Paddock Practices: Everything you wish you knew about farm safety in WA

Image of Peter Aderson — Creating a culture of farm safety is crucial for keeping your family, employees and visitors safe and injury free. Photo: Liz Wells/GRDC

Key Points

Agricultural businesses need to be aware of significant changes to work health and safety (WHS) laws that came into operation in 2022.
Because farms may also be family homes, it’s important to be aware that occupants of the home and any visitors can be exposed to occupational risks and hazards associated with agriculture workplaces.
There are several resources available to growers, including apps, to help manage WHS for their farm business.

Agriculture is a high-risk working environment. It has a unique combination of workplace hazards, which include plant (such as tractors, motorbikes and quad bikes), chemicals (such as pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers), noise, dust, working with animals, and outdoor labour, which can lead to exposure to sun and adverse weather conditions.

It can also often involve working alone or in remote areas, which can increase WHS risks.

In 2021, there were 46 on-farm fatalities in Australia. 87% of these fatalities were male, and 13% were children under 15 years of age (Farm Safe Australia Safer Farms Report 2022).

Infographic of the 2021 Farm Safety Statistics — Figure 1: Agriculture injury and fatality statistics 2021

Ensuring WHS can be a daunting and complex undertaking for growers. Factors including limited resourcing and the complexity of WHS legislation add challenges to running an already complex farming business.

But creating a culture of farm safety is crucial for keeping your family, employees and visitors safe and injury free.

This Paddock Practice has been compiled from several reputable farm safety resources including Worksafe WA, Farm Safety Australia and Safe Work Australia. It is intended as a general guide to farm safety laws and compliance in Western Australia and does not replace legal advice or take into consideration individual on-farm circumstances.

What are the recent changes to WA’s Work Health and Safety laws?

WHS is the new OSH

The previous laws in WA around occupational safety and health (OSH) have been around for decades. The OSH Act was first introduced in 1984 and has been supported by other legislation around specific health and safety measures related to mines and petroleum.

From March 2022, the Work Health and Safety Act 2020 (WHS Act) replaced all of these and brought WA workplaces under a single WHS Act.

You could be a PCBU

The WHS Act defines a ‘person conducting a business or undertaking’ (PCBU) as either a:

a sole trader (for example, a self-employed person),
each partner within a partnership,
a company,
an unincorporated association, or
a government department of public authority (including a municipal council).

As a result, a person who owns and operates a farm could be a PCBU – even if they operate the farm on their own family property.

If you’re a business owner, you could be a PCBU as an individual. If you run your business as part of a business partnership, you could each be individually and collectively a PCBU. Larger corporations and organisations will have what’s known as officers of the PCBU.

The PCBU has the primary duty of care

Under the OSH Act, duty of care was largely based around the employer-employee relationship.

Under the WHS Act, all PCBUs have a primary duty of care to ensure the health and safety of their workers and others who may be affected by the carrying out of work. If you are a PCBU operating a farm, you have a duty of care to all your workers and to others who may be affected by carrying out work on your farm.

This means, where reasonably practicable, if you are the PCBU you need to take action to eliminate risks to health and safety. If this is not reasonably practicable, you need to make sure those risks are minimised as far as is reasonably practicable. This includes paying attention to the strategic, structural, policy and key resourcing decisions involved in running your business.

The meaning of ‘reasonably practicable’ is what could reasonably be done at a particular time to ensure health and safety measures are in place. There is a requirement to weigh up all relevant matters such as the likelihood of the hazard or risk and the degree of harm that could result if the hazard or risk occurred. Cost is not ordinarily a key factor in determining what is reasonably practicable, unless it can be shown that the cost is ‘grossly disproportionate’ to the risk.

Penalties have changed

The WHS Act includes a new offence of industrial manslaughter (section 30A). This offence involves substantial penalties for PCBUs in a business where a failure to comply with a WHS duty causes the death of an individual, in circumstances where the PCBU knew the conduct was likely to cause death or serious harm and the PCBU acted in disregard of that likelihood.

The WHS Act voids insurance coverage for WHS penalties and imposes penalties for providing or purchasing this insurance.

As part of the new laws, there are also reporting requirements for ‘notifiable incidents’, which includes serious illness, injury or death, and dangerous incidents which might occur during the conduct of a business or undertaking. A PCBU must notify the regulator as soon as they become aware of an incident that arises out of the conduct of the business or undertaking.

WHS laws will be similar across Australia

The new WA laws are largely based on the model WHS Act developed by SafeWork Australia for implementation across Australia via Commonwealth, state and territory laws. As of April 2023, all other states and territories have implemented the model laws, except Victoria. This means businesses will have similar health and safety obligations and requirements across Australia.

Transitional arrangements

Many businesses will need time to adapt to the changes. To help support business owners during the change, the WHS Act has transitional arrangements which apply where duties are new or have changed significantly.

The Small Business Development Corporation of WA runs an online training workshop that outlines the recent changes to WHS legislation.

Worksafe WA has also produced WHS guidance kits that include short animations which can be used at health and safety meetings or toolbox meetings to raise awareness of responsibilities and duties under the Work Health and Safety laws.

What do I need to do to be compliant?

Everyone in the workplace has WHS duties under the model WHS Act.

You have specific duties if you are:

a PCBU,
a principal contractor,
a designer, manufacturer, importer, supplier and installer of plant, substances or structures, or
an officer.

Workers must take:

reasonable care for their own health and safety, and
reasonable care for the health and safety of others by not putting others at risk as a result of the conduct of their business or undertaking when working in agriculture.

The model WHS (General) Regulations 2022 (WHS Regulations) cover duties that apply to agricultural work. This includes managing risks of powered mobile plant, hazardous manual tasks, hazardous chemicals and working outside. Licences are also required for certain types of work, so you’ll need to confirm whether any are needed.

As a PCBU, you must, so far as is reasonably practicable:

ensure the health and safety of yourself, workers and others (including your family and visitors) at work (including at your workplace),
consult with workers who carry out work for the business or undertaking and who are (or are likely to be) directly affected by a health and safety matter, and
consult, cooperate and coordinate activities with all other duty holders who owe a duty about the same matter.

As many farms are also family homes, children, family and visitors can be exposed to many of the occupational risks and hazards associated with agriculture as a workplace. Under the WHS Act, you have a duty of care to these people as well as your workers.

You must prepare and maintain an emergency plan for your workplace. You must also ensure workers have access to first aid equipment and trained first aid officers whenever they are at work.

Duty to manage risks in agriculture

You must, so far as is reasonably practicable, eliminate or minimise risks associated with agricultural work. This involves:

identifying hazards – find out what could go wrong and what could cause harm,
assessing risks if necessary – understand the harm each hazard could cause, how serious the harm could be and the likelihood of it happening,
controlling risks – implement the most effective control measures that are reasonably practicable in the circumstances, and
reviewing control measures to ensure they are working as planned.

You must always first aim to eliminate hazards. If elimination is not possible, you must minimise the risks, so far as is reasonably practicable, for example:

choose the safest equipment for your farm and maintain it,
choose the safest chemicals and follow the manufacturer’s instructions,
ensure workers and visitors are aware of the risks and hazards at the workplace,
ensure workers have the skills to work safely – for example, when handling animals and using farm equipment, and
closely supervise new and inexperienced workers.

Infographic of Farm Safety flow chart — Figure 2: The hierarchy of control measures

Approved codes of practice

A code of practice provides detailed information on how you can achieve the standards required under the WHS Act.

Codes of practice do not replace the law but can help you understand what you need to do to comply with specific regulations and provide a healthy and safe workplace.

Approved codes of practice for WA are available from Work Safe WA.

Farm safety checklists

Work Safe WA has a Farm Safety Checklist to provide information and assistance to employers, self-employed persons, persons having control of workplaces and employees working on farms.

What documentation am I required to keep?

Documenting induction, consultation and risk assessment/mitigation techniques is an important step to ensure that you have evidence that you take work, health and safety seriously, if there is ever an incident or investigation on your farm.

It can be as simple as writing notes in a diary, or as complex as a WHS management system purchased through a safety contractor. Find a method that works for you, implement it, and keep up with the practice.

Risk management process

Keeping records of the risk management process demonstrates what you have done to comply with the WHS Act and WHS Regulations. It also helps when undertaking subsequent risk management activities, including reviewing your control measures.

The detail and extent of recording will depend on the size of your workplace and the potential for major WHS issues.

It is useful to keep information on:

the identified hazards, assessed risks and chosen control measures (including any hazard checklists, worksheets and assessment tools used in working through the risk management process),
how and when the control measures were implemented, monitored and reviewed,
who you consulted with – relevant training records, and
any plans for changes.

There are specific record-keeping requirements in the WHS Regulations for some hazards, such as hazardous chemicals, plant and equipment. If such hazards have been identified at your workplace, you must keep the relevant records for the time specified.

You should ensure that everyone in your workplace is aware of record-keeping requirements, including which records are accessible and where they are kept.

Injury registers

All farms should keep an injury register. Any injury or illness that results from work on the farm should be recorded in this register, no matter how minor or major.

Work Health and Safety and Workers Compensation legislation requires employers and PCBUs to keep a record of work-related injury (including contractors). In the event of a serious injury or illness, a death or dangerous incident, the appropriate Work, Health and Safety Authority must be immediately notified.

Information on reporting an incident in agriculture in WA is available from Work Safe WA.

In addition, workers compensation insurers require employers and PCBUs to provide a record of the work-related injury and notify the worker compensation insurer within a 48-hour period of the accident.

Emergency plans and procedures

Under the model WHS laws, all workplaces must have an emergency plan in place. The plan must let workers and visitors know what to do in an emergency. It should be easy to access and reviewed and updated regularly.

Safe Work Australia has resources for growers including an Emergency Plan fact sheet and an Emergency Plan template.

Safety inductions, where do I start?

The first step to creating a strong safety culture is conducting safety inductions for every person who sets foot on a farm. A well-prepared induction should raise awareness and outline potential risks and hazards on the property and provide information on how to reduce those risks and hazards to prevent injuries or fatalities.

Online induction

An online induction provides generalised farm safety information so that your new employees, contractors, family members or any visitors to your farm, are informed of risks and hazards that they may encounter and have some practical knowledge about strategies to mitigate those risks.

It provides information in a structured, modular way, so that a person new to your farm has some form of understanding of Australian farming practices and the risks and hazards associated with them.

An online induction is only one part of fulfilling your duty of care to your employees.

Farm Safe Australia has an online induction tool which includes customisable modules.

On-farm induction

An induction is a process that new employees, contractors, family members or visitors should go through on the first day (or first few days depending on the size of the business) of their new job in which you, the employer or PCBU, introduce them to your business and provide them with all relevant information to help them to be successful and safe in their new position.

However, an induction may also occur when there is a new piece of machinery, new vehicle or any other changes that may affect the health and safety of a worker – and each of your employees should be inducted into new equipment or machinery (or new processes), regardless of how long they have worked for you. Records should be kept to prove this induction has taken place.

A ‘new-to-your-farm’ induction should include:

a tour of the property with the provision of a detailed map,
an introduction to the human resources policies and procedures including an employee’s rights and responsibilities,
an introduction to the safety policies and procedures,
an introduction to machinery, equipment and vehicles that they will be using during their employment with you, and
an opportunity for each person inducted to ask any questions.

Farm Safe Australia provides resources including safety induction sign-off cards, on-farm induction cards and induction videos for new and current employees, contractors and visitors.