Families Call for National Industrial Manslaughter Laws

Relatives of workers killed in Australian workplaces have gathered outside Parliament House in Canberra to call for the introduction of industrial manslaughter into model workplace health and safety laws at a national level.

The delegation is explicitly pushing for the implementation of recommendations from the 2018 Senate Inquiry into industrial deaths and the Boland Review of Australia’s work health and safety laws in all states and territories.

183 Australians were killed at their workplace in 2019 – an increase of 37 deaths since 2018 and the first increase since 2007.

Industrial manslaughter provisions are currently lacking in NSW, South Australia, Tasmania and the Commonwealth jurisdiction.

In a statement, the ACTU said industrial manslaughter laws were designed to hold employer’s criminally accountable for preventable deaths that occur in a workplace – including jail time and increased financial penalties.

“The law provides justice for the families who have lost loved ones and acts as a deterrent for employers who might otherwise cut corners on work health and safety.”

ACTU Assistant Secretary Liam O’Brien said you could not hear the harrowing stories of loved ones left behind and not want to commit to stronger laws protecting Australians in their workplaces.

“We hope that politicians on all sides will understand the importance of committing to tougher workplace health and safety laws – especially when hearing that there has been an increase of fatalities since 2018.”

“The Morrison government must take action to ensure that no matter where a worker is killed their family can expect these deaths to be thoroughly investigated and employers are held to account.”

Earlier this year, Marie Boland, the author of the independent review into the model WHS laws, said that without a national approach to industrial manslaughter legislation, the issue would continue to evolve on a piecemeal basis over the coming years with different outcomes in different jurisdictions (see related article).

“I continue to believe that it is important that Safe Work Australia as the national tripartite policy body responsible for the maintenance of the harmonised WHS laws should be leading the work to develop an industrial manslaughter offence that sits within the WHS legal framework which is consistently enacted across jurisdictions,” she said.

“While I acknowledge that industrial manslaughter will remain a very difficult offence to prosecute, I believe it is important that the offence is available nationally for prosecutions where the evidence reaches the standard of criminal negligence.”