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Abstract
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This legislative note traces the recent pattern of amendments to five of Australia's nine work health and safety statutes to include the crime of manslaughter.
Australia has a federal system of government. Because there is no legislative power to legislate for work health and safety in the Australian federal constitution, the Commonwealth (federal) government and each of the six state and two territory governments have enacted their own work health and safety legislation. Until recently, Australian work health and safety regulation has largely followed the approach taken in the United Kingdom (UK), originally in the nineteenth- century UK Factories Acts, and from the late 1970s, in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (UK) (see Johnstone, Bluff and Clayton 2012, chap. 2). From 2008 to 2011, there was a process of harmonizing the Australian work health and safety statutes, which culminated in the development of a Model Work Health and Safety Act 2010 (Model Act) which has been adopted by each of the Australian jurisdictions apart from Victoria, enacting a Work Health and Safety Act. This note will refer to these statutes collectively as the "Work Health and Safety Acts.
Language: en |