Understanding Criminal Liability for Workplace Harm in Australia: The Reasonably Practicable Standard

Courts in Australia routinely prosecute workplace harm as criminal conduct. Leaders, officers, and organisations are held accountable not only for what they did, but for what they failed to foresee, prevent, or control. This book examines how courts determine criminal responsibility after workplace harm, tracing the judicial reasoning that separates conviction from acquittal.

The book is structured around real, publicly available court decisions and prosecution outcomes and cases related to workplace safety drawn from jurisdictions across Australia. It covers three categories of prosecution: fatalities and industrial manslaughter cases, where physical harm exposes systemic failure; officer prosecutions, where distance, delegation, and governance are tested against statutory duties; and psychosocial prosecutions, where courts assess culture, workload, and behaviour as safety systems capable of causing harm. Each chapter analyses a specific case, tracing the prosecution's argument, the defence position, the judicial reasoning, and the outcome. The book's central question is one that practitioners regularly face but rarely have answered with precision: why do prosecutions succeed in some cases and fail in others? The answer is that courts apply the concept of reasonably practicable with remarkable consistency, and this book makes those patterns visible and accessible to every person with a duty of care.

Understanding Criminal Liability for Workplace Harm in Australia: The Reasonably Practicable Stanadard has been written for safety leaders, officers, directors, and regulators as well as lawyers, who make decisions under uncertainty and who may later find those decisions scrutinised in court.

Tom Bourne is an Australian work health and safety professional with more than two decades of experience advising organisations on risk management, safety culture, and legal accountability. His work spans high-hazard industries including construction, manufacturing, resources, and professional services. He is the host of Voices from the Edge, a podcast exploring the human dimensions of workplace harm through conversations with regulators, legal practitioners, frontline workers, and organisational leaders. His approach to safety is built on first principles: understanding how courts interpret duty, how organisations create the conditions for harm, and how leaders at every level can think more clearly about decisions that will later be scrutinised. He is a recognised voice in the Australian WHS community.