WorkSafe ACT has agreed to implement four of 12 recommendations from a recent review which found that the conduct of Work Health and Safety (WHS) prosecutions in the ACT could be improved.
Releasing the report of the review and WorkSafe’s response, WHS Commissioner Jacqueline Agius said that in 2022, she engaged an independent review of the current legislative, policy and operational framework used in the ACT to initiate, run and manage WHS prosecutions.
In her report Conduct of Work Health and Safety Prosecutions Review the Reviewer, Marie Boland said that no one she consulted suggested that the current framework was operating at optimum efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, or consistency.
“The purpose of prosecution generally is to deter non-compliance with the laws and hold persons who breach those laws to account,” Ms Boland said.
“Participants in this review considered neither purpose was being met in the ACT in the context of WHS law,” she said.
“Fundamentally, it is not clear to the community at large how and why WHS prosecution decisions are made.”
Ms Boland said it had led to anecdotal propositions – which had become well established opinions – that it was only where there had been a very serious incident resulting in a worker’s death (and most likely in construction) that a WHS prosecution would be commenced.
She made 12 recommendations to WorkSafe and the Legislative Assembly to optimise WHS outcomes for the ACT’s workers and employers, and ensure the community has faith in its WHS regulator to make prosecution decisions efficiently, effectively, transparently, and consistently.
Commissioner Agius accepted four of the recommendations which fell directly within WorkSafe’s remit and supported a further four.
She said WorkSafe did not support two of the recommendations which related to the establishment of an in-house prosecution team on the basis that given the size of the Territory, the costs of an in-house prosecution team and the possibility of ‘capture’ did not make the option viable.
WorkSafe did not respond to two recommendations, to implement an efficiency performance measure which required briefs of evidence to be assessed within 120 days of referral, and a performance measure which required 90 per cent of prosecutions to result in a conviction.
Ms Boland’s 40-page review report can be accessed at this PS News link and WorkSafe’s eight-page response at this link.
