Last week SafetyNet reported on Victorian Metal Traders and the $35,000 fine it received after an employee was seriously injured by a forklift in their scrap metal yard. The company pleaded guilty to failing their primary duty to provide a safe workplace. Despite having a procedure in place that identified the risks of vehicle/pedestrian interactions, no controls were in place nor was the procedure adequately communicated to the employees. The company did not have an adequate traffic management plan in place to ensure separation of pedestrians and mobile equipment.
Looking around the country, we see employers in similar cases being subjected to much higher penalties. One recent example comes from NSW, where Steel-Line Garage Doors Australia Pty Ltd has been fined $450,000 after a worker was seriously injured when they were struck by a forklift. The company pleaded guilty to a failure to comply with their primary duty to provide a safe workplace. Despite having a truck load/unload procedure in place, it was not adequately implemented, enforced or provided to workers. The company did not have an adequate traffic management plan in place to ensure separation of pedestrians and mobile equipment.
Based on the information presented in reports of both prosecutions the cases appear to be substantively the same – so, how have 2 seemingly similar cases resulted in such different penalties?
In February 2025 the Sentencing Advisory Council (SAC) released a report to the Victorian Government making 12 recommendations for reform regarding the sentencing of OHS offences in Victoria. This included significantly increasing maximum penalties for breaching OHS duties in line with community expectations. The Victorian Government is yet to provide a response to this report.
Whilst we wait for a response, we continue to see Victorian employers receiving penalties that appear out of step with those issued in other Australian jurisdictions and with community expectations. As evidenced above, prosecutions of employers for similar offences in other States have resulted in fines of significantly higher value.
In both of these cases the employer had the same duty – to ensure that employees and other persons are not exposed to risks to their health and safety. Both companies were aware of the hazards arising from people and mobile equipment operating in the same space. Both companies had adequate resources to manage health and safety in their workplaces. Both companies had access to free guidance from their State workplace safety regulator. Both companies’ failures to adequately manage traffic in their workplace resulted in a worker sustaining serious injury.
But the companies received vastly different penalties.
Ensuring that workers can go home safely to their families at night is the greatest duty that an employer has. Where employers fail in this obligation, workers are injured, lives are lost, and families are devastated. Where workers are hurt or killed at work there is an expectation of justice. The people responsible for the harm must face justice and ensure that no other worker is harmed in this way again.
VTHC wants to see the quantum of the fine sufficient to present as a real burden on the offender and better ensure that the principle of deterrence can be met. Deterrence is only possible when the fear of an outcome encourages behavioural change, and currently, Victorian fines do not accomplish this.
The SAC’s recommendations from their review of the sentencing of OHS offences in Victoria include a fivefold increase in maximum penalties for companies and individuals who breach their health and safety duties.
The SAC also recommends new mechanisms to improve accountability for penalties imposed, including making more company directors personally liable for fines in appropriate circumstances, and developing a world-first legislated sentencing guideline to include in the Occupational Health and Safety Act. That guideline would provide courts with guidance on how to calibrate penalties to the relative financial circumstances of offenders and would include ranges of indicative sentences based on key factors in the case, such as the fact that someone was killed or injured as a result of the offence.