Industrial Manslaughter in Australia | A Guide for Officers and Boards

Industrial manslaughter is now a criminal offence in every Australian jurisdiction under work health & safety law. For the first time, a mine operator has been convicted and fined $7 million. The message from the courts is now unambiguous: organisational negligence that kills a worker is a crime, not a regulatory breach.

This guide is written for officers and board members who are  the people who carry personal duties under Australian work health and safety legislation and who face criminal exposure when those duties are not met. It explains the law, what the courts have actually done with it, and what an officer or board must do when a workplace fatality occurs.

What is industrial manslaughter?

Industrial manslaughter is a criminal offence committed when a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU), or an officer of a PCBU, causes the death of a worker through conduct that negligently breaches a health and safety duty. The offence does not require proof of intent. Negligence alone conduct that falls so far below the standard of a reasonable person as to involve a risk of death is sufficient.

The concept is straightforward. Where an organisation’s failure to manage a safety risk results in a worker’s death, and that failure is serious enough to constitute criminal negligence, the organisation — and potentially its officers personally  can be charged and convicted of a criminal offence. The consequence is not a fine under work health and safety legislation. It is a criminal conviction and penalties that can include decades of imprisonment for individuals.

Australian jurisdictions use slightly different language to describe the fault element. Most require proof of negligence — conduct that falls well below the standard of a reasonable person in the circumstances. Some require gross negligence. None require proof that the accused intended to cause death or serious harm. The prosecution must prove that the negligent conduct caused the death and that the accused owed a health and safety duty to the deceased.

Which Australian jurisdictions have industrial manslaughter laws?

Every Australian state and territory, and the Commonwealth, has an industrial manslaughter offence. National coverage was completed in 2024 when NSW, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Commonwealth enacted the offence. The ACT was the first, in 2004.

The following table sets out the legislative provision, fault element, maximum penalties, and commencement date in each jurisdiction. Maximum penalties vary significantly — NSW and Victoria carry the highest maximum fines for organisations ($20 million and $21.08 million respectively) while the NT allows life imprisonment for individuals.

Note on mining legislation: In Queensland, industrial manslaughter provisions also appear in the Coal Mining Safety and Health Act 1999 (Qld) (ss 48A–48D) and the Mining and Quarrying Safety and Health Act 1999 (Qld) (ss 45A–45D), extending the offence to cover mine operators and site senior executives under mining-specific legislation. The Mastermyne/Crinum prosecution was brought under the WHS Act 2011 (Qld) as amended in 2020 to extend industrial manslaughter to the mining industry.

Who can be charged with industrial manslaughter?

Both the organisation (as PCBU) and individual officers can be charged. A PCBU includes any entity that conducts a business or undertaking companies, partnerships, and sole traders. An officer is a person who makes, or participates in making, decisions that affect the whole or a substantial part of the business.

The organisation as PCBU

The primary target of industrial manslaughter prosecutions in Australia has been the organisation. In every conviction to date, the PCBU was the entity found guilty of the criminal offence. The organisation’s conduct is assessed as a whole  its policies, practices, culture, and management decisions are all relevant to whether its conduct was negligent.

Where the PCBU is a body corporate, the conduct of its employees, agents, and officers is imputed to the company under the corporate liability provisions of the relevant legislation. This means that a company can be found criminally negligent even if no single individual’s conduct was negligent — the collective failures of multiple people and systems can together constitute criminal negligence.

Officers | Personal criminal liability

An officer of a PCBU can be charged with industrial manslaughter in most jurisdictions either as the PCBU itself (where there is no corporate separation, such as a sole trader) or as an officer whose failure to take reasonable care contributed to the PCBU’s contravention.

The officer duty under Australian work health and safety legislation requires officers to exercise due diligence to ensure that the PCBU complies with its duties. Due diligence means taking reasonable steps to acquire and keep up-to-date knowledge of work health and safety matters, to understand the nature of the operations and the associated hazards and risks, to ensure that the PCBU has appropriate resources and processes to manage safety, and to verify that those resources and processes are being used.

The distinction between WHS Category 1 and industrial manslaughter

Industrial manslaughter and Category 1 offences (reckless conduct) both carry severe penalties, but they are distinct offences.

Category 1 — reckless conduct: The accused, without reasonable excuse, engages in conduct that exposes a person to a risk of death or serious injury, being reckless as to that risk. Requires proof of recklessness — a conscious disregard of a known risk. Maximum penalty for an individual: $300,000 or 5 years imprisonment (Qld model).

Industrial manslaughter: Requires proof of negligence — that the conduct fell so far below the standard of a reasonable person as to involve a risk of causing death. Does NOT require proof that the risk was known or consciously disregarded. Requires that death actually resulted. Maximum penalty for an individual: up to 25 years imprisonment (Vic, NSW).

In R v Brisbane Auto Recycling [2020] QDC 113, the company was convicted of industrial manslaughter while its two directors were convicted of the lesser Category 1 offence of reckless conduct. The directors received suspended sentences; the company was fined $3 million. This illustrates that even where organisational conduct meets the criminal negligence threshold, individual officers may face different charges depending on the evidence of their personal knowledge and conduct.

What convictions have Australian courts recorded?

Australian courts have recorded five PCBU convictions and two individual convictions for industrial or workplace manslaughter since 2020 all involving mobile plant or structural failure. With Mastermyne, the total PCBU conviction count reaches six. Fines have ranged from $1.5 million to $7 million for organisations. Two individuals have served or are serving custodial sentences. Penalties are rising  with the Victorian Court of Appeal in 2025 more than doubled the original LH Holding fine on the grounds it was manifestly inadequate and failed to reflect general deterrence.

Note on evidentiary weight: The Brisbane Auto Recycling, Jeffrey Owen, LH Holding, and Narellan Pools cases are sourced from published judgments and official OWHSP and regulator publications. The Jeffrey Owen appeal was lodged in 2022; the outcome was not confirmed from available sources at the date of this guide and will be updated when confirmed. The Mastermyne Crinum Operations Pty Ltd sentencing (Brisbane DC, May 2026) is sourced from ASX company announcements and Mining and Energy Union press releases. We note the formal judgment was not published on Queensland Judgments at the time of writing. This guide will be updated when the formal Mastermyne citation is available.

Case study: Mastermyne/Crinum  | What went wrong

The Mastermyne/Crinum conviction is the most significant industrial manslaughter decision in Australian mining history. It is the first conviction of a mine operator in Queensland and the first sentence recorded under Queensland industrial manslaughter laws. The facts reveal a pattern of systemic failure that officers and boards in any high-hazard industry would recognise.

What happened

On 14 September 2021, experienced underground miner Graham Dawson, aged 62, was killed at the Crinum coal mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin when the roof of an underground tunnel collapsed and crushed him. Henare Morgan, aged 25, was seriously injured in the same event. Both were carrying out roof support works at the time. It took four days to recover Graham Dawson’s body from the site.

The mine was owned by Japanese firm Sojitz Corporation and operated by Mastermyne Crinum Operations Pty Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mastermyne Group Limited, listed on the ASX. The Mining and Energy Union and the Office of the Work Health and Safety Prosecutor recommended prosecution after investigations identified that Mastermyne’s strata control systems were inadequate.

Following a jury trial at the District Court of Emerald before Judge Jeffrey Clarke, Mastermyne Crinum Operations was found guilty of industrial manslaughter by a majority verdict of 11:1 in March 2026 — the first successful application of industrial manslaughter charges against a mining company since the laws were extended to the Queensland mining industry in 2020. The company was subsequently sentenced in the Brisbane District Court and ordered to pay a $7 million fine plus $300,000 in regulator’s costs. An appeal has been lodged.

What the judge said

In handing down the sentence, Judge Clarke said Graham Dawson’s death was avoidable. He identified an alarming lack of consultation about the company’s decision to change its methods of underground strata support, and found there had been clear warning signs about the risk in the period before the incident.

Six systemic failures  | Lessons for officers and boards

An analysis of the publicly reported facts of the Mastermyne/Crinum case identifies six systemic failure patterns that are directly relevant to officer due diligence obligations. None of these failures required exceptional bad luck or novel circumstances to occur. All are recognisable in organisations that have allowed safety systems to degrade.

• Management of change failure. The approved method of underground strata support was abandoned without the change going through a formal management of change process. When the method changed, the supporting risk assessment, controls, and approvals did not change with it. Officers who do not verify that management of change systems are functioning allow this failure to occur silently.
• Information flow failure. The company’s geotechnical engineers were not informed of the changed conditions in the relevant underground area. Expert advice that existed within the organisation was not connected to the decision-making that affected the work. Officers must verify that specialist expertise is integrated into operational decisions, not held in a separate silo.
• Precursor events ignored. There were warning signs before the fatal event. Events that signal elevated risk  near misses, deteriorating conditions, worker concerns were not used to trigger a reassessment of the hazard. A functioning safety system treats precursor events as data, not nuisance.
• Paper-to-practice gap. The documented safety management system did not reflect what was actually happening at the mine face. Safe work method statements and procedures existed on paper; the practices that workers actually followed were different. Officers who rely on document audits without field verification do not know what their workers are actually doing.
• Episodic expert engagement. The company’s geotechnical consultants were engaged intermittently rather than maintained as an ongoing presence during a period of high geological risk. Specialist expertise in high-hazard environments is not a project resource — it is an operational safety control. When the risk is present, the expertise must be present.
• Recommissioning risk underestimated. The work was carried out in a section of tunnel that had been decommissioned and then recommissioned. Decommissioned workings carry elevated geological risk — the conditions that led to decommissioning, and any changes during the period of non-use, require fresh assessment before work resumes. This is a common failure in underground mining and in any industry where assets are returned to service after a period of inactivity.

The insurance question

Following the Mastermyne sentencing, reporting noted that the company had indicated it may partially mitigate the financial penalty through its insurance programme. This observation has prompted active regulatory discussion in Australia about whether insurance should be permitted to cover industrial manslaughter penalties.

The current position is that whether a penalty can be covered by insurance depends on the policy terms and jurisdiction. Officers and boards should not assume that insurance eliminates financial exposure from an industrial manslaughter conviction. More importantly, the existence of insurance is not a defence to the criminal charge and does not affect the recorded conviction or the imprisonment risk for individual officers.

What must an officer or board do after a workplace fatality?

A workplace fatality triggers immediate obligations that run in parallel. Regulatory notification must occur immediately. The scene must be preserved. Legal counsel must be engaged without delay. The officer’s personal due diligence obligations continue — how the organisation responds to the fatality is itself part of the evidence of whether those obligations were met.

Immediate steps – the first 24 hours

• Secure the scene. Under s 39 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld) and equivalent provisions in other jurisdictions, the person with management or control of the workplace must not disturb the scene of the incident except to assist an injured person, make the site safe, or comply with a direction from an emergency service. This duty applies to physical evidence and, under December 2025 amendments to the model WHS Act (to be verified for jurisdiction-specific adoption), extends to digital records. Establish who has authority to make decisions about the scene and ensure that person is contactable.
• Notify the regulator. Workplace fatalities are notifiable incidents requiring immediate notification — in most jurisdictions, as soon as reasonably practicable after becoming aware of the incident. This is not a next-business-day obligation. SafeWork NSW, WorkSafe Victoria, Workplace Health and Safety Queensland, and their equivalents all have 24-hour notification lines. In the mining sector, the relevant regulator in Queensland is Resources Safety and Health Queensland (RSHQ).
• Engage legal counsel immediately. The decision about what to say to the regulator, how to cooperate with the investigation, and whether to exercise any available rights requires legal advice before the organisation takes any significant step. The organisation’s workers and officers should be advised not to make statements to regulators without legal counsel present unless there is an overriding obligation to do so.
• Activate the incident response plan. If the organisation has a major incident response plan, activate it now. If it does not have one, identify who is responsible for each of the following: media statements, worker support, family notification, insurance notification, board notification, and regulatory liaison.
• Notify the board. A workplace fatality is a material event for any organisation. Board members carry personal officer duties. They need to know immediately so that they can begin to assess their own obligations and exposures.

Engaging an independent WHS investigator

An independent WHS investigation conducted promptly after a workplace fatality serves multiple functions. It establishes the facts before evidence degrades. It demonstrates to the regulator that the organisation is taking the incident seriously and is committed to understanding its causes. It provides the organisation’s legal counsel with an evidence base from which to assess the organisation’s exposure. And it generates the corrective action findings that demonstrate, to a court if necessary, that the organisation responded to the event with the rigour appropriate to its seriousness.

The investigation must be conducted by a person or organisation that is genuinely independent of the entity under investigation. An internal review, or a review conducted by a consultant with an ongoing relationship with the organisation, will not carry the same credibility with a regulator or a court.

Safetysure conducts independent workplace fatality investigations across Australia. Investigations are conducted by qualified consultants with no employment or contractual relationship with the client organisation. Reports are produced under an ISO 9001-certified quality management framework. Safetysure can mobilise nationally, including to remote and regional locations.

Contact: 1300 087 888 | admin@safetysure.com.au | safetysure.com.au/incident-investigation-services/

What does officer due diligence require before a fatality occurs?

The officer due diligence obligation under s 27 of the model WHS Act is prospective it requires officers to take active steps to ensure the organisation is managing safety risks effectively, not to wait for something to go wrong. The Mastermyne conviction demonstrates that systemic failures accumulate over time and that officers who were not paying attention to safety governance have no defence when a fatality results.

Due diligence requires an officer to take reasonable steps to do all of the following.

• Acquire and maintain current knowledge of work health and safety matters relevant to the organisation’s operations. This includes knowledge of the hazards specific to the industry, the applicable legislative obligations, and current practice in risk management. An officer cannot delegate knowledge.
• Understand the nature of the operations and the associated hazards and risks. Board-level knowledge of the principal hazard register, the critical controls for each principal hazard, and the assurance activities that verify those controls are functioning is not optional  it is a legal requirement.
• Ensure the organisation has appropriate resources financial, human, and technical  to eliminate or minimise risks so far as is reasonably practicable. Resource constraints do not excuse non-compliance with safety obligations, but an officer who has made genuine, documented efforts to allocate adequate resources is in a materially different position from one who has not.
• Ensure the organisation has processes for receiving and considering information about incidents, hazards, risks, and near misses, and for responding to that information. The Mastermyne precursor events failure is a direct example of what happens when this process does not exist or is not functioning.
• Ensure the organisation implements processes for complying with its duties and obligations under the legislation, and verify that those processes are being used. Document review alone is not verification. Field-based assurance going to where the work is done and checking that documented procedures are being followed  is what due diligence actually requires.

A specific warning from Narellan Pools: the court found that Narellan Pools had engaged qualified safety consultants to identify workplace risks, had WHS systems in place, and was otherwise regarded as a responsible corporate citizen. None of that prevented a conviction for industrial manslaughter. The consultants had not identified the crane-pedestrian interaction risk at any site. The lesson for officers is direct: engaging consultants does not discharge the due diligence obligation. Officers must verify that the consultants’ scope was adequate, that identified risks were acted on, and that residual risks were reassessed. Delegation to consultants without verification is not due diligence.

Your might like to read: Company Charged with Industrial Manslaughter

A question for officers and board members

Can you answer yes to all of the following right now?

1. I know what the three most serious safety risks in our operations are.
2. I know what the critical controls for each of those risks are.
3. I know how the organisation verifies that those controls are in place and functioning.
4. I have seen evidence within the last 12 months that those verification activities are being carried out.
5. I know what our organisation would do in the first 24 hours following a workplace fatality.

If you cannot answer yes to all five, you are carrying unmanaged personal risk. Safetysure works with boards and officers to build the safety governance structures and assurance processes that make these answers accessible. Contact us at 1300 087 888.

What is the sentencing trend?

Penalties are increasing. The Victorian Court of Appeal’s April 2025 decision increasing the LH Holding fine from $1.3 million to $3 million on the grounds it was manifestly inadequate — signals that courts will not accept fines that fail to reflect the seriousness of the offence and the principle of general deterrence. The Mastermyne $7 million fine is the largest yet recorded in Australia. The trend is upward.

Four principles emerge from the decisions to date.

• The financial capacity of the defendant does not prevent the imposition of an appropriate fine. The Victorian Court of Appeal stated this explicitly in the LH Holding appeal, overturning the trial judge’s partial reliance on the company’s financial circumstances. A small company is not protected from a significant fine merely because the fine may force it into administration.
• General deterrence is a dominant sentencing purpose. Courts are acutely conscious that industrial manslaughter convictions are relatively rare and that each sentence must send a signal to other organisations and officers. A sentence that does not deter is not adequate, regardless of the circumstances of the individual defendant.
• Early guilty pleas attract significant discounts. In both Brisbane Auto Recycling and LH Holding, the courts noted the substantial reduction available for an early guilty plea. In LH Holding, Justice Croucher confirmed the fine would have been $2 million but for the guilty plea — a discount of $700,000. This creates a material strategic consideration for organisations facing prosecution.
• Individual officers remain at risk of imprisonment. Jeffrey Owen served 18 months in custody (an appeal was lodged — outcome unconfirmed at the date of this guide). The suspended sentences given to the Brisbane Auto Recycling directors were possible partly because of specific mitigating circumstances — risk of deportation, no prior convictions. The Narellan Pools crane operator received five years imprisonment suspended after 18 months. Future prosecutions of officers with fewer mitigating factors may result in unsuspended terms. In jurisdictions with maximum sentences of 20–25 years, the sentencing range available to courts is vast.

A further signal of prosecutorial intent: NSW has established a dedicated Industrial Manslaughter Unit within the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute industrial manslaughter offences. This is the first jurisdiction in Australia to create a standing prosecutorial unit focused exclusively on this offence. Officers and boards operating in NSW should treat this as a concrete indicator of enforcement priority, not legislative symbolism.

How does Safetysure help?

Safetysure provides independent workplace fatality investigation, post-incident regulatory response support, and officer due diligence advisory services across Australia. All investigation services operate under an ISO 9001-certified quality management framework.

Safetysure’s investigation practice is led by John Ninness, a WHS professional with more than 30 years of experience across mining, construction, manufacturing, ports, and government. Safetysure has investigated major incidents including fire and explosion events, electrical infrastructure failures, and incidents involving mobile and fixed plant. Safetysure operates nationally and can mobilise to remote and regional locations.

Services relevant to industrial manslaughter risk include:

• Independent workplace fatality and serious incident investigation — evidence-based, methodology-rigorous, defensible to regulators and courts
• Independent review of completed investigation reports — assessing methodology, causal analysis depth, and report defensibility
• Post-incident regulatory response support — working alongside legal counsel to manage the organisation’s response to regulatory investigation
• Officer due diligence advisory — helping officers and boards understand their personal obligations and build the governance structures that satisfy them
• Critical risk and principal hazard management — developing the assurance frameworks that give officers evidence that critical controls are in place

Contact Safetysure: 1300 087 888 | admin@safetysure.com.au

Investigation services: safetysure.com.au/incident-investigation-services/

Disclaimer and currency notice

This guide is current as at 16 May 2026. Industrial manslaughter law is developing rapidly across Australian jurisdictions. Legislative provisions, penalty figures, and case outcomes may change. The guide does not constitute legal advice. Officers and boards facing a workplace fatality should obtain immediate legal advice from a specialist work health and safety lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction. Safetysure provides independent WHS investigation and regulatory response services — it does not provide legal advice.

Case citations: R v Brisbane Auto Recycling Pty Ltd & Ors [2020] QDC 113; R v Jeffrey Owen [2022] QDCSR 168 (appeal lodged outcome unconfirmed); Narellan Pools Pty Ltd (DC Brisbane, 14 Jun 2024)  sourced from OWHSP published court report; R v LH Holding Management Pty Ltd & Hanna [2024] VSC 90 (appeal decision: Victorian Court of Appeal, April 2025). The Mastermyne Crinum Operations Pty Ltd sentencing (Brisbane DC, May 2026) is sourced from ASX company announcements and Mining and Energy Union press releases. The formal citation was not published on Queensland Judgments at the date of this guide. This guide will be updated when the citation is available.