NSW appoints inaugural SafeWork Advisory Council

The Council was established through changes to the Work Health and Safety Amendment (Standalone Regulator) Act 2025 to strengthen SafeWork NSW’s governance and give the regulator access to a broad range of strategic perspectives. Its work will support the regulator’s efforts to prevent workplace deaths, serious injuries and illness. NSW recorded 60 workplace fatalities in 2025, most of them in construction, transport and warehousing, and agriculture.

Emeritus Professor Michael Quinlan, a work health and safety expert with more than 40 years’ experience, chairs the Council. Its tripartite membership brings together worker and employer representatives, workplace safety experts and families who have lost loved ones in workplace fatalities. They will advise both SafeWork NSW and the NSW Government.

Under the Act, the SafeWork Commissioner must consider the Council’s advice when determining the regulator’s strategic direction and priorities. A summary of actions taken in response to that advice will be made public under SafeWork NSW’s reporting requirements. Commissioner Janet Schorer said the Council’s central purpose was to ensure those decisions take account of perspectives from workers and their representatives, industry, subject matter experts and people with lived experience. She said their input and partnership would support safer and healthier workplaces.

The Council’s formal commencement also ends the work of the SafeWork NSW Interim Tripartite Reference Group. That group helped ensure employer, union, worker and government perspectives informed the reform agenda and wider regulatory initiatives during the transition to a standalone regulator. It also helped consider practical ways to improve workplace safety while formal governance and consultation arrangements were being developed.

Minister for Industrial Relations and Work Health and Safety Sophie Cotsis described the appointment as an important step towards stronger workplace safety. She said establishing SafeWork NSW as a standalone regulator was intended to strengthen accountability, transparency and its focus on worker safety. The Council’s mix of worker, employer, expert and lived experience representatives would bring practical knowledge and emerging risks into decisions about workplace safety.

Professor Quinlan said the tripartite approach allowed industry, unions and government to work together with expertise and lived experience informing their contribution. He described the model as best practice and said it offered opportunities for input and feedback on emerging issues needing greater attention. TWU Assistant Secretary Marija Marsic said union representation was important so workers’ experiences could inform advocacy for meaningful policy and change.

Business NSW Senior Project Manager Liz Greenwood said the different perspectives represented on the Council needed to be considered through robust discussion before decisions affecting worker safety were made. The membership also includes Debra Pascall, whose son died in a workplace incident in 2018 and who has since advocated for better workplace safety and the prevention of further tragedies.

Ms Pascall said her experience made safety deeply personal and that lived experience kept the human consequences of workplace harm central to decision-making. She said policies and regulations were ultimately about protecting people, and expressed hope that her contribution would help workers return home safely.

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