CRIME — Work health and safety — Sentence — Category 2 offence — Workers exposed to risk of electrocution whilst undertaking work in vicinity of power lines — Failure to ensure use of appropriate plant and to prohibit use of inappropriate plant — Failure to provide a site-specific Safe Work Method Statement — Failure to provide adequate information and instruction to workers — Foreseeability of risk
Quick Take
1A PCBU that supplies plant and workers to a principal contractor under a wet hire arrangement retains its own s 19 duty. Where its workers take direct instructions from it, its failure to provide information and instruction goes to its own direct conduct. On the facts, that duty required it to know and communicate the manufacturer's prohibition on using its piling rig as a crane, and to make enquiries about the safety measures at the site, notwithstanding that the principal contractor controlled the site.
2The supplier's moral culpability may be mitigated where the principal contractor alone controlled the most effective control measure (here, removing or rerouting the overhead power lines) and the supplier made some genuine attempt to satisfy itself that the site would be run safely.
3Applying R v Dib [2003] NSWCCA 117, an offender who pleads guilty shortly before trial, after the charge has been substantially amended in its favour, may receive a reduced utilitarian discount even though the delay was not its fault. On the facts a 15% discount was allowed. The 25% discount given to the co-offender was distinguished because its plea had avoided the vacation of the trial fixture.
