WHS Fines in Australia — National Overview

The model WHS Act establishes three categories of duty offence that apply across all harmonised jurisdictions — NSW, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT, the Northern Territory, and the Commonwealth. Category 1 covers reckless conduct causing risk of death or serious injury and carries the highest penalties. Category 2 addresses failures to comply with a health and safety duty that expose a person to risk of death, serious injury, or serious illness. Category 3 covers duty failures without the requirement that anyone was actually exposed to risk. While the category structure is consistent, the dollar value of maximum penalties differs between states because each jurisdiction sets its own penalty unit. For the 2025-26 financial year, NSW sets the penalty unit at $123.31, Queensland at $161.19, South Australia at $152.00, and Tasmania at $195.00. These differences mean that the same offence can attract materially different maximum penalties depending on where it occurs. Businesses operating across state borders must track penalty unit values in each jurisdiction to understand their exposure accurately.

Industrial manslaughter is now an offence in Queensland, Victoria, the ACT, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, and New South Wales. South Australia and Tasmania have not yet enacted standalone industrial manslaughter provisions, although deaths can still be prosecuted under Category 1 or general criminal law in those jurisdictions. Maximum penalties vary significantly. Queensland introduced industrial manslaughter first in 2017 with a maximum of $10,036,350 for a body corporate and 20 years' imprisonment for an individual. New South Wales followed with a $20,000,000 corporate maximum and 25 years' imprisonment. Victoria's provision under the Workplace Safety Legislation and Other Matters Amendment Act 2023 carries a maximum of $18,271,400 for a body corporate and 25 years' imprisonment. The ACT applies a maximum of 20 years' imprisonment for individuals. Western Australia's provision under the Work Health and Safety Act 2020 carries a maximum of $5,000,000 for a body corporate and 20 years' imprisonment. The trend across Australian parliaments is clear — every remaining jurisdiction without industrial manslaughter is under pressure to introduce it.

Comparing maximum penalties across jurisdictions reveals significant variation despite harmonisation. For Category 1 offences involving reckless conduct, body corporate maximums range from approximately $3,463,000 in lower-penalty-unit states to $18,513,000 in NSW. Individual maximums range from approximately $693,000 to $3,085,500 with imprisonment terms of five years. For Category 2 offences, body corporate maximums range from approximately $1,039,000 to $1,731,500 and individual maximums from approximately $207,000 to $346,300. Victoria operates outside the harmonised framework and sets its own penalty structure under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 and the amended Workplace Safety Legislation Act 2023. Western Australia adopted the model WHS Act in 2022 but with its own penalty unit values. The practical consequence for multi-state operators is that compliance standards must meet the requirements of the strictest jurisdiction in which the business operates, not the lowest common denominator.

Enforcement activity has intensified across all Australian jurisdictions since 2023. SafeWork NSW issued more than 12,000 improvement and prohibition notices in the 2023-24 financial year and commenced over 140 prosecutions. Queensland's Office of Industrial Relations has increased its focus on psychosocial hazards and silica exposure, with several prosecutions exceeding $500,000 in penalties. SafeWork SA secured an $840,000 penalty against a manufacturing business for multiple safety failures in 2024. Victoria's WorkSafe has pursued several industrial manslaughter investigations following the commencement of the new provisions. Across all jurisdictions, regulators are targeting three common themes — inadequate risk assessment documentation, failure to implement controls specified in codes of practice, and insufficient health monitoring for hazardous substance exposure. The introduction of 88 new penalty offences under the WHS Regulation 2025 gives regulators additional tools to prosecute specific failures that were previously addressed only through general duty provisions. Businesses that have not updated their safety management systems since the new regulation commenced are operating with elevated prosecution risk.