The ACT's work safety watchdog should establish its own team to prosecute workplace crimes as part of an overhaul to the way workplace incidents are handled, a review of the system has found.
But the Director of Public Prosecutions, Shane Drumgold SC, said the proposal was unrealistic and legally unworkable. He said "the report is replete with misrepresentations, unfounded claims and serious factual errors".
The review made 12 recommendations, which covered improved efficiency requirements for the handling of workplace prosecutions, clearer guidelines for deciding how prosecutions are to be handled and legislative changes to allow the work health and safety commissioner to work more closely with external lawyers.
The review, completed by Marie Boland, also recommended ACT laws be changed to allow the commissioner to establish a five-member in-house prosecution team.
The review also recommended ensuring all industrial manslaughter charges were prosecuted by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The full review report has not been released publicly and will be taken to the workplace health and safety council for endorsement in August.
The ACT's work health and safety commissioner, Jacqueline Agius, said the review had recommended a hybrid model that would allow the regulator to access expertise to ensure its prosecutions were conducted to a high standard.
"That's the model that is recommended. The question is how and what we will now do about it, because some of those recommendations are policy decisions for the ACT government; they're not decisions for WorkSafe ACT," Ms Agius said.
"I will be taking that view to the Work Health and Safety Council, and the Work Health and Safety Council will decide whether to promote that review and recommend the ACT government adopt those recommendations."
Ms Agius said she would ensure WorkSafe ACT adopted all the recommendations that were within its immediate control.
"People will need time to be consulted. Laws will need to be changed if that's required for the recommendation. Of course, all of those things take a lot of time," she said.
Ms Agius said a copy of the report had been provided to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Asked whether the recommendations, if adopted, would shift the balance from the DPP to WorkSafe, Ms Agius said it was up to the director to comment.
Mr Drumgold said the report completely disregarded "well-established and fundamentally important principles including the independence of prosecutorial decisions from government interests, investigator bias and interest group pressure".
"The recommendations completely disregard the prosecutor's primary role as a minister of justice, going so far as to set performance measures in securing unrealistic, and comparatively unhealthy conviction rates," he said in a statement provided to The Canberra Times.
"The resulting proposal is completely unrealistic, and if adopted, would result in a model that would be both prohibitively expensive and functionally and legally unworkable."
The recommendations were released at a commemorative service to mark 10 years since the worksite death of Ben Catanzariti, 21, who was killed when a faulty concrete pump boom collapsed on him at a construction site on the Kingston Foreshore in 2012.
Ms Agius offered an apology at the service to Mr Catanzariti's family over the grief and loss they had experienced.
"Kay, I say this to you - on Ben's tenth anniversary, you are more than an advocate. You are more than just a mum of a boy who lost his life. You are the mum of Ben and Jack. I have listened to you, I have heard you, I have felt your pain and your despair, and I am sorry."
Ben Catanzariti's mother, Kay Catanzariti, thanked Ms Agius for the apology and called on the ACT government to adopt the recommendations in the review as quickly as possible.
"I think it's a breath of fresh air and now it is up to [Workplace Safety] Minister Mick Gentleman and others to put this through swiftly and in a timely manner. And I hope the minister will do this," Mrs Catanzariti said.
Mrs Catanzariti said she had put her trust in regulators over the last decade and had been paid lip service.
"They failed me, they failed all Australian workers. All I wanted was a guilty. Someone took a shortcut and killed our son and brother. And I hope no other family will have to endure as much pain as we have done," she said.
The Director of Public Prosecutions dropped charges arising from Ben Catanzariti's death against an engineer and multinational concreting firm in 2016, after two expert reports cast doubt on the prosecution's case.
A coronial inquest in 2019 concluded it was impossible to say what caused the fatal failure of bolts holding the concrete boom as it swung over the heads of workers on the Kingston construction site where Ben Catanzariti was killed.
Ms Agius on Thursday conceded the Director of Public Prosecutions would still have handled the prosecution arising from Mr Catanzariti's death under the recommended hybrid model.
Mr Catanzariti's death sparked a comprehensive, two-year investigation, involving a range of agencies.
WorkSafe ACT and ACT Policing worked with their cross-border counterparts the NSW Police Force and WorkCover to investigate the death.
The result was the laying of criminal charges against a NSW maintenance engineer and the company that undertook the maintenance work on the boom.
We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on The Canberra Times website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. See our moderation policy here.
