Following Workplace Health and Safety Requirements on Site

About this course.

This course covers the health and safety duties a worker holds under Australia's work health and safety framework, and the everyday practices that put those duties into action. It explains how to find, read and follow site WHS requirements — site rules, inductions, safe work method statements (SWMS), safe work procedures, signage and labels — and why those requirements exist. It looks honestly at the pull of shortcuts and the risk they carry. It sets out your right and responsibility to report hazards, incidents and near misses and to raise concerns, and it explains the right to stop or refuse unsafe work in appropriate circumstances and how issue resolution generally works. Throughout, it stresses the value of consultation and speaking up, and it flags how these duties apply differently across Australian jurisdictions.

Duties are framed using the model work health and safety (WHS) laws developed by Safe Work Australia. Safe Work Australia is the national policy body: it writes and maintains the model WHS Act, model WHS Regulations and model Codes of Practice, but it does not enforce them. Each state and territory enacts its own WHS laws and enforces them through its own regulator. Victoria has not adopted the model laws and instead operates under its Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act 2004 and OHS Regulations, enforced by WorkSafe Victoria. Western Australia adopted the model WHS laws more recently than the eastern states. Because of this, the duties described here must always be checked against the law and regulator where you actually work.