Mark,
While I understand your sentiment, safety cannot remain the responsibility of any one entity. This has been an ongoing issue over the last 15+ years and it has been made very clear on a number of occasions that labour hire companies have very well defined obligations when they place workers. The expectation is that all parties have obligations in this regard and you cannot simply “wash your hands” of these obligations.

Andrea,
My sympathy on your loss. There has been too much focus on legal definitions rather than what is right!

Labour hire businesses cannot pretend it has no role to play here. They are the direct employer so immediately they owe a duty of care. Each party has a degree of control over its worker – sometimes the roles overlap but you cannot send an employee into a hell hole and then pretend they had no more to do.

Kevin, I believe the objectives of ‘marginal general deterrence’ (increasing sentences to deter others from committing that crime) are no longer regarded as effective grounds for punishing offenders. There is a mountain of scholarly material disputing its worth in favour of other principles of punishment (dare we go down that theoretical path…guffaw).

That said, the termed ”absolute deterrence” is seen as being absolutely effective in deterrence. They say we should be focusing on this form of deterrence – meaning that what actually works is increasing the likelihood of the offender getting caught and ensuring the sentencing process occurs in a timely manner so that it is actually still relevant to the offence itself. I can’t disagree with that logic since empirical evidence supports that theory.

Here’s a question I would love to get your thoughts on Kevin (et all…)

How many category 3 offences have we seen prosecuted around the harmonised states thus far?

A recent analysis on this subject. A death results in an investigation recommending a category 2 prosecution. The Crown decided to drop all charges on account evidentiary onus in proving causation. No downgrading to a cat 3 offence where causation is not even an element of the offence. The reason? …apparently because they would never get out of the courtroom if they decided to prosecute this low-end provision!

Sounds hard to believe doesn’t it?