Lack of Proactive Officer Duties Drives a 30 % Higher Workplace Fatality Rate

Victoria’s workplace health and safety regulator, WorkSafe Victoria, recorded 12 workplace fatalities in the 12 months to 21 November 2025.

Twelve preventable deaths in one year, in industries where the hazards and controls are well known is an unacceptable toll by any measure. The causes remain unchanged: structural collapses, unguarded machinery, falls from height, fatigue-related vehicle incidents, and chemical explosions, concentrated in construction, agriculture, manufacturing, and transport/logistics.

Safe Work Australia data confirm Victoria’s traumatic fatality rate continues to exceed the national average and the rates in every other mainland jurisdiction.

In 2023 Victoria recorded 1.9 deaths per 100,000 workers against a national average of 1.4. Preliminary 2025 figures sit at ~1.8, while the rest of the country continues a clear downward trend.

Persistent and systemic failures by directors and managers

In every one of this year’s 12 fatalities, WorkSafe found clear breaches of the employer’s primary duties under sections 21–23 of the VIC OHS Act and found that officers had failed to take all reasonable measures to prevent those breaches. Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic). In each case officers failed to exercise due care, triggering both corporate liability (s.155) and deemed personal liability (s.144). Nine incidents have already resulted in charges, several under Victoria’s industrial manslaughter laws.

Accountability only after-the-fact

Sections 144–145 of the Victorian OHS Act impose no ongoing obligation whatsoever: they impose no positive duty, prescribe no steps, and create no obligation for officers to act unless and until after a worker has died and a corporate offence is proven.

The vague “all reasonable measures” test offers directors and senior managers almost unlimited room to claim ignorance or wave a dusty policy that was never implemented. In practice, these sections do not drive prevention; they merely provide a basis for punishment after the fact, and even then, only when WorkSafe has the resources to prosecute.

The Victorian framework is purely reactive: officer accountability arises only after a corporate breach has been proven and, in these cases, after a worker has died.

Positive duties under WHS Model Law

In every other mainland state and territory, section 27 of the model WHS Act imposes a positive, continuous duty on officers to exercise due diligence to ensure the business complies with its health and safety obligations. This duty exists whether or not any incident has occurred and requires officers to:

• acquire and keep up-to-date knowledge of work health and safety matters,

• gain an understanding of the nature of the operations and the hazards and risks associated with them,

• ensure the business has and uses appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise those risks,

• ensure processes exist for receiving, considering, and responding in a timely way to information about incidents, hazards, and risks,

• ensure the business has processes for complying with its duties and obligations, and

• verify that those resources and processes are actually being provided and used.

Regulators and courts in NSW, Queensland, and elsewhere routinely examine board minutes, risk registers, audit schedules, resource decisions, and verification reports — often months or years before any incident — to determine whether the officer met these requirements.

~30 % higher fatalities highlights legislative shortcomings

The persistent ~30 % higher fatality rate in Victoria compared with model WHS states — despite both jurisdictions facing the same industries and hazards — strongly correlates with the absence of a proactive officer due-diligence framework.

Every other mainland state has required directors and senior managers to demonstrate ongoing, verifiable safety governance since the Model WHS laws were enacted in 2011.

The evidence is undeniable: the absence of a positive officer due-diligence duty is a major driver of Victoria’s persistently elevated workplace death toll.

No matter where your organisation is headquartered or managed from, if your business also has operations in Victoria, the health and safety management system at your VIC locations must comply with Victoria State laws and State regulator initiatives. VIC is the only state left in Australia that is not on the Model WHS Laws introduced in 2011.

Despite similarities between VIC and other State jurisdictions, a management system based on Model WHS laws cannot be repurposed into a VIC OHS management system without major modifications.

Courtenell specialises in multi-jurisdictional safety governance. We offer targeted training for directors, CEOs, and senior leaders who manage operations in Victoria alongside model WHS states. Contact us for practical, jurisdiction-specific solutions.