Australia's senior managers will increasingly face hefty OHS fines and even imprisonment as regulators and law makers attempt to tackle what is one of the highest workplace fatality rates in the developed world, according to Norton Rose Lawyers partner Michael Tooma.
"We repeatedly pat our backs for our health and safety performance, and I don't know why," Tooma told delegates at a seminar on corporate manslaughter laws in Sydney this morning.
On average, more than one worker is killed on the job every day, he says. There is a global trend towards holding those in senior managerial positions to account for safety breaches, and Australia is beginning to follow it.
Tooma's comments follow the recent conviction of Victorian employer Orbit Drilling Pty Ltd and its managing director for "recklessly endangering" a worker, who was killed when the Mack truck he was driving overturned on a steep off-road slope.
They were fined a combined total of $870,000 after the County Court found the truck's brakes were in deplorable condition, and the 21-year worker - who had held his truck licence for little more than two weeks - was inadequately trained.
An Orbit Drilling supervisor has also been charged over the incident, and could face up to five years in jail.
According to Tooma, corporate manslaughter or similar provisions have been "on the statutory books for a long time", but never used - until now.
The Orbit Drilling case was the first conviction under s32 of the Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, he says, but "you're going to see a gravitation towards the use of those kinds of prosecutions".
Safety must be more than "bolt on"
High-profile London QC Gerard Forlin, who was the guest speaker at the seminar, says in Canada safety is the first agenda on business meetings, because managing directors are directly responsible for OHS outcomes.
In Canada, the UK (which has recently enacted the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007) and many other countries, the "board" must be able to prove - in the event of an OHS incident - that it knows "what's going on" with safety, and that safety is a core part of business, as opposed to a "bolt on".
The new corporate manslaughter laws in Britain, Forlin says, have dispensed with the need "to find a controlling or directing mind that is also personally guilty" of a breach.
In the past, managing directors of smaller companies were ending up in prison over workplace fatalities, while larger faceless organisations were escaping conviction for similar breaches, he says.
But now boards - and the "suits" that sit on them - can and have been held to account.
Australia will follow this lead, Tooma says.
"It's a problem of our own making," he says. Our high per capita workplace fatality rate, and the recent spate of on-the-job deaths in Western Australia, Victoria and other jurisdictions, have added "further fuel to the fire".
Safety For Life - Safety Business Review
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