• Workplace rights and obligations
  • General information
  • Who has obligations and what are they?
• Meeting your obligations
• Failing to meet your obligations
• Right of entry
• Provision Improvement Notice (PIN)
• Workplace amenities
• First aid
• Personal protective equipment
• Internal investigations

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Meeting your obligations

How to meet your obligations

You can meet your workplace health and safety obligations by following the law.

• If a regulation or ministerial notice tells you how to prevent or minimise exposure to a risk, you must comply
• If a regulation or ministerial notice prohibits exposure to a risk, you must comply
• If a code of practice states a way of managing exposure to a risk, you must adopt and follow that approach or one that gives you at least the same level of protection against the risk

If there is no regulation, ministerial notice or code of practice to guide you in managing a particular risk or preventing exposure to it, you still have a workplace health and safety obligation. You can meet your obligation by taking reasonable precautions and exercising due care in your work activities.

Otherwise you are breaching the law. Penalties may be imposed for breaching the workplace health and safety laws.

See the How to Manage Work Health and Safety Risks Code of Practice 2011 for further information.

Protection for speaking up

As a workplace health and safety officer, workplace health and safety representative or worker, you may have a concern about a workplace health and safety issue at your workplace.

The Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995 (PDF, 766 kB) encourages you to speak up, protecting you from victimisation.

Amendments to the Act in 2003 particularly protect:

• workplace health and safety officers
• workplace health and safety representatives and
• members of a workplace health and safety committee.

By law, an employer cannot dismiss or victimise you for:

• making a complaint about an issue concerning exposure to a risk of illness of injury; or
• contacting or helping a workplace health and safety inspector.

See s174 of the Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995 (PDF, 766 kB) for more information.