Industrial Manslaughter in Australia: 9 Things Foreign Parents Miss
Groups with Australian entities tend to hold two beliefs about work health and safety there. That it is broadly similar to the British system because the language and legal tradition are familiar. And that industrial manslaughter is a heavy-industry issue.
The first is partly true and misleading. The second stopped being true while most foreign parents were not watching.
Between 2004 and late 2024, every Australian work health and safety jurisdiction introduced an industrial or workplace manslaughter offence. The last of them arrived in 2024, and the offence now applies across all of them, to persons conducting a business or undertaking and to their officers personally.
Nine things.
1. It exists everywhere now, and the last arrivals were recent
The Australian Capital Territory legislated first, in 2004. Queensland followed in 2017, Victoria and the Northern Territory in 2020, and Western Australia in 2022.
Then came a cluster. The Commonwealth offence, introduced through the Closing Loopholes legislation, took effect in July 2024. South Australia commenced in July 2024. New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, commenced in September 2024. Tasmania, the last jurisdiction, commenced in October 2024.
If your group last reviewed its Australian position before 2024, that review predates the offence in the jurisdictions containing most of the country's corporate headcount.
2. Officers are exposed personally, and that reaches people outside Australia
The point that changes who needs briefing.
The offence applies to a person conducting a business or undertaking and to officers of that PCBU. Officer is defined broadly under the model law framework, covering directors and senior executives who participate in decisions affecting a substantial part of the business.
That definition does not stop at the Australian border. A group executive in London or New York who makes decisions about budget, headcount, systems or priorities for the Australian entity may fall within it, and the personal due diligence duty on officers has always been non-delegable.
Combine that with the offence and the position is clear: the exposure is not confined to the Australian country manager.
3. The fault element differs by jurisdiction
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Where a group standard breaks down.
Most jurisdictions require that the PCBU or officer who owes a duty engages in conduct breaching that duty, and that the conduct causes a worker's death. Where they diverge is the fault test: some are framed around negligence, some around recklessness, some around gross negligence, and some combine them.
That variation matters for how you brief people. There is no single Australian threshold to describe, and a group note stating one is inaccurate somewhere.
4. Penalties vary enormously
Reported maximum penalties differ substantially across jurisdictions, with corporate maximums running into the tens of millions and individual maximums running to decades of imprisonment. The Northern Territory has been reported as allowing life imprisonment for individuals.
Confirm current figures through Australian advice rather than any summary, including this one. Several jurisdictions express corporate maximums in penalty units, which are indexed and change, so dollar conversions circulating in commentary go stale quickly.
The relevant point for a board is not the precise figure. It is that these are the most severe work health and safety penalties in the common law world, and they attach to individuals as well as entities.
5. The penalties cannot be insured
The provision that changes the risk calculus, and it is deliberate.
Several jurisdictions expressly prohibit insurance or indemnity arrangements covering work health and safety penalties, and Queensland's Act contains a specific prohibition on indemnifying any person for penalties under the industrial manslaughter provisions.
Cover for legal and defence costs is generally still permitted. The penalty itself is not transferable, by design, precisely to prevent organisations from treating it as a cost of doing business.
For a group whose risk framework assumes that financial consequences are ultimately insurable, this is a category that is not.
6. Who prosecutes is not the regulator everywhere
An operational difference that affects how a matter unfolds.
The arrangements differ markedly. Queensland established an independent statutory work health and safety prosecutor. New South Wales restricts industrial manslaughter prosecutions to the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Attorney-General, so the regulator cannot prosecute the offence directly. Western Australia similarly requires proceedings to be commenced by the DPP rather than the regulator. The Northern Territory requires the regulator to seek the DPP's views and consent, and Tasmania refers serious files to the DPP.
The practical implication is that an incident may move from a regulatory investigation into a criminal prosecution stream handled by a different body, on a different timeline, with different disclosure expectations.
7. Some jurisdictions have no limitation period
Reported for at least one jurisdiction, and worth establishing for each entity you operate.
Where no limitation period applies, a prosecution can be commenced long after the event, which changes how long the evidence of what you decided and why remains relevant. Records that would ordinarily have been disposed of under a corporate schedule may be the only account of a decision taken years earlier.
8. Victoria is not part of the harmonised scheme
The structural point groups most often miss.
Victoria never adopted the model work health and safety laws and operates under its own Occupational Health and Safety Act, with its workplace manslaughter offence sitting in that Act rather than in a WHS Act. The Commonwealth model text therefore does not describe the Victorian position.
A group with entities in Melbourne and Sydney is operating under two different statutory frameworks, not one framework with local variations.
9. What officers actually have to do
The constructive half, and it is the same discipline this series has described in Korea, New Zealand and South Africa.
The officer duty is a due diligence duty set out in the model work health and safety law, and its elements are specific: acquiring and keeping up to date knowledge of work health and safety matters, understanding the operations and their hazards, ensuring the business has appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise risks, ensuring processes exist for receiving and considering information about incidents and hazards and responding in a timely way, ensuring processes for compliance exist, and verifying the provision and use of those resources and processes.
Verification is the word that does the work. Receiving a favourable report is not verifying. Independent health and safety audits, with findings going to the officers directly rather than through the management line being assessed, is what a verification step looks like in practice.
What a group with Australian entities should do
| Action | Why |
|---|---|
| Identify your officers, including those outside Australia | The duty is personal and reaches group decision-makers |
| Brief them on the offence, not just the duty | Most were briefed before 2024, if at all |
| Map which jurisdictions you operate in | Fault elements, penalties and prosecutors differ |
| Treat Victoria separately | Different Act, different scheme |
| Check your indemnity assumptions | Penalties are not insurable |
| Establish a verification mechanism | The duty says verify, not receive |
| Review record retention | Limitation positions vary |
The first row is where to start, and it is a question for your company secretary as much as for health and safety.
The wider pattern
Australia is the most developed example of a trend this series has traced across several jurisdictions.
Korea's Serious Accidents Punishment Act provides for imprisonment of not less than one year for the responsible management personnel where a serious accident causes death, and extended to businesses with five to forty-nine employees in January 2024. New Zealand clarified its officer due diligence duty in its 2026 reform. South Africa places the primary duty on the person with overall management and control, requiring foreign-owned entities to identify who that actually is. Malaysia allows personal prosecution of directors where an offence is attributable to their neglect.
The common thread is that the question is no longer what the organisation must do. It is who, by name, carries it, whether they know, and whether they can show they verified rather than assumed. Holding that evidence across every entity in one register is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone. Marsh publishes a state-by-state overview of the Australian position.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite provides the independent verification that officer duties increasingly require, which is a different exercise from producing a management report. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years. Our health and safety consultants work extensively with finance and banking, legal and IT and software organisations with Australian operations.
Our global health and safety consultants establish which of your people carry personal duties in which jurisdictions, and our international health and safety consultants confirm what is outstanding locally.
If nobody in your group can name the officers of your Australian entity, or say when they were last briefed, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
