Notifiable Incidents In Australia: What To Report And When

Most workplace incidents are handled entirely inside the organisation. Someone reports it, a manager looks into it, a fix is applied and the record is closed.

A small number are different. For those, the law requires you to tell the regulator, and to do it immediately rather than after an internal review. Getting that judgement wrong is one of the more serious mistakes an employer can make, because the failure to notify is itself an offence, separate from whatever caused the incident.

The model framework also changed in December 2025. Safe Work Australia published amendments to the model WHS Act that add three new triggers. As at October 2026, its guidance still says those changes only take legal effect once each state or territory adopts them. This guide sets out what is notifiable, when, to whom, and what the coming changes mean for you.

Written by Gavin Altus. Every requirement below is drawn from Safe Work Australia’s published guidance and the model WHS laws, listed in Sources. This is general information, not legal advice.

Sentrient builds workplace compliance software for Australian organisations, including incident reporting software used to capture incidents and keep an audit history.

What Is a Notifiable Incident?

A notifiable incident is an event you are legally required to report to your work health and safety regulator. It is a narrower category than the incidents you record internally, and the trigger is the nature of the event rather than how serious it turned out to be.

Under the model WHS laws, a notifiable incident arises from the conduct of the business or undertaking and is one of the following:

• The death of a person: A worker or any other person, including a contractor or a member of the public, where there is a causal link to work. A death from a non work-related medical condition does not need to be notified.
• A serious injury or illness: Defined by the treatment required rather than by how it looks at the scene.
• A dangerous incident: An event that exposed someone to a serious risk, whether or not anyone was actually hurt.

The numbers show why this matters. Safe Work Australia’s Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025 recorded 188 worker deaths from traumatic injuries at work in 2024. Falls from a height caused 13% of them, and serious falls now sit expressly in the amended dangerous incident definition covered below.

The December 2025 amendments add a fourth category, violent incidents, and two further notification duties that sit alongside notifiable incidents. Those are covered below.

One point that catches people out: the obligation belongs to the person conducting a business or undertaking, and where several duty holders share a site, the amended model law also gives them duties to notify each other.

What Changed in December 2025, and Whether It Applies to You

On 5 December 2025, Safe Work Australia published amendments to the model WHS Act. They introduce the concept of a relevant occurrence, which covers three things rather than one:

Relevant occurrence	What it covers	Notify by
Notifiable incident	Death, serious injury or illness, dangerous incident, and now a violent incident	Immediately
Notifiable suicide	Work-related suicide or attempted suicide, including suspected, of a worker or in some settings another person	Immediately
Notifiable extended absence	A worker absent 15 or more consecutive days from a work-related physical or psychological injury or illness	Within 14 days

The amendments also widen the existing definitions. Serious injury or illness now expressly includes fractures of the pelvis, skull or facial bones, other serious bone fractures, serious crush injuries and serious brain injuries from a blow or repeated blows to the head. Dangerous incident now expressly includes electrical or arc flash explosions, mobile plant incidents and serious falls.

What Counts as a Serious Injury or Illness

This is the category people most often misjudge, because the test is the treatment required, not how dramatic the event was. Under Safe Work Australia’s guidance, a serious injury or illness is one requiring:

• Admission to hospital as an in-patient, including where the person should have been admitted but treatment was not available or not sought, for example because of a remote location or cultural reasons.
• Immediate treatment for any of the following:
  • A serious eye injury, burn, laceration, crush injury or bone fracture
  • The amputation of a body part, or loss of a bodily function
  • Separation of skin from tissue, such as scalping or degloving
  • A spinal injury
  • A fracture of the pelvis, skull or facial bones
• Treatment from a doctor, nurse or paramedic within 48 hours of exposure to a substance.
• A serious brain injury resulting from a single or repeated blow, knock or shock to the head.

Certain illnesses are also prescribed, including infections where work is a significant contributing factor, and occupational zoonoses contracted through work involving animals or animal products, such as Q fever, anthrax, leptospirosis, brucellosis, Hendra virus, avian influenza and psittacosis.

Some items on that list, including fractures of the pelvis, skull or facial bones, other serious fractures and serious brain injuries, come from the December 2025 amendments and apply only where your jurisdiction has adopted them.

Notice what is absent from that list. There is no requirement that anyone be at fault, no threshold of lost time, and no exclusion for incidents involving contractors or visitors.

Dangerous Incidents, Where Nobody Was Hurt

A dangerous incident is notifiable even if no one was harmed, which is the single most commonly missed obligation. The test is whether the event exposed a person to an immediate or imminent serious risk to health or safety. Safe Work Australia’s guidance lists:

• Uncontrolled escape, spillage or leakage of a substance
• Uncontrolled fire, implosion, explosion, electrical or arc flash explosion, or an electric shock
• Uncontrolled escape of gas, steam or a pressurised substance
• Fall or release of a thing from a height
• Collapse, overturn, failure, malfunction of or damage to plant that requires authorisation under the regulations
• Collapse or failure of an excavation, or of shoring supporting an excavation
• Inrush of water, mud or gas in workings, or interruption of the main ventilation system, in an underground excavation or tunnel
• A serious fall of a person from one level to a lower level, into a hole, trench, pit, void or body of water, or onto a dangerous surface or object
• Mobile plant, including unpowered, that overturns or partially overturns, collides with something, pins or ejects a person, malfunctions, or moves without operator control, including roll-aways

The last two items, along with arc flash explosions, were added or made explicit by the December 2025 amendments, so check whether your jurisdiction has adopted them. The rest reflect the long-standing model law.

If a load falls from a crane into an empty area, that is notifiable. If a scaffold plank drops three storeys onto a closed footpath, that is notifiable. The absence of an injury is a matter of luck rather than a defence.

Violent Incidents

This is a new category under the December 2025 amendments, and it is the one most likely to change day-to-day practice in healthcare, education, retail, hospitality, security and community services.

A violent incident is notifiable where it exposes a person to a serious risk of psychological harm, even if no physical injury occurred. Safe Work Australia’s guidance covers:

• Sexual assault, including suspected sexual assault
• Physical assault, including assault with bodily fluids
• Deliberate deprivation of a person’s liberty without lawful authority
• Threats of violence where the person has both the intent and the means to carry out the threat

One handling instruction is worth committing to memory now. For sexual assault incidents, Safe Work Australia’s guidance is that the notification should not include identifying information about the victim.

Notifiable Extended Absence: The 15 Day Rule

The second new duty is the one most likely to affect organisations that have never made a notification in their history.

Where a worker is absent for 15 or more consecutive calendar days because of a work-related physical or psychological injury or illness, that absence itself becomes notifiable. It applies to anticipated absences too, where a medical practitioner’s opinion indicates the worker will be away that long and the worker tells you.

Two things to understand about it. The notification window is 14 days from becoming aware of the extended absence, which is longer than the immediate requirement for incidents but still short enough to need a process rather than good intentions. And it is separate from workers compensation. Lodging a claim does not discharge this duty.

The practical effect is that psychological injury becomes visible to regulators in a way it has not been before, which is the stated purpose of the reform.

Work-Related Suicide and Attempted Suicide

The third new duty requires notification of a worker’s death by suicide, or an attempted suicide, including suspected cases, where there is a link to work. Notification is immediate.

Safe Work Australia’s guidance sets out indicators that suggest a work link. These include that it occurred while the worker was working or would ordinarily have been working, that it occurred at or very close to a workplace or in work accommodation, that it occurred while the person was wearing their work uniform when they would not ordinarily be wearing it, that lethal means were accessed through work, that the worker experienced work-related psychological harm, or that the worker had been exposed to frequent, prolonged or severe psychosocial hazards because of work.

A suicide can occur away from the workplace and still be work-related.

There is also a duty in relation to a person other than a worker, where suicide is a reasonably foreseeable risk given the nature of the workplace, such as a mental health unit or a custodial setting, and there are physical hazards present that could be used.

When and How to Notify

Notification is immediate for a notifiable incident and for a notifiable suicide or attempted suicide, by the fastest possible means. Regulators accept notification by phone, email or online form, and those channels are available at all hours.

“Immediately” does not mean after your investigation, after legal advice, or after the site manager has briefed the executive. The model WHS Act does not define the word, so read it plainly: notify straight after you become aware, once first aid is under way and any immediate danger is controlled.

The regulator will want to know:

• What happened, for example a death, injury or illness
• When and where it happened
• Who was affected
• What treatment was provided
• What actions were taken at the site

You only need to notify once in relation to the same event or set of circumstances. Notifying police or another agency does not replace the duty to notify the WHS regulator, and other authorities may have their own separate requirements.

Who to Notify in Each State and Territory

You notify the regulator for the jurisdiction where the work is carried out. If you operate across borders, you have obligations in each.

According to Safe Work Australia, the Commonwealth, the ACT, New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Queensland implemented the model WHS laws in 2012, South Australia and Tasmania in 2013, and Western Australia in March 2022. Victoria is the only jurisdiction that has not implemented them.

Jurisdiction	Regulator	Governing law
New South Wales	SafeWork NSW	WHS Act 2011 (NSW)
Victoria	WorkSafe Victoria	OHS Act 2004 (Vic), a separate regime
Queensland	Workplace Health and Safety Queensland	WHS Act 2011 (Qld)
Western Australia	WorkSafe WA	WHS Act 2020 (WA)
South Australia	SafeWork SA	WHS Act 2012 (SA)
Tasmania	WorkSafe Tasmania	WHS Act 2012 (Tas)
Australian Capital Territory	WorkSafe ACT	WHS Act 2011 (ACT)
Northern Territory	NT WorkSafe	WHS (National Uniform Legislation) Act 2011 (NT)
Commonwealth	Comcare	WHS Act 2011 (Cth)

Victoria is the exception worth planning around. It has not adopted the harmonised model WHS laws and operates under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. WorkSafe Victoria must be notified immediately when a notifiable incident occurs, a written record must follow within 48 hours, and a copy of that record must be kept for at least 5 years. WorkSafe Victoria takes notifications 24 hours a day on 13 23 60. That written-notice step has no equivalent in the model law, so national employers need a Victorian variation in their process rather than a single procedure.

Because adoption of the December 2025 changes is happening jurisdiction by jurisdiction, the safest operating assumption is that your obligations may differ from a neighbouring state’s. Check the current position with your regulator before changing your reporting practices.

What to Do in the First Hour

1. Look after people first: First aid, emergency medical care, and control of any immediate risk to others. Nothing below outranks this.
2. Decide whether it is notifiable, on what you know: If you are unsure, contact the regulator and ask. Regulators would rather field a question than miss a notification.
3. Notify by the fastest means available: Phone is usually fastest. Record who notified, when, and what was said.
4. Tell the other duty holders: Where more than one business operates at the site, the duty to notify each other is now explicit in the amended model law.
5. Preserve the site: Do not disturb it until an inspector releases it, except to help an injured person, remove a deceased person, make the site safe, or assist police.
6. Preserve the evidence: The amendments extend this expressly to electronic and digital records and witness details, not only the physical scene.
7. Support the people affected: Clear, sensitive communication and access to counselling or an employee assistance program.

Once the immediate obligations are met, the internal process picks up: investigate what happened, fix the cause, check the fix worked and record the outcome. Closing an incident record does not mean the underlying risk has gone.

Records and Site Preservation

You must keep a record of each notifiable incident for at least 5 years from the day notification was made to the regulator. Under the amended model law, the same applies to notifiable extended absences and notifiable suicides.

A record that satisfies this is not a note in an inbox. It needs to show what happened, when you became aware, when and how you notified, and what you did at the site. If your incident records live across email, a shared drive and someone’s notebook, the five-year obligation is the point at which that arrangement fails, usually at the worst possible moment.

This is where structured incident reporting earns its place. Sentrient’s incident module keeps a complete audit history of every update against an incident, supports confidential registers for sensitive matters, and allows incidents to be linked to the risks and controls they relate to. Book a free demo to see how the record and the audit trail work.

Four Mistakes That Cause Missed Notifications

• Waiting for certainty: The duty is triggered by awareness, not by proof. Notify on what you know and correct the detail later.
• Treating near misses as non-events: Dangerous incidents are notifiable with no injury at all.
• Assuming contractors and visitors do not count: The obligation covers any person, not only your employees.
• Running one national procedure: Victoria’s written-notice step and the staggered adoption of the 2025 changes mean a single process will be wrong somewhere.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is a notifiable incident in Australia?

An incident you must report to your work health and safety regulator. Under the model WHS laws that means the death of a person, a serious injury or illness, or a dangerous incident arising from the conduct of your business. The December 2025 amendments add violent incidents, and create separate duties for work-related suicide and for extended absences of 15 or more days, in jurisdictions that adopt them.

2. How quickly must a notifiable incident be reported?

Immediately after becoming aware of it, by the fastest means available. The exception is a notifiable extended absence under the amended model law, which carries a 14 day window. In Victoria, immediate notification must be followed by a written record within 48 hours.

3. Do you have to notify if nobody was injured?

Yes, if it was a dangerous incident. The test is whether a person was exposed to an immediate or imminent serious risk to health or safety, not whether harm resulted. This is the most commonly missed obligation.

4. What is a notifiable extended absence?

A worker’s absence of 15 or more consecutive calendar days that is reasonably attributable to a physical or psychological injury or illness arising from the conduct of the business. It includes anticipated absences based on a medical practitioner’s opinion. It must be notified within 14 days, and it is separate from any workers compensation claim.

5. Is a workplace assault notifiable if there was no injury?

Under the amended model law, a violent incident is notifiable where it exposes a person to a serious risk of psychological harm, even where no physical injury occurred. That covers sexual assault, physical assault including with bodily fluids, deliberate deprivation of liberty, and threats where the person has the intent and means to carry them out. This applies where the jurisdiction has adopted the amendments.

6. Are the December 2025 changes law everywhere in Australia?

No. The model WHS Act is a template, and the changes take effect in a jurisdiction only once that jurisdiction adopts them into its own law. Safe Work Australia advises checking with your regulator before changing your notification systems. Victoria is not part of the harmonised scheme at all.

7. How long must incident records be kept?

At least 5 years from the day notification was made to the regulator. In Victoria, the written record provided to WorkSafe within 48 hours must also be kept for at least 5 years.

8. Can the incident site be cleaned up after notifying?

Not until an inspector releases it. The site must be left undisturbed so far as is reasonably practicable, with exceptions for helping an injured person, removing a deceased person, making the site safe, or assisting police. Under the amendments, preservation extends expressly to evidence including electronic and digital records and witness details.

9. Does notifying the police mean you do not need to notify the regulator?

No. Notifying police or another agency does not replace the duty to notify the WHS regulator, and other authorities may have separate requirements of their own.

10. What should we do if we are not sure whether something is notifiable?

Contact your regulator and ask, rather than deferring the decision internally. Safe Work Australia’s guidance is to make a judgement on the information available and not to wait for police or coronial investigations. Where the matter is sensitive, take legal advice on what information can be collected or shared, but do not let that delay the notification itself.

Sources

• Safe Work Australia, Incident reporting (includes the notification handbook)
• Safe Work Australia, Notifiable incidents, extended absences and suicides handbook and fact sheet, December 2025 update
• Safe Work Australia, Model Work Health and Safety Legislation Amendment (Incident Notification) 2025
• WorkSafe Victoria, Notifiable incidents under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004
• Safe Work Australia, WHS regulators contact information

This guide is general information current at the date of publication and is not legal advice. Notification duties differ between jurisdictions and change over time. Confirm your obligations with your work health and safety regulator or a qualified adviser.