A recent occupational health and safety (OHS) prosecution over a quad bike fatality gained some mainstream media attention, primarily due to one of the owners being an independent New South Wales politician, Helen Dalton. Strip out the political newsworthiness, and there are some serious OHS lessons for all employers to be learned from the Court judgement.
The death of 23‑year‑old footballer Nick Lowden should force the Australian Football League (AFL) and every sporting body that claims to care about player welfare to confront the fact that the risks of brain injury in Australian football are no longer mysterious, emerging, or debatable. They are foreseeable, documented, and cumulative. And once a risk is foreseeable, the occupational health and safety (OHS) duty to eliminate or minimise it so far as is reasonably practicable (SFAIRP) applies.
A Four Corners investigation to be broadcast on June 29, 2026, examines Lowden’s death. (This article is based on some preliminary reporting on the issue by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Safe Work Australia’s (SWA) latest consultation on quad bike safety is another reminder that fatalities and serious injuries continue despite years of guidance, rebates, training campaigns and polite encouragement. The evidence laid out in SWA’s consultation paper shows that harm has persisted even after “extensive education and awareness efforts”, so voluntary approaches have reached their limit. When a hazard keeps killing people in the same predictable ways, the question is no longer whether we need stronger regulation but why it has taken so long to get there. This moment demands more than another round of messaging — it demands decisions that actually change the machines people ride and the conditions they ride them in.
Below is my submission to SWA’s consultation process on improving the safety of quad bikes used in the workplace. I strongly encourage everyone to participate.
As I write this, hundreds of workers’ memorial services are taking place around the world. I usually attend the Melbourne, Victoria, event and wish I could have been there today because one speaker, Lana Cormie, transcended the usual politics and platitudes to outline a broader strategy for occupational health and safety (OHS) reform.
In 2000, Graeme Cowan‘s world collapsed after the “dot-com crash“, leading to an attempt to end his own life. His new book, “Great Leaders Care: Developing Safe, Resilient and Successful Teams“, is an analysis of the consequences of those times and the tools he discovered to stabilise his mental health. There are two clues to his intended audience in the title – “Leaders” and “Teams”. “Leaders” gets his book onto the management and self-help shelves in bookshops and airports. “Teams” flags its Human Resources category. Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) readers may find this book interesting but largely unhelpful.
Earlier this month, I was critical of occupational health and safety (OHS) and farmers and asked
“So what can WorkSafe teach them about safety that farmers don’t already know?”
The death of dairy farmer Brad Collins following an incident involving a quad bike is the type of death that could have occurred and been reported at any time over the last few decades. Surely, a change in the cultures of farming, safety, and enforcement is required? Are we at “peak safety” on the deaths of farmers from quad bikes? Can nothing more be done?
Walk through any corporate sustainability report and you’ll find the same familiar choreography: a glossy declaration of “unwavering commitment to safety,” a handful of photos featuring smiling workers in immaculate PPE, and a CEO foreword that reads like it was written by a risk‑averse committee. What you won’t find is any serious engagement with the economic structures that produce harm in the first place.
For decades, scholars have been mapping the relationship between capitalism and workplace injury. They’ve shown, with depressing consistency, that harm is not an aberration but a predictable by‑product of systems designed to extract value from labour while externalising risk. Yet when these same scholars propose alternative models — models that would reduce harm by redistributing power, stabilising labour markets, or democratising decision‑making — executives respond with a familiar repertoire of excuses.
This article examines why. In a couple of real-world case studies, corporations were presented with opportunities to adopt safer, fairer, more accountable models — and chose not to.
Because the truth is simple: executives don’t reject these proposals because they’re unworkable. They reject them because they work exactly as intended.
