Margaret Diamond, General Counsel; Sophie Redmond, Executive Counsel; Greg Robertson, General Counsel; Harmers Workplace Lawyers

The Model Work Health and Safety Act (the Model Act) states as one of its key objects: “protecting workers and other persons against harm to their health, safety and welfare through the elimination or minimisation of risks arising from work”: s 3(1)(a)).

This protection is achieved in a variety of ways. Duties are imposed by the Act on Persons conducting a business or undertaking (and on Officers and Workers and other persons) and the Act requires voluntary compliance.

However, the framers of the Model legislation were realistic enough to recognise that there would need to be a degree of compulsion for the legislation to be effective. Hence, the Model Act provides for various methods of securing and enforcing compliance, including the regulator and Inspectors in each jurisdiction which are given a broad range of powers, and measures such as Infringement notices and voluntary Enforceable undertakings.

Further to this though, for when such methods fail, the Model Act also provides for other significant forms of compliance and enforcement measures which are administered by the courts. One of these is a system of criminal offences and penalties (see Criminal offences and penalties), and the other is a civil penalty regime (dealt with in this subtopic).