Industrial manslaughter

Thank you for your feedback

Consultation on industrial manslaughter is now closed.
Your feedback informed the Work Health and Safety Amendment (Industrial Manslaughter) Act 2024.

Industrial manslaughter laws

Have your say on the development of an industrial manslaughter offence

The NSW Government is developing an industrial manslaughter offence within the NSW Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act) and we want your input.

Each workplace death is a tragedy that unites us all in the shared belief that every worker has the right to a safe and secure workplace. Preventing workplace fatalities is a top priority.

We plan to strengthen existing laws with a new industrial manslaughter offence, to:

act as a further deterrent to unsafe work practices
ensure the most serious health and safety breaches carry a heavy penalty
send a clear message that people who place workers’ lives at risk will be held to account
ensure that justice continues to be served for workers.

Tell us what you think

We want to hear your views, particularly from businesses and workers in industry, as well as WHS professionals and others generally interested in the topic.

You can help us understand what you think about the key elements that the proposed offence would include:

who this new offence will apply to
what needs to be present for industrial manslaughter to have been committed
the penalties that should be given if a person or company is found guilty
the statute of limitations for this offence.

To have your say, you can fill out a survey or upload a submission. The consultation paper gives information and suggested questions to help you with your responses.

Have your say by 5pm Monday, 18 March 2024.

Complete a survey

Complete a submission

Other ways to have your say

This survey has concluded.

Email: whspolicy@customerservice.nsw.gov.au

Post:

Industrial Manslaughter Consultation 

Policy, Strategy and Governance

SafeWork NSW

92-100 Donnison Street

Gosford NSW 2250

All submissions will be made publicly available on this consultation page. If you do not want your personal details or any part of your submission published, please indicate this clearly. Automatically generated confidentiality statements are not sufficient. Submissions may be referred to in a report on the outcome of the consultation, however any anonymous submissions will be referred to as such.

Please note, even if you state that you do not wish us to publish certain information, we may need to release that information by law. For example, to comply with the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009.

Timeline

Timeline item 1 - complete

Open and listening

Give your views here until Monday 18 March
Timeline item 2 - complete

Under review

Thanks for your input. We're reviewing what you told us.
Timeline item 3 - complete

Sharing what we heard

The Work Health and Safety Amendment (Industrial Manslaughter) Act 2024 (Amendment Act) passed the NSW Parliament on 20 June 2024 and was assented to on 24 June 2024.

Who's listening

SafeWork NSW policy team

NSW Government

Email: whspolicy@customerservice.nsw.gov.au

Resources

A person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) is a broad term used throughout work health and safety legislation to describe all forms of modern working arrangements, which we commonly refer to as businesses.

A person who performs work for a PCBU is considered a worker.

Types of PCBUs can include:

public and private companies
partners in a partnership
sole traders and self employed people
government departments and authorities
associations if they have one or more employees
local government councils
independent schools
cooperatives
universities.

An Officer of a PCBU is a person who holds responsibility for corporate culture and practices.

Executive officer of a corporation means a person who is concerned with, or takes part in, the corporation’s management, whether or not the person is a director or the person’s position is given the name of executive officer.

Senior officer of a person conducting a business or undertaking means if the person is:

a corporation
an executive officer of the corporation (PCBU); or
the holder of an executive position who makes, or takes part in making, decisions affecting all, or a substantial part, of the person’s functions.

A person acts recklessly when they have actual knowledge of the risk and consciously disregard it.

A person is grossly negligent when their conduct falls so short of what can be expected of a reasonable person's standard of care, causing the death of a person, that it merits criminal punishment.

To establish a corporation’s state of mind, it is sufficient to show that the body corporate’s board of directors or an authorised person of the body corporate intentionally, knowingly or recklessly engaged in the relevant conduct, or expressly, tacitly or impliedly authorised or permitted the conduct or if a corporate culture existed that encouraged or tolerated the conduct.

Gross negligence or reckless conduct - Category 1: A Category 1 offence carries the highest penalty currently imposed by the WHS Act.

An individual is liable to imprisonment for up to five years and/or a fine of $399,479, or an individual as a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) or an officer is liable to imprisonment for up to five years or a fine of up to $798,383; a corporation is liable to a fine of up to $3,992,492.

Failure to comply with health and safety duty—Category 2: A Category 2 offense carries the penalty of a $1,730 fine, or an individual as a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) or an officer is liable to $3,465; a corporation is liable to a fine of $17,315.

Australia uses a system of model work health and safety laws (WHS) to help harmonise Commonwealth, state and territory laws.

In February 2023, a national meeting of WHS Ministers agreed that an offence of industrial manslaughter with a penalty of $18 million for corporations and 20 years’ jail for an individual be added to the model WHS laws.

Seven Australian jurisdictions (WA, NT, ACT, VIC, QLD, SA and the Commonwealth) have already introduced an industrial manslaughter offence within their own WHS laws.

We plan to add an industrial manslaughter offence to the NSW WHS Act. This will be in addition to the existing Category 1 offence, which currently carries the strongest penalties for workplace death or injury.

Your feedback will help inform these reforms.

Privacy collection notice

1. Who we are

Your information is being collected by the Department of Customer Service (the Department) on behalf of SafeWork NSW. SafeWork NSW gives priority to protecting the privacy of your personal information, in accordance with the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (PPIP Act) and Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (HRIP Act).

If you have any questions about this privacy collection notice, or how we handle your personal information, you can contact our Privacy team using the contact details at the end of this notice.

2. Why we collect your personal information

SafeWork NSW is collecting your personal information for the purposes of seeking your feedback on how the NSW Government should implement an industrial manslaughter offence as an result of amendments to the NSW Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act).

3. The kinds of information we collect

We may collect the following information:

Your name
Your email address
Some information to understand who you are or your role
If you are registered for the Have Your Say site, the Department will be able to see your login or username, email address and hometown or suburb associated with your submission, even if you choose to answer the survey anonymously. 
Your feedback and opinion on the topic*
Any additional personal or health information if it is provided in free-text fields or your submission.

* Information you provide via your feedback or opinion may include ‘health information’ and attracts a higher level of protection under the HRIP Act.

4. Failure to provide information

Your information is provided voluntarily however if you choose not to provide your information, we may not be able to send you updates and outcomes of this public consultation or contact you about your submission.

5. How we may use this information

We may use the information we collect in the following ways:

To create a report on the outcome of this consultation and publish submissions on the NSW Government Have Your Say Website. If you have chosen to remain anonymous your responses will be referred to as such. Your responses or submission will be kept private if you have indicated this preference.
To share your responses or submission (including any personal and health information) with SafeWork NSW.
Internal administrative purposes, including providing you with occasional updates and outcomes on this topic or to contact you about your submission (if you provide your personal information and agree for us to do so). 
To support more informed policy making, program management, evaluation, research, and service planning as it can facilitate more efficient service delivery for residents and businesses in NSW. 
We may share personal information you provide with other parts of the Department, including the Data Analytics Centre, for the purposes of conducting analysis across all consultations and to refine our engagement methodology. 
Other directly related purposes.

6. Who we may share your information with

Your responses along with your name or company/organisation may be published in a report on the outcome of this consultation and submissions may be published on the NSW Government Have Your Say Websites should you agree for us to do so. Your responses will be published anonymously without your name, or your responses will be kept private depending on what you have agreed to in this survey or your submission.

The Have Your Say site is owned and operated by the Department using software licensed from Social Pinpoint. For details of how Social Pinpoint may access personal information, please refer to Social Pinpoint’s Privacy Policy.

We will not disclose your personal information to anybody unless we are authorised or permitted to do so by law or where you give consent. Our Privacy Statement describes when this may occur. 

7. Protecting your information

We will store and manage your information in accordance with the provisions of the PPIP and HRIP Acts. We have measures in place to help protect your personal information from loss, unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure, or other misuse.

We will only keep information for as long as we need it to fulfil the purposes we collected it for. After which, the information will be disposed of securely in accordance with the State Records Act 1998 and any other applicable legislation.

See our Privacy Management Plan for more information about how we handle your personal information.

8. Your rights

Subject to certain conditions, you have the following rights in relation to your personal information:

The right to request access to your personal information
The right to request correction of your personal information

If you wish to invoke any of the above rights, please contact us using the details below.

Updates on this topic are offered as an ‘opt in’ subscription. You can 'opt out' at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the emailed update.

If you unsubscribe, your information may not be permanently deleted from the service provider system and instead, stored on a suppression list that prevents future emails from being sent to your email address.

To have your data permanently removed from the suppression list database, please send a request to: YourSay@customerservice.nsw.gov.au

9. Contact us

If you would like to make a privacy enquiry or complaint, you can contact us on (02) 9219 3999 or at privacy@safework.nsw.gov.au.

Support

You can contact these services if you need any help or support:

LifelineLifeline(External link): crisis support and suicide prevention service. Phone (24hrs): 13 11 14

Beyond BlueBeyond Blue: information and support for mental health problems like depression, anxiety and suicide. Phone (24hrs): 1300 22 4636 Website: www.beyondblue.org.au

MensLine Australia: Visit mensline.org.au or call 1300 78 99 78

Headspace: support for people aged 12 to 25, including mental health support.

1800RESPECT: support for people impacted by domestic, family or sexual violence.

Access SafeWork NSW information on mental health and mental health and safety.

Report a work health and safety concern

Contact SafeWork NSW on 13 10 50 or raise your concerns anonymously on the Speak Up Save Lives app.

Join the conversation

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Industrial manslaughter

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