Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill

February 13th saw the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill passing its first reading in Parliament, presenting the most significant changes to the Health and Safety at Work Act (the Act) since 2015.

In some of the most important changes relevant to small to medium enterprises, the Bill aims to ease the burden of compliance and focus more on critical risk. It introduces the term "small PCBUs" being organisations with 19 or less staff for at least nine out of twelve months of the year, and requires them to manage "critical risks" rather than the current more onerous tasks of addressing ALL workplace risks, which larger PCBUs will still have to.

It goes on to define what "critical risks" are; hazards to which specific regulations apply or hazards likely to result in death, notifiable injury, illness, incident, or occupational disease.

Further, the Bill puts greater distinction on the clarity of an Officer of a PCBU. An Officer is a person in the organisation who holds a very senior leadership or governance position having a due diligence duty under the Act, that hasn't changed. But the Bill separates duties at a governance level from those at an operational one. This potentially more clearly defines roles and responsibilities from Officers in the scope or their roles.

WorkSafe notification requirements are becoming more defined with the Bill. Expanding current definitions and adding clear examples around notifiable events will make it far clearer when an incident is required to be notified to WorkSafe.

Recreational use of land has a significant focus in the new Bill also. It allows for PCBUs who only manage or control land now will not owe a duty of care to people lawfully accessing that land for recreational activities unless they are directly involved with the activity or working in the same area. The idea being to address the current issues with apparent reluctance from landowners with inherited responsibilities.

It is early days for the Bill at this stage, but the Government is indicating it will push to progress the reforms within the current parliamentary term.