Your document library aged badly this quarter. NSW quietly approved fourteen Codes of Practice, Queensland varied another, and South Australia dropped the high risk construction work threshold to two metres. Plus a free prompt that audits what your SWMS actually cite.
The Scan
SA: high risk construction work now starts at two metres. From 1 July 2026, the Work Health and Safety (High Risk Construction Work) Amendment Regulations 2025 lower the South Australian threshold from a risk of a fall of more than three metres to more than two metres, bringing SA into line with every other jurisdiction. Work in that two to three metre band is now high risk construction work, so a SWMS has to exist before work starts and the work has to be carried out in accordance with it. SafeWork SA's own framing is that the practical steps have not changed, only the trigger. Residential is where it lands hardest. SafeWork SA
NSW: fourteen Codes of Practice approved so far this year. SafeWork NSW has approved fourteen Codes between February and May 2026, many of them replacing pre-WHS era documents. Three landed on 22 May and go straight at construction: Work on roofs, commercial and industrial buildings (replacing a 2009 code), Working safely when cutting, drilling and grinding concrete and masonry products (replacing a 1997 code), and Work near overhead and underground electric lines (replacing a 2006 code). More below. SafeWork NSW
QLD: the Concrete pumping Code has been varied. The five yearly review of the Concrete pumping Code of Practice 2019 is done and the varied Code took effect 1 July 2026. WHSQ says the changes are technical and editorial, folding in safety alerts issued over the past five years, with no new requirements introduced. No new requirements still means a new version, and your pre-pour checklist is pointing at the old one. WorkSafe Queensland
WA: 73 workers had high risk work licence classes cancelled. WorkSafe WA cancelled an assessor's accreditation over non-compliant assessments and false documentation, and barred him from reapplying for two years. The consequence lands on employers: 73 licence holders have had one or more classes cancelled and have to repeat the training and licensing process. The assessor's scope covered scaffolding, dogging and rigging, cranes, hoists, forklifts, EWPs and certain pressure equipment. If you engage WA licensed workers, every card in your competency matrix is worth re-verifying through WorkSafe's licence search or the ServiceWA app. Published 11 May 2026. WorkSafe WA
VIC: amusement structure regulations commenced 29 July. The Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Amusement Structure) Regulations 2026 are now in force. All rides, including older ones, need design registration or a certificate of interstate recognition, item of plant registration is mandatory and renewed annually off an inspection by a competent person, and manuals and logbooks have to stay with the ride. Applications for post-1995 rides close 30 October 2026. Pre-1995 rides have until 1 November 2027. Narrow, but a hard deadline if events or fixed site amusement is anywhere in your portfolio. WorkSafe Victoria
The One That Matters
The duty landed. Almost nobody checked what it landed on.
Last issue covered the NSW change that turned an approved Code of Practice into something you have to meet or beat from 1 July. What went largely unremarked is what SafeWork NSW spent the first half of the year doing: approving new Codes over the top of the old pre-WHS ones. Fourteen landed between February and May 2026, and three of those, on 22 May, sit under everyday construction work.
Put the two together. Six weeks before Codes became a duty in NSW, the Codes themselves changed underneath everyone.
A height safety procedure citing "Safe Work on Roofs Part 1" is citing a 2009 document that has been replaced. A concrete cutting SWMS built on the 1997 code predates the entire silica regime it now has to sit inside. A crane or scaffold SWMS pointing at the 2006 overhead powerlines code is pointing at a code that no longer exists.
Until 30 June that was untidy. From 1 July it is a gap between what your systems say and what you are now legally required to meet or beat.
The fix is boring and it is a morning's work. Pull your controlled document list. Pull every Act, Regulation, Code and Standard each one cites. Check each citation against the regulator's current index. Most teams find somewhere between three and ten dead references sitting in live documents.
Better you find them than an inspector finds them on your SWMS cover page.
(Victoria runs the OHS Act 2004 and approves compliance codes, not codes of practice. If you work across the border, the NSW duty does not follow you.)
Footnotes
SafeWork NSW sets its sights for 2026-27. The new Regulatory Statement, published 1 July 2026, names four priorities: falls from heights, psychosocial risks, hazardous substances, and mobile plant, vehicles and fixed machinery. It also flags a new Psychosocial Advisory Service and a Tunnelling Dust Safety Taskforce. Three of the four are construction's daily bread. SafeWork NSW
Queensland's tilt-up and precast Code is finally being replaced. Consultation on a draft Tilt-up and Precast Code of Practice 2026 ran from 3 June to 3 July 2026, replacing a 2003 code. No commencement date has been published yet. If you erect or install precast, this is the one to watch for gazettal. WorkSafe Queensland
NSW is writing rules for digital work systems. The Work Health and Safety Amendment (Digital Work Systems) Act 2026 is only partly commenced. Right now only the guideline making powers are live. Everything else, including a new union entry permit power to access those systems, starts at least a month after SafeWork NSW publishes the DWS Guidelines, and public consultation is still to come. If you use digital allocation, tracking or productivity monitoring tools, get on the update list. SafeWork NSW
WorkSafe ACT says the paperwork is not the control. A safety alert published 22 June 2026, written off the back of an enforcement outcome where a SWMS existed and was not followed, puts it plainly: it is not enough to have controls in place, you have to make sure they are used, followed and maintained in practice. A SWMS that exists and is not followed is evidence, and not the helpful kind. WorkSafe ACT
The Prompt
This month's build is the one your document register has been quietly avoiding: finding out which of your citations are dead. The prompt below takes your controlled documents and the instruments they cite, and returns a currency audit register with staleness flags, a risk rating, and the exact regulator index to check each one against. It deliberately refuses to tell you whether a Code is current, because no AI model reliably knows. It tells you where to look and in what order.
You are an Australian HSEQ document controller. I'll
give you my controlled safety documents and the
legislation, Codes of Practice and Standards each one
cites. Build me a document currency audit register.
For each cited instrument, give me a table row with:
1. Which of my documents cites it
2. The citation exactly as I've written it
3. Instrument type (Act / Regulation / Code of
Practice / Australian Standard / regulator
guidance)
4. Jurisdiction the citation implies
5. Staleness flags: does the citation carry a year,
is that year more than five years old, does it use
pre-2012 language such as "occupational health and
safety" in a WHS state
6. Risk if superseded (high / medium / low) with one
line of reasoning
7. The exact verification step, naming the regulator
index or catalogue I need to check it against
8. Review priority: 1 this week, 2 this month, 3 this
quarter
Then a short list headed "Check these first" with
every citation you rated high risk or flagged as
pre-2012.
Critical: do NOT tell me whether a Code or Standard
is current or superseded. You don't have reliable
current knowledge of Australian Codes of Practice and
you will get it wrong. Your job is to structure the
audit and tell me exactly what to verify and where.
Anything I haven't described properly, list under
"Insufficient information".
Australian English. Victoria runs the OHS Act 2004
and OHS Regulations 2017; every other state and
territory runs the WHS Act and WHS Regulations, so
flag any citation that mixes the two frameworks.
My jurisdictions:
[e.g. NSW and VIC]
My trades / scopes of work:
[e.g. commercial fitout, carpentry, concrete cutting]
My documents and their citations:
[one per line, e.g.
Working at Height SWMS - cites Safe Work on Roofs
Part 1 (2009), AS/NZS 1891.4
Concrete Cutting SWMS - cites Cutting and drilling
concrete and other masonry products (1997)]Tip: feed it ten documents, not your whole library. The output is long, and the "Check these first" list is the part you actually work from. If you cite an Australian Standard without an edition year, it will flag every one of them, and it should.
Fix-It
Running the prompt tells you what to check. The done-for-you version tells you what the answer is. The Code Register Pack, from HSEque, is a pre-built Australian document currency register: 270 construction-relevant Codes of Practice across every state and territory, each one labelled either construction-specific or applies-on-every-site, with the date exactly as the regulator publishes it. Plus a trade mapping tab so you can filter to the scopes you actually do, an eleven step audit checklist, and a review schedule so it stays a live control instead of a one-off tidy-up. Built for the HSEQ manager who has inherited a library nobody has audited since the last restructure.
And the thing underneath all of this.
Every item in this issue lands in the same place: a SWMS citing a version that no longer exists. HSEque writes them the other way round. Pick your trade and your state and the correct references go in automatically, Victoria under the OHS Act, everywhere else under the model WHS laws, so a document written for one jurisdiction stops quoting another. Locked, version-controlled PDF, so a revision leaves a trail instead of a mystery. 66 trades, all eight jurisdictions, from $12 a month, and the first month is free.
Courts & Fines
WorkSafe Victoria: a demolition company was fined $200,000, without conviction, in the Melbourne County Court after pleading guilty to performing high risk construction work without first preparing a safe work method statement for it. WorkSafe Victoria
SafeWork NSW: a carpentry business was convicted and fined $120,000 in the Industrial Court of NSW after a worker fell approximately six metres when a ceiling joist collapsed. SafeWork NSW
SafeWork NSW: a stone cutting company and its sole director were fined a total of $135,000, split $75,000 and $60,000, over a risk of workers being exposed to respirable crystalline silica. SafeWork NSW
WorkSafe Victoria: a crane operator was convicted and fined $20,000 plus $4,000 costs after pleading guilty to recklessly engaging in conduct that placed people at a workplace in danger of serious injury. WorkSafe Victoria
See you next month,
Alex
General industry commentary. Not legal advice.
The Toolbox is published by HSEque. It is general information for Australian HSEQ professionals, not legal advice. WHS and OHS obligations differ between states and change over time. Always check the current primary source for your jurisdiction and seek your own professional or legal advice before acting on anything here. Links go to the original regulator or Safe Work Australia material, so read the source, not just our summary.