WHS activities and outcomes

The Work Health and Safety Year in Review highlights Comcare’s compliance and enforcement activities to promote and enable safe and healthy work across the Commonwealth jurisdiction. The latest edition provides an overview of our regulatory activities for 2023 including work health and safety (WHS) incidents, inspectorate activities, monitoring and compliance activities, education and engagement and other programs of work.

Reviewing our past performance allows us to improve our services and to identify and address the needs of our scheme. This includes looking at emerging evidence to validate our regulatory approach or to change course where necessary.

During 2023, significant changes to Commonwealth work health and safety laws came into effect. In April 2023, WHS regulations were amended to prescribe how employers must identify and manage hazards and risks to workers’ psychological health and safety. The changes define important terms such as ‘psychosocial hazard’ and ‘psychosocial risk’ and identify how to manage these risks. There were also changes to offences and penalties under the WHS Act. The Work Health and Safety Amendment Act 2022 came into effect in September 2023 with measures that broaden the Category 1 offence to include negligence as a fault element.

• Download the Work Health and Safety Year in Review 2023 (PDF, 3.9 MB)