The Court convicted LiveBetter Services Limited and imposed a fine of $675,000 (reduced from $900,000 by 25% for an early guilty plea) for a Category 2 offence under s 32 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), arising from the fatal scalding of a profoundly disabled NDIS participant during worker-supported bathing due to systemic failures in risk assessment, safe bathing procedures, training, and incident response. The Court held that the totality principle had limited application where concurrent Federal Court civil penalty proceedings under the NDIS Act arose from the same incident but addressed different statutory duties with limited overlap in the relevant 'criminality', and that the defendant's failure to implement straightforward and available control measures — including formal water temperature testing and documented bathing procedures — rendered the offence objectively serious notwithstanding the defendant's general commitment to safety. The Court declined to exercise the s 6 Fines Act discretion on capacity to pay where the defendant's own financial statements indicated the proceedings were 'not expected to have a material financial impact' and no submission on capacity to pay was made.
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