Legislative Compliance

Legislative compliance is meeting the duties an organisation owes under Acts and regulations made by parliament, rather than obligations that come from a contract, an internal policy or a voluntary standard. In an Australian workplace it covers safety, employment, privacy, consumer and industry specific law, and the duty applies whether or not anyone has read the statute.

What makes this awkward in Australia is that the obligations sit across nine parliaments. The model work health and safety laws have been adopted everywhere except Victoria, which still operates under its Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. Western Australia was the last to come across, in 2022, a decade after New South Wales and Queensland. Chain of responsibility duties under the Heavy Vehicle National Law apply in six jurisdictions and not in Western Australia or the Northern Territory. An organisation working across borders is meeting several regimes at once, not one.

Areas where legislation places a direct and specific duty on an employer include:

• occupational health and safety, where the duty holder and the wording differ between Victoria and the WHS states
• chain of responsibility, which reaches anyone whose decisions affect heavy vehicle safety, not only the driver
• competition and consumer law, covering misleading conduct and unfair contract terms
• workplace policies, which are how a statutory duty becomes something staff can actually follow

The test a regulator applies is rarely whether someone knew the law. It is whether the organisation took reasonable steps, meaning current policies, training matched to the real risk, and records showing who did what and when. Commonwealth Acts and instruments are published on the Federal Register of Legislation, the authorised whole of government source, and each state and territory maintains its own register. Obligations vary between jurisdictions and change often, so treat this as general information rather than legal advice and get advice on anything carrying real exposure.

Posts tagged here look at how Australian organisations track obligations as they shift. Sentrient’s compliance training courses cover the areas where legislation places a direct duty on employers.