Leading commentary and perspectives on employment and labor law
The author acknowledges the contribution of Scott Meagher.
Safe Work Australia (SWA) has published amendments to the model Work Health and Safety (WHS) Act and Regulations which expand incident notification requirements, update licensing arrangements for crane operations and align regulations with current practices. This article focusses on the amendments concerning incident notification.
Victoria’s Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 (new Regulations) came into effect on 1 December 2025.
The new Regulations require employers to, so far as is reasonably practicable, identify psychosocial hazards and eliminate any risk associated with a psychosocial hazard. If it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate a risk associated with a…
Welcome to our WHS Law Briefing. This briefing identifies key issues and emerging trends in WHS Law, and details significant legislative and case law developments from February to date in July 2025. Please contact our national WHS team if you would like to discuss any of the matters in this briefing or would like…
This is co-authored by Harry Kinkead.
The Victorian Government is on the brink of finalising new regulations addressing psychological health, which will soon mandate written “prevention plans” for managing psychosocial hazards in workplaces. This development follows a comprehensive four-year process and is likely to take effect on 1 December 2025.
The forthcoming psychological health…
This article was co-authored by Emma Anvari.
A Victorian parliamentary inquiry report published in August 2024 concerning workplace drug testing (the Report) contains key recommendations relating to medicinal cannabis for both the Victorian Government and WorkSafe Victoria.
The terms of reference for the Victorian Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee (Committee) included inquiring into the…
By Nicki Milionis, Isobelle Martin and with thanks to Amy Moore
In July, the Queensland Government announced a “nation-leading” regulatory reform requiring persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) to proactively address workplace sexual harassment and sex or gender-based harassment. The first tranche of these changes will take effect from 1 September 2024, following the…
By Nicki Milionis and Yasmine Sahihi
On 2 August 2024, Safe Work Australia announced that the Work Health and Safety (WHS) ministers had accepted recommendations to revise the incident reporting framework of the model WHS Act, including in relation to notification of psychosocial hazards and psychological harm.[1] At the time of writing, the relevant…
By: Nicki Milionis and Michael McCrae with thanks to Yasmine Sahihi and Amy Moore for their contributions
Victoria’s first industrial manslaughter decision pursuant to section 39G of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic) (OHS Act) was handed down in the Supreme Court recently in R v LH Holding Management Pty Ltd…
