• ​​In October 2023, the NSW Government announced that it would introduce industrial manslaughter laws with severe penalties for serious work health and safety breaches that result in death.

• ​In the general criminal law, there is an offence of manslaughter by criminal negligence, which has a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment. In NSW, it appears that there has only been one successful prosecution of this offence in the context of a workplace death.

• ​The most serious offence in the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) is the Category 1 offence of engaging in conduct with gross negligence or recklessness that exposes an individual to a risk of death or serious injury or illness. The maximum penalty is 5 years imprisonment for an individual and a fine of $4 million for a corporation. From 1 July 2024, the maximum penalty will increase to 10 years imprisonment for an individual and $10.4 million for a corporation.

• ​Since 2012, there have been 4 successful prosecutions of Category 1 offences in NSW – all involved a corporation rather than an individual. The maximum penalty imposed for this offence was a fine of $2.025 million.

• ​In 2018 a Senate committee report on industrial deaths and a national review of work health and safety laws recommended introducing a new offence of industrial manslaughter.  In contrast, Safe Work Australia’s 2019 advice to ministers did not recommend introducing this offence.  

• ​The main argument for industrial manslaughter laws is that existing offences are inadequate for deterring and punishing grossly negligent safety breaches that result in a workplace death. Critics of these laws argue that existing offences are sufficient and that enacting new outcome-based offences interferes with the risk-based preventative framework of work health and safety laws.

• ​Since 2017, 6 states and territories have introduced industrial manslaughter offences into their work health and safety laws. These offences are similar to the Category 1 offence but only apply where there has been a workplace death and have much higher maximum penalties such as 25 years imprisonment.​

• ​Since 2017, it appears that there have been 4 successful prosecutions for industrial manslaughter in other states and territories.  Two of these cases have been finalised. In one, an individual was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment, suspended after 18 months; and in the other a corporation was fined $3 million.​