Consultation is not telling workers afterwards. Five workers can force a committee, and a trained rep can stop the job.

The duty: four things that must happen, or it was not consultation

Section 47(1) requires a PCBU to consult, "so far as is reasonably practicable… with workers who carry out work for the business or undertaking who are, or are likely to be, directly affected by a matter relating to work health or safety", and it attaches a tier C monetary penalty, the same tier as the parallel duty in section 46 to consult, co-operate and co-ordinate with every other business that shares a duty. Section 48 then defines what consultation legally is, and each limb is a test a suggestion box fails. Relevant information must be shared with workers; workers must get a reasonable opportunity "to express their views and to raise work health or safety issues" and "to contribute to the decision-making process"; their views must be "taken into account"; and they must be "advised of the outcome of the consultation in a timely manner". If workers have an HSR, section 48(2) makes involving that representative part of the definition. Section 49 lists when the duty switches on: identifying hazards and assessing risks, deciding on control measures, deciding on welfare facilities, proposing changes that may affect health or safety, and making decisions about the procedures themselves, consultation, issue resolution, worker health monitoring, workplace monitoring, and the provision of information and training. That last item means a business cannot even decide how to train people without asking them first. How consultation sits inside the wider management system an officer must verify is covered on the safety management systems page; this page is about the machinery itself.

Health and safety representatives: elected by workers, trained at the employer's cost

The machinery starts with a single sentence: under section 50, any worker "may ask the person conducting the business or undertaking to facilitate the conduct of an election" for one or more HSRs. The PCBU does not get to decline; section 51 obliges it to facilitate the determination of work groups, negotiated with the workers, and section 61 puts the election procedure in the workers' hands: "The workers in a work group may determine how an election of a health and safety representative for the work group is to be conducted", with the PCBU required to provide the resources and facilities the election reasonably needs. Only members of the work group can stand and only members vote (sections 60 and 62), if candidates equal vacancies no ballot is needed (section 63), and the term of office is three years (section 64). Once elected, the HSR has a training entitlement with hard edges: section 72 requires the PCBU, on request, to allow the representative to attend a regulator-approved course "chosen by the health and safety representative", to release them within three months of the request on full pay, and to pay the course fees. Regulation 21 of the model WHS Regulations sizes the entitlement: "an initial course of training of up to 5 days" plus up to one day's refresher each year. The training matters beyond the classroom, because the Act gates the HSR's two strongest powers on having completed it. It matters to boards too: the officer due-diligence examples in section 27(5)(e) of the December 2025 consolidation now expressly include "consulting with workers" and "ensuring that health and safety representatives receive their entitlements to training" among the obligations an officer must have compliance processes for.

Section 68 lists what an HSR can do: represent the work group, monitor the PCBU's compliance measures, investigate complaints and "inquire into anything that appears to be a risk" to the work group's health or safety. In support, the HSR may inspect the workplace after reasonable notice, or without notice "in the event of an incident, or any situation involving a serious risk"; accompany an inspector on an inspection; sit in on health-and-safety interviews with a worker's consent; request a health and safety committee; receive health and safety information about the work group, though never personal or medical information about an identifiable worker without consent (section 68(3)); and request assistance from any person. Section 70 turns those powers into PCBU obligations with a tier D penalty: consult the HSR, confer when reasonably requested, provide access to information, provide the resources and assistance the role reasonably needs, and allow the representative the time the functions take, on full pay.

The two hard powers: the eight-day notice and the stop

A trained HSR who reasonably believes a person "is contravening a provision of this Act", or has contravened it in circumstances making repetition likely, can issue a provisional improvement notice under section 90, a written notice requiring the contravention to be remedied. The Act builds in due process on both sides. The HSR must consult the person first (section 90(3)), cannot issue a PIN where an inspector has already dealt with the same matter, and the notice must state what provision is believed contravened, how, and a compliance date "at least 8 days after the notice is issued" (section 92). The recipient has 7 days to ask the regulator to have an inspector review the notice, which stays it until the inspector confirms, varies or cancels it (sections 100 to 102). But a PIN that is not challenged is not advisory: section 99 makes non-compliance an offence carrying a tier B monetary penalty, one of the higher tiers in the Act. In effect the model law hands a trained workplace representative a junior version of an inspector's improvement notice, with an appeal path instead of a discretion to ignore it.

The second power needs no paperwork. Section 84 gives every worker the right to cease unsafe work: a worker "may cease, or refuse to carry out, work if the worker has a reasonable concern that to carry out the work would expose the worker to a serious risk to the worker's health or safety, emanating from an immediate or imminent exposure to a hazard". Section 85 extends it to the collective: an HSR with the same reasonable concern may direct workers in the work group to cease work, normally after consulting the PCBU and attempting issue resolution, but immediately and without consultation "if the risk is so serious and immediate or imminent that it is not reasonable to consult before giving the direction". The direction is training-gated (section 85(6)), the ceased worker must stay available for suitable alternative work the PCBU may lawfully assign (sections 86 and 87), and section 88 protects continuity of engagement, so a lawful stop cannot quietly become a resignation. What that right looks like against a live hazard, hot work in a heatwave, is worked through on the heat page.

Health and safety committees: five workers, two months, no veto

Where an HSR represents a work group, a committee is the standing forum, and its trigger is deliberately low. Under section 75 the PCBU "must establish a health and safety committee… within 2 months after being requested to do so" by an HSR or by "5 or more workers at that workplace", with a tier F penalty attached. The membership rule in section 76 is the clause that keeps a committee from becoming a management meeting: "At least half of the members of the committee must be workers who are not nominated by the person conducting the business or undertaking." An HSR who consents is a member as of right, and if the parties cannot agree on the make-up, either side can ask the regulator to appoint an inspector whose decision binds as if agreed. The committee's functions under section 77 are co-operative rather than adversarial, facilitating co-operation on health and safety measures and helping develop the workplace's standards, rules and procedures, and section 78 sets the floor for a live committee: it "must meet… at least once every 3 months", and at any reasonable time when half its members ask. Section 79 funds it: members attend on paid time, and the committee gets access to the PCBU's information about hazards and worker health and safety, again minus identifying personal or medical information without consent.

The Part 5 machinery at a glance: what a worker or HSR can set in motion, what the model WHS Act then requires of the PCBU, and the deadline or penalty tier the Act attaches. Sections cited are from the 5 December 2025 consolidation; penalty tiers are set in dollars by each jurisdiction.

One honesty note for multi-state operators. These are the model provisions, which the model-laws hub records as implemented in every jurisdiction except Victoria. Victoria runs its own worker-participation machinery, HSRs, designated work groups and committees included, under its Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, with its own section numbers and timeframes, so Victorian duty holders need the Victorian text. The older name this page's readers may know, "OHS committee", survives from that pre-harmonisation vocabulary; under the model law the statutory term is health and safety committee. Who holds which duty under which Act is mapped on the WHS laws reference page.