Amendments to the Model Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth)

The Model Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth) has been amended by the Parliamentary Counsel's Committee after further adoptions of the recommendations from the Boland Report in 2018.

An overview of the revisions is below:

• Removal of the definition under s 4 of ‘medical treatment’ and inserting the terms ‘serious injury and illness’ and ‘relevant registered health professional’

  
  

• Inserting the terms under s 4 of ‘notifiable extended absence’, ‘notifiable suicide’, ‘relevant occurrence’ and ‘violent incident’

  
  

• Updating the duties of officers under s 27 to not only report notifiable incidents, but now also report extended absences and suicides

  
  

• Inserting s 34A and the term of ‘relevant occurrence’ to include a notifiable incident, extended absence or suicide

  
  

• Revising the ‘notifiable incidents’ under s 35 to expand the definitions of death, serious injury/illness or a dangerous incident to now include a ‘violent incident’

  
  

• Inserting s 35A to define ‘extended absence’ from work as being 15 or more consecutive days, or based on the opinion of a medical practitioner, anticipating an absence of 15 consecutive days or more

  
  

• Section 35A further requires that an absence is ‘reasonably attributable’ to a physical or psychological injury/illness arising from work

  
  

• Inserting s 35B to define ‘notifiable suicide’ to include death, suspected or attempted during work rosters, sites, accommodation or when expected to be wearing ‘work uniform’

  
  

• Inserting s 36(1)(a)-(b) to provide that the objective test for a serious injury or illness is not the medical treatment provided but whether it could be considered to require the medical treatment

  
  

• Revising the types of injuries and illnesses under s 36(1)(b) to include clarifications of spinal injuries and bone fractures

  
  

• Updating the requirements for serious head injuries under s 36(1)(ii) to include injuries where signs and symptoms may not be immediately obvious

  
  

• ‘Relevant registered health practitioner’ under s 36(3) being medical, nursing and paramedical professionals registered with AHPRA

  
  

• Clarifying under s 37 that electrical explosions, arc flash events, mobile plant incidents and serious falls of a worker are ‘dangerous incidents’

  
  

• Under s 37(3), ‘mobile plant’ are forklifts, rail vehicles, front-end loaders, trucks, floats, boats, bicycles, trolleys, quad bikes, drones and autonomous plant that overturns, collides, pins, ejects, malfunctions or moves whilst not under exclusive control

  
  

• Under s 37(3), a serious fall from working at heights is now classed as a fall ‘from one level to a lower level’

  
  

• Inserting 37A to define a ‘violent incident’ as a sexual assault (including suspected), physical assault (including with bodily fluids), deprivation of liberty or the threat or sexual/physical assault

  
  

• Inserting s 39A to require PCBU’s to notify other duty holders immediately after being made aware of being required to ‘activate’ their duty