Two more NSW District Court convictions, and both landed where the first two did

This is the third window in a series. July found six convictions and none under three years. August found four, two of them under three years, and a clean split between the courts. Our August window closed on 21 August, so this one opens on 22 August and runs to the end of September, which leaves no announcement between the two. Six convictions fall inside it.

The six

The median of the six is 1,397.5 days, against 1,231 in July and 1,078.5 in August. None is under three years; the fastest, Matilda Walking Floors, is 1,148 days. Two of the six are deaths, and in both the person killed was not the defendant’s worker: a pedestrian struck by a reversing reach stacker, and a person on an electric bicycle who hit the edge of a steel road plate over a trench. Those two, and the Secura scaffold matter, were prosecuted under the duty to other persons in section 19(2), not the duty to workers.

What held

In August the District Court sample was two, both from July: Fenner Dunlop at 1,629 days and a company director at 1,601. We wrote that we would not tell you the District Court is slower while that sample stayed at two. It has doubled, and both newcomers landed inside the band the first two set. All four District Court matters now sit within 39 days of each other, between 1,590 and 1,629. All twelve Industrial Court matters sit between 1,031 and 1,462. Nothing overlaps.

What moved

The Industrial range moved up. August’s three fastest matters had pulled its floor down to 1,031 days; September added the two slowest Industrial matters so far, Secura Scaffold Services at 1,462 and Woodward Foods Australia at 1,333. The Secura incident was in September 2022, earlier than any Industrial matter before it. So the gap between the courts has narrowed from 312 days to 128, and it narrowed from the Industrial side, not the District one.

We are still not telling you the District Court is slower. Four cases is a pattern worth watching, not a finding, and the two courts hear different classes of matter, so a difference in elapsed time is as likely to reflect what gets sent where as how fast anything moves. One of the four, ANJ Container Services, was found guilty after a defended hearing, according to its release; every other conviction in this window followed a guilty plea. The releases cannot tell us how much of any case’s time that difference accounts for.

What this does and does not mean

Our view, labelled as such, and unchanged since July. This is not an accusation of delay. A prosecution needs an investigation, expert evidence, a brief, charging inside a limitation period and a place in a court list, and a regulator that moved faster by cutting any of those would be worse, not better. Nothing in any of these six releases explains why that individual case took the time it did, and we have not asked.

What the number is good for is planning. A conviction SafeWork NSW announced in late August or September 2026 describes a workplace as it stood between just over three years and almost four and a half years earlier. Across all sixteen cases the median is 1,231 days, about three years and four months. The scaffold left unsecured near the public in 2022 is the one fined in 2026.

What to watch

Whether a District Court matter ever lands inside the Industrial range, or an Industrial matter inside the District band; either would end the clean split. Whether the Industrial ceiling keeps rising toward the District floor. The October window is already open: on 7 October SafeWork NSW announced an Industrial Court conviction over a May 2023 death, which the next edition will measure.

Sources

Provenance. Researched, written and maintained with AI under rules the people who run this site set and enforce, and taken from the primary sources below. How The Duty Holder works.

1. SafeWork NSW, Company fined $800,000 after workplace fatality due to mobile plant incident (announced 28 August 2026, read 12 October 2026): ANJ Container Services and Bond Stores Pty Ltd, the $800,000 fine, the District Court of NSW, the finding of guilt after a defended hearing, the section 19(2) duty, and the incident date of 21 April 2022.
2. SafeWork NSW, Two companies and director fined $420,000 after worker injured by closing industrial gate (announced 31 August 2026, read 12 October 2026): the two SMB Australia Car Transport companies fined $180,000 each and their sole director $60,000, the District Court of NSW, and the incident date of 24 March 2022. The release names the director; we have not, because this masthead reports companies by name and individuals by role.
3. SafeWork NSW, Company fined $375,000 after worker injured while using grain mill (announced 15 September 2026, read 12 October 2026): Woodward Foods Australia Pty Ltd, the $375,000 fine, the Industrial Court of NSW, and the incident date of 21 January 2023.
4. SafeWork NSW, Company fined $140,000 after worker ejected from mobile elevated working platform (announced 24 September 2026, read 12 October 2026): Matilda Walking Floors Pty Ltd, the $140,000 fine, the Industrial Court of NSW, and the incident date of 3 August 2023.
5. SafeWork NSW, Construction company fined $225,000 after cyclist fatality (announced 28 September 2026, read 12 October 2026): NSW Kerbing Pty Ltd, the $225,000 fine, the Industrial Court of NSW, the section 19(2) duty, and the incident date of 4 July 2023.
6. SafeWork NSW, Company and director fined total of $48,000 after unsecured scaffolds exposed public to risk (announced 30 September 2026, read 12 October 2026): Secura Scaffold Services Pty Ltd fined $40,000 and its sole director $8,000, the Industrial Court of NSW, the section 19(2) duty, and the incident date of 29 September 2022. The release names the director; we have not.
7. SafeWork NSW, Demolition recycling company fined $187,500 after labourer fatally injured in workplace mobile plant incident (announced 7 October 2026, read 12 October 2026): the Industrial Court of NSW and the incident date of 31 May 2023, mentioned under What to watch and outside this window.
8. The Duty Holder, We said no NSW conviction took less than three years. In August, two of four did (25 August 2026), and Six NSW convictions in a fortnight. Not one took less than three years (31 July 2026): the ten earlier convictions, their courts, incident dates and day counts, used here for the sixteen-case figures and re-checked against those pieces.

See an error, or have we measured a case from the wrong date? Request a correction and we will check it against the regulator's own announcement and log the outcome.

How we sourced this

Every figure is ours, computed from the six releases listed above and read on 12 October 2026. The method is identical to July’s and August’s: for each conviction we take the incident date the release itself states and the date SafeWork NSW announced the conviction, and subtract. The announcement date is the dateline at the top of the release’s own page, not the date a listing or sitemap reports, which on this site can differ from it by years. To be sure the window is complete we read SafeWork NSW’s news listing back to May 2026 and checked the dateline on every media release in its sitemap; the window’s other items (a horticulture compliance blitz, a psychosocial advisory service, lead work in Broken Hill) are not convictions and are excluded. The six day counts are 1,621, 1,590, 1,462, 1,333, 1,182 and 1,148, a median of 1,397.5. The sixteen-case figures are the twelve Industrial Court matters, 1,031 to 1,462 days, and the four District Court matters, 1,590 to 1,629, with an overall median of 1,231. Where a release gives a combined fine we report the combined figure. We have not sought comment from SafeWork NSW or from any defendant, and nothing here goes beyond what the releases state.