Queensland created the offence of industrial manslaughter in 2017 and extended it into the resources sector in 2020. For six years after that, mining people discussed it as a theoretical exposure.
In March 2026 it stopped being theoretical.
What happened in the first mining case
Mastermyne Crinum Operations Pty Ltd was convicted of industrial manslaughter under the Coal Mining Safety and Health Act 1999, following the death of Graham Dawson, an experienced underground miner, in a roof collapse at the Crinum underground mine on 14 September 2021.
In May 2026 the company was sentenced to a $7 million fine plus $299,000 in costs — the largest work health and safety penalty imposed in Australia to that point.
Two things about that outcome are worth sitting with.
The first is the size. Australian WHS penalties have historically clustered well below a million dollars, to the point where "the fine is a cost of doing business" was a defensible cynicism. A $7 million fine is not a cost of doing business for most contracting companies in this country.
The second is the gap. The death was in September 2021. The conviction was in March 2026. Four and a half years of investigation, brief, and prosecution — during which every record the business held about that site, that team and that control was examined by people whose job was to find the gap.
The offence, in plain terms
Industrial manslaughter in Queensland is committed where:
- a worker dies, or is injured and later dies, in the course of carrying out work; and
- the conduct of the employer or entity — or of a senior officer of it — caused the death; and
- that conduct was negligent.
Each element does work. "Caused" is a legal causation test, not a loose contribution. "Negligent" is the criminal standard: a great falling short of the standard of care a reasonable person would exercise, and such a high risk of death or grievous bodily harm that the conduct merits criminal punishment. It is a materially higher bar than the negligence that grounds a civil claim.
It reaches a senior officer — a person concerned with, or taking part in, the management of the entity. That is broader than the board. An operations manager who makes decisions affecting a substantial part of the business can be one.
The penalties
For an individual: up to 20 years imprisonment. There is no fine option at the top of the range. The offence was written to put custodial sentencing on the table for workplace deaths, and that was the entire political point of it.
For a body corporate: a maximum of 100,000 penalty units — approximately $10 million, depending on the indexed value of a penalty unit at the time of sentencing.
None of it is insurable. Criminal penalties cannot be insured against in Australia, and indemnifying an officer against them is generally unlawful. Some policies will fund a defence. None will pay the fine.
Where it sits against the other offences
It is easy to blur industrial manslaughter into the category offences. They are different animals.
| Turns on | Death required | Maximum | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industrial manslaughter | Negligent conduct causing death | Yes | 20 years / ~$10m |
| Category 1 | Reckless or grossly negligent conduct exposing a person to risk of death or serious injury | No | Imprisonment and heavy fines |
| Category 2 | Failure to comply with a duty exposing a person to risk | No | Fines |
| Category 3 | Failure to comply with a duty | No | Lower fines |
The category offences are about exposure. Industrial manslaughter is about outcome. A business can commit a category 1 offence on a day where nothing whatsoever happens.
What a prosecution actually examines
Having read a number of these judgments, the pattern is consistent, and it is not about intentions.
Prosecutors reconstruct the system as it operated, not the system as it was written. They obtain the safety management system, and then they obtain the evidence of whether anyone followed it. Training records. Competency assessments. Supervisor authorisations. Inspection sign-offs. Maintenance records. The gap between the documented control and the practised one is where the case is built.
The questions are unglamorous and they are all records questions:
- Was the person doing this task competent to do it, and what evidence of that did the business hold on that day?
- Was the plant involved fit for the task, and when was that last verified?
- Who authorised the work, and what were they entitled to authorise?
- Had this control failed before? What happened when it did?
- Did anyone raise it? What was the response?
An organisation whose answer to each is a dated record is in a defensible position even where the outcome was terrible. An organisation whose answer is "we would have known if there had been a problem" is describing an absence of a system.
What it means for contracting companies and principals
The offence does not care whose payroll the deceased was on. It asks whose conduct caused the death.
On a mine site, a principal typically controls access, sets the standard, approves the method, directs the sequence and can stop the job. That is a very large amount of influence, and influence is what the prosecution examines. The idea that engaging a contracting company moves the exposure to the contracting company is not supported by the way these cases run — it is one of the reasons contractor management became a board-level topic in the resources sector rather than a procurement one.
Equally, a contracting company is a duty holder in its own right. Sending a worker who was not competent for the task, or plant that was not fit for it, is the contracting company's conduct. "The client inducted them" does not answer it.
The connection to critical control management
Queensland's Resources Safety and Health Legislation Amendment Act 2024 required operators to be compliant, by 1 June 2026, with obligations to identify and verify the effectiveness of the critical controls standing between a worker and a fatal event.
That is not a coincidental piece of timing. A critical control is, by definition, the thing whose failure kills somebody — which makes it precisely the thing a manslaughter prosecution investigates. Requiring operators to name their critical controls and demonstrate they are working creates, as a by-product, a documented expectation about exactly what should have been in place.
Which cuts both ways. An operator that can show its critical controls were identified, verified and monitored has built the strongest evidence available that its conduct was not negligent. An operator that named a control and never verified it has, in writing, established what it knew it should have been doing.
There is no neutral position left. After 1 June 2026, the record either exists or its absence is itself the finding.
