster, bomb threats, violence. The contents the law fixes, the 12-month drill benchmark, and who coordinates the plan in a shared building.
Law + guidance
Section 19 makes information, training, instruction and supervision one duty with four working parts, regulation 39 sets the suitability test, the white card guards construction's door, and Schedule 3 licenses 29 classes of high risk work. What a PCBU must sight before work starts.
Law + guidance
A safety management system is a loop, not a binder, and the law already demands its working parts: officers must verify under section 27, workers must be consulted under section 47. And the model Act defines corporate culture, making a culture that tolerated a breach one way to prove a company's fault.
Law + guidance
The 18 kinds of high-risk construction work that demand a safe work method statement before work starts, the $250,000 threshold that creates a principal contractor and a site-wide WHS management plan, and the fatality and claims numbers behind the machinery.
Law + guidance
The 2025 national survey found 88.9 per cent of injured workers got back to work, down from 91.6 in 2021; with a return-to-work plan the rate was 94.0 per cent, without one 81.7. The scheme duties, the coordinator role and the measurable case for early intervention.
Law + guidance
The WHS worker definition never asked how someone is engaged. Who owes what to gig and labour-hire workers, why shared duties cannot be contracted away, and the workers' compensation gap the October 2025 national policy approach is trying to close.
Law + guidance
Comcare's national audit tool puts 79 of its 108 criteria under implementation: whether the system is used, not whether it is written down. Where gap analysis fits, what ISO 45001 is and is not, and the officer duty that makes verification a legal obligation.
Law + guidance
Commencement dates from 2017 to 2024, maximum penalties from $10 million to life imprisonment, and a model penalty that re-indexed days ago. The table every multi-state duty holder needs, cited to each regulator.
Law + guidance
The December 2025 incident notification amendment expands what PCBUs must tell the regulator, once your jurisdiction adopts it. The current rules, the coming ones, and a live example of the reporting loop working.
Law + guidance
Two million workers, the worst claims record in the country, and a July 2025 code that says patient care never outranks worker safety. What aged care providers now have to show.
Law + guidance
One model law, nine implementations, one holdout state. What a PCBU is, what officers owe, what codes of practice legally are, and what is about to change. The page the rest of this masthead links back to.