Thirty-four submissions on welding rules are now public, and the two safety regulators that made one both said no

In August we read the consultation paper and reported the structural finding inside it: the hierarchy of control does not directly apply to welding, which is why Safe Work Australia proposed six welding-specific regulations. At that point nobody outside the agency knew what the sector had said, because the submissions were not up. They are up now, all 34 of them, and we have read every one.

What makes this set unusually readable is the form itself. Every respondent had to answer one question before anything else: Please indicate the approach you support to address the issues in the paper. There were two choices. That turns 34 essays into a countable result, which is rare in a consultation and is the reason this piece can tell you the answer rather than a flavour.

The count, and the reversal inside it

Across all 34 published responses: 19 chose new welding-specific regulations in the model WHS Regulations, 15 chose updates to the code and guidance.

Split by who is answering, that flips. Fifteen submissions came from named organisations, the rest from individuals and anonymous respondents. The individuals and anonymous respondents went 12 to 7 for new regulations. The named organisations went 8 to 7 for the code. So the headline majority for regulation is carried by people, and the organisations that lodge formal submissions for a living lean the other way.

Source: the approach each respondent selected on its own published response page, Safe Work Australia Consultation Hub, read 30 September 2026. Individuals and anonymous respondents are counted in the totals above but not named here.

The two regulators, and the one rule each of them would keep

This is the finding worth the reading time. Two of the nine WHS regulators made a submission. Both picked the code over new regulations. But neither rejected the proposals wholesale, and the single proposal each one kept is different.

SafeWork NSW supports applying Part 3.1. That is the first of the six, and the one that would make the hierarchy of control bind welding directly instead of sideways through hazardous chemicals. NSW supports in principle the proposed regulation, and its reason is operational rather than philosophical: it would remove the need for an inspector to work out whether a particular metal in the fume meets the definition of a hazardous chemical before the duty applies.

On the other five, NSW says SafeWork NSW does not support this proposed new regulation, five times over. Including the documented risk assessment, which it says may create unnecessary administrative burden, particularly for routine or low-risk tasks where hazards are already well understood and controlled through existing procedures.

WorkSafe WA supports the documented risk assessment. The same proposal. Its submission says a documented risk assessment lays a strong foundation for the selection and maintenance of suitable controls, notes that the model Regulations already require one for several kinds of hazardous work including confined spaces, and adds that risk assessment is particularly important for chronic hazards such as exposure to carcinogens.

And on Part 3.1, the proposal NSW backs, WA’s position is Further evidence is needed to justify a welding-specific provision rather than improved guidance.

Built by us from the two regulators’ own submissions, response 40 and response 44, read 30 September 2026. The wording in each cell is a summary of the position each submission states; the quoted phrases appear in the text above.

One out of six each, and not the same one. A duty-holder reading both would be entitled to conclude that the sector’s own enforcers cannot agree on which of these six rules is the one that would change anything, which is a harder problem for the proposal than a flat no would have been.

The code side’s strongest argument is Safe Work Australia’s own sentence

The consultation paper describes its own proposals like this: The proposed regulations largely clarify or restate existing expectations in the Code and the model WHS Regulations and elevate some guidance from the Code into the WHS regulations.

That sentence does a lot of work in the submissions arguing against regulation. The Australian Industry Group quotes it back and says We simply do not see how creating new regulations that only clarify or restate existing duties, or are already outlined in the Code as practical measures to comply with WHS duties, leads to better WHS outcomes, and states a general position it says it has held consistently: a lack of compliance with existing duties or inadequate enforcement is not a sound basis for increased regulation.

SafeWork NSW reaches the same reading independently, and uses it to argue for something much larger than welding.

NSW’s alternative is not about welding at all

Instead of six welding rules, NSW proposes one change to the model WHS Act: a provision equivalent to its own section 26A, requiring PCBUs to comply with an approved code of practice or implement alternative measures that achieve an equivalent or higher standard of WHS. Its argument for preferring that is explicit about scale: such a provision would strengthen the status of all approved codes of practice rather than targeting a single work activity.

Section 26A commenced in NSW on 1 July 2026, and we reported what it changed at the time. The submission is NSW telling the national body that the mechanism it has just switched on at home is the better answer to the complaint that codes get treated as advice. That is a far bigger proposition than welding signage, and it arrived inside a welding consultation.

NSW also lodged a specific technical point that is easy to check and awkward to dismiss. The workplace exposure limit for total welding fume is 1 mg/m³ as an 8-hour time-weighted average. The separate limits for zinc as fume and iron as fume are 2 mg/m³ and 5 mg/m³. NSW notes this may make the zinc oxide and iron oxide limits redundant and create confusion for duty holders. A limit you cannot reach without already breaching a lower one is not a limit, and that is a housekeeping problem sitting inside the exposure standards rather than the welding rules.

The welding industry’s own body asked for the regulations

Weld Australia, the industry body for the trade the consultation is about, chose new regulations, and supported every one of the six: applying Part 3.1, training, information, signage, the documented risk assessment and restricting access. Its practical caveats are worth more than its vote. On signage it says There are too many safety signs now and adding yet another for welding will simply get lost in the "noise". On restricting access it says that would only be feasible in a maintenance workshop or where welding booths are in use, and would be impractical on general fabrication or a company-wide maintenance shutdown.

Its most concrete contribution is a gap none of the six proposals touches. Weld Australia says The use of hand-held laser welders, cleaners and cutting systems is currently unregulated, and that while some imported machines carry good safety features, many do not and their safety systems are easy to bypass. A consultation about whether to restate existing duties has, in its own submissions, a request to regulate a class of tool nobody has covered yet.

There is one more twist in that. The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman argues against new regulations partly on the ground that According to Weld Australia, approximately 94% of businesses operating within the welding and fabrication industry employ fewer than 20 people. So Weld Australia’s own figure is being used to argue against the position Weld Australia took.

ASBFEO’s underlying point is not about capacity to comply in the abstract. It records that earlier Safe Work Australia consultations found the problem to be low small business understanding of existing obligations, including the prevailing view that the model Code is only a guide, without appreciating its role in demonstrating compliance with the obligations. That is the same diagnosis the paper makes. The two sides agree on the disease and disagree on whether a regulation is the medicine.

The health case, with numbers attached

The submissions supporting regulation mostly do not argue about legal architecture. They argue about exposure.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions puts the population at More than half a million workers are exposed to welding hazards each year, sourced in its own footnote to the 2025 Australian Work Exposures Study analytical report with an extrapolation against ABS labour account figures, and notes the exposure is not confined to manufacturing: it puts manufacturing at 13.9 per cent, agriculture, forestry and fishing at 12.8 per cent and construction at 12.4 per cent.

Its case for regulation rests on three figures from an AMWU survey of welders conducted in 2023, which it summarises as nearly two-thirds (60%) reported that welding fumes were not reduced to the lowest level, nearly one in five using no personal protective equipment, and fewer than one in four having participated in health monitoring. Those are the union’s own survey numbers rather than official statistics, and we have not seen the survey instrument, so treat them as what the ACTU put to the regulator.

The clinical context is not contested by anyone in the set. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified welding fumes as a Group 1 carcinogen in 2017, and the consultation paper itself refers to unintended exposure to carcinogenic welding fumes. Cancer Council Australia’s submission goes further than the paper does, recommending not only the six proposals but also that requirements be written to capture new and emerging technologies without the need for ongoing amendments, which is the same problem Weld Australia raised from the tool end.

What happens next, and what has changed today

Nothing has changed in law. The consultation closed on 12 July 2026, the feedback goes to Safe Work Australia Members, and any change to the model WHS Regulations would then have to be implemented separately in each jurisdiction. There is no published date for a decision.

What has changed is that the argument is now on the record and countable, and it does not line up the way a consultation on safety regulation usually does. It is not industry against unions with regulators umpiring. Unions, the cancer body, the occupational hygienists and the welding industry’s own peak body are on one side; the general employer bodies, the small business ombudsman and both responding regulators are on the other; and the two regulators disagree with each other about which single rule is worth making.

For a welding employer the practical reading is unchanged from August and now better evidenced. Every duty discussed in these 34 submissions already exists. The dispute is about where it is written down. Two regulators have now said in writing that they would rather fix the code than the regulations, and one of them has said the real fix is to make every code carry the weight the NSW one already does.