Safety watchdog ignored warnings at site where worker died

The NSW government has bowed to pressure to hold an inquiry into the state’s workplace safety regulator SafeWork NSW, after revelations it was slow to act on safety warnings.

The alleged tardy response from the regulator includes a case where SafeWork NSW delayed inspecting a site when a man died after a 23 tonne skip loader reversed over him.

It had received four separate alerts about waste management company Aussie Skips two years before the fatality, including two a month before the tragic event, a parliamentary committee heard on Friday.

SafeWork received a notification – known as a request for service (RFS) – from a subcontractor on April 23, 2018, then a separate anonymous tip on May 4, 2018, 20 days before the fatal accident. But it didn’t do an onsite inspection of the Aussie Skips site until May 24, the day the father of two died.

In another case, a 59-year-old salvage worker was killed by a yacht mast after a crane with an unlicensed driver lost its load on January 27, 2021. SafeWork had been tipped off six weeks earlier that crane drivers weren’t licensed and a person had been “pinned by a pile on the tugs”. However, an onsite inspection didn’t take place until the day of the fatality.

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Just over a year after this death, on February 14, 2022, SafeWork received a fresh tip-off that the company was still using crane operators that weren’t licensed for a slew crane, along with other practises that “put others at risk”.

Despite the company’s poor track record, SafeWork failed to conduct an onsite visit until it received a further safety alert on May 2021, when it sent out an inspector to visit the site a week later.

Last month The Sydney Morning Herald exposed serious issues in SafeWork including a culture of bullying, high churn of inspectors and inspectors alleging they were subjected to political interference.