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businessleadership.com.auAn officer’s duties for safety

Work health and safety · Officers

Business leadership: an officer’s duties for health and safety

Under the work health and safety (WHS) laws, a business owes duties to keep people safe, and the people who lead it carry a duty of their own. An officer must exercise due diligence to ensure the business meets its WHS duties. This guide, published by Dotto, follows that one duty from the meeting table down to the work floor, in the words of Safe Work Australia, the state regulators and the Act itself.

General information, not legal advice. Safe Work Australia says it is not a regulator and cannot advise on WHS issues in a workplace; it points people to their state or territory work health and safety authority. The sources for each page are listed at its foot.

One duty

The duty, as the Act words it

The Commonwealth’s Work Health and Safety Act 2011 puts the officer’s duty in a single subsection, section 27(1):

“If a person conducting a business or undertaking has a duty or obligation under this Act, an officer of the person conducting the business or undertaking must exercise due diligence to ensure that the person conducting the business or undertaking complies with that duty or obligation.”

Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth), section 27(1), as compiled at 1 July 2024

The “person conducting a business or undertaking”, or PCBU, is the business. SafeWork SA says the term covers a broad range of work relationships and business structures, run for profit or not, alone or with others. The officer is someone who leads it, and Safe Work Australia says it is “the role and influence” a person has that decides who that is, which “is different for each person and each business.” SafeWork NSW describes the duty as “an immediate, positive and proactive duty”.

An empty meeting room: two white tables pushed together, ten dark chairs, two blank whiteboards and a screen on the wall
Where an officer’s decisions are made: an empty meeting room. Photo by Pexels on Pixabay.

Where

Where the model laws apply

Safe Work Australia created the model WHS laws in 2011, but it does not enforce them: “The Commonwealth, states and territories regulate and enforce WHS laws.” For penalties, it sends readers to “the specific WHS Act” of their own jurisdiction. Safe Work Australia names them in one sentence:

“The jurisdictions that have adopted the model WHS laws are the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory.”

Safe Work Australia, Maximum monetary penalties under the WHS laws

Victoria is not on that list. Its law is the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, and Safe Work Australia keeps its Victorian penalty comparison in a separate table. Some of the adopting places, as their regulators name their Acts:

A selection, from each regulator’s own page
JurisdictionIts Act
CommonwealthWork Health and Safety Act 2011
New South WalesWork Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), with the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025 (NSW)
QueenslandWork Health and Safety Act 2011
Western AustraliaWork Health and Safety Act 2020
South AustraliaWork Health and Safety Act 2012

Six steps

From the meeting table to the work floor

The Act does not leave due diligence vague. Section 27(5) says it includes taking reasonable steps in six areas, and they read like a line drawn from the people who decide down to the place where the work happens.

A two-storey building in cross-section, with a green line from the meeting table down to the work floor Upstairs, a meeting table with chairs under a window. Downstairs, shelving stacked with boxes and a stepladder. A green line starts at the meeting table, drops through the floor and runs along the work floor to the shelving. Six round markers sit along the line, standing for the six reasonable steps of due diligence, from keeping up to date at the top to verifying at the far end.
Drawn for this guide. The six markers, from the top of the line:
  1. (a)Up-to-date knowledge of WHS matters
  2. (b)Understanding the operations and their hazards and risks
  3. (c)Resources and processes to eliminate or minimise risks
  4. (d)Processes for information about incidents, hazards and risks
  5. (e)Processes for complying with the business’s duties
  6. (f)Verifying the resources and processes in (c) to (e)

The Act’s full wording of each step, and SafeWork NSW’s examples of the records that show it, are in the six steps of due diligence.

Five guides

The guides

  1. 1

    Who is an officer

    The role and influence test, the Act’s definition, and who is left out.

  2. 2

    Due diligence in six steps

    Section 27(5) in full, with SafeWork NSW’s practical reading of each step.

  3. 3

    Psychosocial hazards

    What an officer’s due diligence covers when the hazard is to mental health.

  4. 4

    Consulting workers on safety

    The WHS duty to consult, which the Act names among the duties an officer must see met.

  5. 5

    Penalties and industrial manslaughter

    The model penalty categories, and industrial manslaughter in each place the sources cover, with dates.