All Australian OHS Acts place a duty of care on employees or workers, as defined in each Act, to avoid exposing others to a risk to their health or safety from the conduct of the employee or worker at work. Except for New South Wales, the duty also requires the employees and workers to take reasonable care for their own health or safety.
not endanger themselves and others at a workplace, through the consumption of alcohol or a drug.250
Queensland is the only jurisdiction where the duties of a worker are also owed by ‘anyone else at the workplace’.251
The Tasmanian Act places specific prohibitions on all persons at a workplace, in relation to the misuse of equipment and being affected by the consumption of alcohol and drugs.252
Most OHS Acts qualify the duty of the worker or employee by requiring only that they take ‘reasonable care’ at a workplace or at work. The Commonwealth Act requires employees to take ‘reasonably practicable steps’.253 In Queensland the duty is qualified by way of the defence: that the duty holder has complied with a relevant regulation, code of practice or in the absence of these, has taken reasonable precautions and exercised proper diligence.254
The NSW WorkCover Review recommended that the NSW Act be amended to include a duty for employees to take reasonable care for themselves.255 This was supported by the subsequent Stein Inquiry, which stated that employees should have an explicit duty to take reasonable care for their own health or safety at work, as is provided in other Australian jurisdictions.256
