Recently the NSW government announced proposals to changes to their work safety laws. They have made the correct move of eliminating presumption of guilt and lining up with the rest of Australia. Now everyone in the workplace will be responsible for safety according to what each person can reasonably control.
Presumption of guilt in work place accident prosecutions has been a significant reason why businesses have been deserting NSW. Company managers have been prosecuted for genuine accidents over which they had no reasonable control. This has applied to small and large businesses.
The fact is that it has been impossible to prove innocence. Effectively it has meant that guilt applied as soon as an injury occurred, regardless of the cause.
The government has finally recognised that this is unfair. People, who under normal justice process would have been found innocent, have been wrongly convicted. Injustices have been done to ordinary people in the workforce.
But the government has however failed to take the next logical step. Surely it would make sense that, having accepted that the law is flawed, prosecutions currently in the pipeline should be frozen. If the law is bad it would be wrong to proceed with existing prosecutions.
NSW conducts more that 450 prosecutions a year, which is a larger figure that all other states combined. Victoria for example has well under 200 a year. This must suggest that there could be around 250 people in NSW currently facing prosecution who should not be facing prosecution under the proposed NSW changes.
This is large scale injustice that must be stopped.
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