The Victorian Government says inspectors will soon be able to issue immediate fines for falls from height offences. The mechanism sitting behind that sentence is the part worth reading, because it changes how often a penalty can land, not how big it is.
On Friday 18 September the Victorian Government announced that WorkSafe’s enforcement powers will be expanded to cover additional infringement offences, and that this will include the ability for inspectors to issue fines on the spot for falls from height.
That sentence arrived underneath a set of numbers. Sixty one workplace deaths in Victoria last year. 26,323 injury claims. Five industries, construction among them, accounting for more than 60 per cent of those deaths and 55 per cent of the claims. In construction alone, 26 workers killed and more than 10,600 injured across three years, with falls from height named as the biggest killer.
The numbers are the justification. The mechanism is the news, and it has had almost no attention.
What an infringement notice actually is under Victorian safety law
Victoria already runs an infringement scheme under occupational health and safety law. It commenced on 31 July 2021, and the offences it covers are prescribed in Schedule 20 of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017.
There are 59 of them, and every one is a licensing, registration, documentation or record keeping offence. They run across asbestos, crystalline silica, lead and hazardous substances, plant, mines and quarries, major hazard facilities, construction induction and safe work method statements.
What the schedule does not reach is Part 3.3, the prevention of falls provisions. That is what the announcement proposes to change.
An infringement notice is a fixed penalty issued by an inspector, either in person at the workplace or by mail after the inspection. Every offence in Schedule 20 currently carries the same rate: 2 penalty units for an individual and 10 for a body corporate. At the 2026 to 27 penalty unit value of $209.10, set by the Treasurer in May, that is $418.20 and $2,091. The value is indexed each financial year, so both figures move on 1 July.
The notice carries at least 21 days to pay. A duty holder can pay it, apply to WorkSafe’s Internal Review Unit, or elect to have the matter heard in the Magistrates’ Court instead. WorkSafe’s position is that prosecution remains available, and that the scheme sits alongside improvement notices, prohibition notices and enforceable undertakings rather than replacing any of them.
Expiation, and why the word matters here
Expiation is what happens when an infringement penalty is paid within time. Under section 33(1) of the Infringements Act 2006, no further proceedings may be taken against the person for that offence, and no conviction is taken to have been recorded. Section 33(2) adds that payment of an infringement penalty is not an admission of guilt in relation to the offence, and is not an admission of liability for the purpose of any civil claim or proceeding arising out of the same occurrence. Section 33(3) provides that the payment must not be referred to in any report provided to a court for the purpose of determining sentence.
A paid infringement and a conviction are not the same regulatory event
This is the distinction that gets lost when an announcement is reported as tougher fines.
A WorkSafe prosecution that succeeds produces a conviction, a published result summary, and a court record. An infringement notice that is paid within time produces none of those things. The offence is expiated and the file closes.
That difference runs straight into paperwork builders already deal with. Prequalification questionnaires, head contractor onboarding packs, tender responses and insurance proposals routinely ask about prosecutions, convictions and enforcement history, and the answer after a paid infringement is not the answer after a court outcome.
It cuts the other way too. Because an infringement is not a conviction, it is a far lower bar for a regulator to reach for. There is no brief, no investigation file built for court, and no prosecutorial discretion exercised months later.
The court numbers show why WorkSafe wants a smaller, faster penalty
WorkSafe’s own 2025 enforcement figures make the logic visible.
Across the year the regulator completed 137 prosecutions and enforceable undertakings, producing $17,391,325 in fines, costs and undertakings for breaches of the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Dangerous Goods Act. Construction accounted for the largest share of health and safety prosecutions with 64.
Offences involving working at height produced the highest number of outcomes of any offence type. 52 employers, described by WorkSafe as almost exclusively from construction, paid a combined $3.74 million in fines, costs and undertakings. That works out at an average of roughly $71,900 per outcome.
Those are large penalties arriving slowly, through a court, after an investigation. An infringement notice capped at $2,091 is a different instrument entirely. It is small, and it can be issued the moment an inspector sees the breach.
Read the two together and the direction is clear enough. WorkSafe is not short of severity on falls. It is short of frequency.
WorkSafe is not short of severity on falls. It is short of frequency.
The underlying duty is not changing at all
Part 3.3 of the OHS Regulations 2017 governs prevention of falls and applies specifically where there is a risk of falling more than two metres. The risk must be eliminated so far as is reasonably practicable. Where that is not practicable, it must be reduced by working down a hierarchy of control with five levels, beginning with working on the ground or on a solid construction and ending with a fixed or portable ladder or administrative controls.
Risks of falling two metres or less sit outside Part 3.3 but remain covered by the general duties in the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.
WorkSafe’s published position on the existing scheme is that it creates no additional obligations. Every infringement offence is an existing offence that already had to be complied with. What changes is what can happen once an inspector finds a breach, not what counts as one.
For builders tracking how the regulators that license and police residential builders have moved from paperwork checks to active enforcement, this fits the pattern exactly. The obligations stay put. The speed and visibility of enforcement keep increasing.
What the announcement did not include
No commencement date. No fine amounts for the new offences. No published list of which falls offences will be captured.
Those omissions are structural rather than evasive. Infringement offences are prescribed in regulation, so the change requires the OHS Regulations to be amended before an inspector can issue anything. WorkSafe has a review of the OHS Regulations and the Equipment (Public Safety) Regulations underway, and states the existing regulations continue to apply until the new ones are made.
It is worth ruling out the obvious candidate. The Workplace Legislation Amendment (Accident Compensation and Other Matters) Bill 2026 is before the Victorian Parliament and does amend the OHS Act, but WorkSafe’s summary of it covers financial guarantees for self insurers, health and safety representatives, authorised representatives of registered employee organisations and administrative matters. Falls infringements are not in it. On the published material, no primary source identifies the vehicle or the timing.
One line in the release does not match WorkSafe’s own statement
The release names construction, health care and social assistance, government, agriculture and transport as the state’s highest risk industries, and says they are again the five.
WorkSafe’s published Statement of Regulatory Intent for 2026 to 27 names a different five: health care and social assistance, construction, government, agriculture and manufacturing.
Construction sits at the top of both lists, so nothing about the exposure for builders turns on it. The two documents may simply be measuring different things, with the release grouping industries by harm statistics and the statement of intent setting out where the regulator will direct its own effort. Neither says so. Anyone reading the release as a map of where inspectors will be deployed this financial year should read the statement of intent alongside it, because the regulator’s own document names a different fifth industry.
The number that changes is not the fine
For a builder running sites in Victoria, $2,091 is not the figure that decides whether perimeter guardrail goes up. It never was. The cost of a fall has never been the penalty.
What changes is how many times a year a penalty can land at all. Court prosecution is rationed by investigation capacity, and 52 working at height outcomes across an entire state in a year is roughly one a week. Inspector visits are a different order of magnitude, and the whole point of an infringement notice is that it can be written at the end of one.
That is the shift buried in Friday’s release. Not harder consequences for falls, more frequent ones. It is the same direction Victoria took when it brought psychosocial hazards into the OHS framework in December 2025, and the same direction behind the falls enforcement escalation we covered in April.
Until the regulations are amended, none of it is live. When they are, the arithmetic of an unprotected edge changes from a small chance of a very large number to a good chance of a small one, repeated.
The Good Builder Take
The headline here reads as a crackdown and the substance is something more interesting. Victoria is not raising the price of a falls breach. It is lowering the cost of enforcing one. A prosecution takes months of investigation and a court date. An infringement notice takes an inspector, a form and twenty minutes. Regulators move to instruments like this when severity has stopped producing behaviour change and they want volume instead. Builders who already run documented fall prevention will not notice. Builders who have been running on the odds that an inspector will not turn up are the ones whose maths just changed, and they will find out when the regulations are amended rather than when a worker falls. That is the point of the design.
Frequently asked questions
No commencement date has been announced. Infringement offences are prescribed in Schedule 20 of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017, so the change requires those regulations to be amended before an inspector can issue a notice. WorkSafe has a review of the OHS Regulations underway and states the existing regulations continue to apply until new ones are made.
Every infringement offence in Schedule 20 of the OHS Regulations 2017 currently carries the same rate: 2 penalty units for an individual and 10 penalty units for a body corporate. The Victorian Treasurer fixed the penalty unit at $209.10 for the 2026 to 27 financial year, which makes those amounts $418.20 and $2,091. The penalty unit is indexed annually, so both figures change on 1 July. No amounts have been announced for the proposed falls from height offences.
No. Under section 33(1) of the Infringements Act 2006, paying the penalty within time expiates the offence, no further proceedings may be taken, and no conviction is taken to have been recorded. Section 33(2) adds that payment is not an admission of guilt, and is not an admission of liability for any civil claim arising from the same occurrence. Section 33(3) provides that the payment must not be referred to in a report provided to a court for sentencing purposes.
Yes. A duty holder has at least 21 days to pay and can instead apply to WorkSafe’s Internal Review Unit, on grounds including exceptional circumstances, special circumstances, a decision contrary to law, mistaken identity or being unaware of the notice. WorkSafe states an application must be made before the due date on the infringement notice or penalty reminder notice, or within 14 days of becoming aware of a notice the duty holder did not know about. A duty holder can also elect to have the offence heard and determined in the Magistrates’ Court. Once the due date on a penalty reminder notice passes and the fine is registered with Fines Victoria, internal review is no longer available.
Part 3.3 of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 applies where there is a risk of falling more than two metres. The risk must be eliminated so far as is reasonably practicable, and where that is not practicable it must be reduced using a hierarchy of control with five levels, from working on the ground or a solid construction through passive fall prevention devices, work positioning systems and fall arrest systems, down to ladders and administrative controls. Falls of two metres or less are covered by the general duties in the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.
Related articles
- Victoria Doubles Down on Falls Enforcement
- Construction Licensing and Compliance in Australia
- Running a Building Business in Australia
Last updated: 22 September 2026. Enforcement powers, penalty unit values and regulatory timetables change. Confirm current requirements with WorkSafe Victoria.
General information only. This article reports on Australian occupational health and safety law and regulatory announcements and does not constitute legal advice. Enforcement powers, penalty unit values, regulations and commencement dates change and vary by jurisdiction. Builders and trades should confirm current requirements with WorkSafe Victoria and seek advice specific to their circumstances before acting.
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