An HSR’s use of Provisional Improvement Notices during bargaining puts safety in the spotlight

A dispute at Qantas has put safety back in the spotlight.

Around 600 Qantas Ground Services workers have voted overwhelmingly in favour of protected industrial action during bargaining for an enterprise agreement, significantly impacting airport operations.

At the same time, the Transport Workers’ Union Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) have raised a series of safety concerns in Provisional Improvement Notices (PINs), concerning workplace safety and psychosocial hazards related to an asserted loss of job security and pay structures at related entities. Qantas disputes elements of this characterisation, and the parties remain in negotiation for an enterprise agreement.

So what are HSRs?

A Health and Safety Representative (HSR) is a worker elected by their peers to represent employee interests in health and safety matters at the workplace.

HSRs have the right to inspect the workplace, investigate potential hazards, make representations to management, and request the involvement of regulatory authorities where they believe a serious health and safety risk exists. Employers must give HSRs reasonable time and paid leave to perform their functions and must not disadvantage them for acting in that role. HSRs are a mechanism for embedding worker participation in safety management, particularly in workplaces with 20 or more employees where an HSR must be elected if workers request one.

And what is a PIN?

A Provisional Improvement Notice (PIN) can be issued by any trained Health and Safety Representative (HSR) to the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) where they have reasonable grounds to believe a health and safety risk exists in the workplace.

Once issued, the PIN notifies the PCBU of the alleged risk and typically allows 14 days for them to respond or take corrective action before the HSR may escalate the matter to the regulator. This power gives HSRs a formal enforcement mechanism to compel management attention to safety concerns without immediately involving external authorities, encouraging workplace-level resolution while preserving the HSR’s right to escalate to SafeWork NSW or WorkSafe Victoria if the risk isn’t addressed. The PIN sits as an intermediate step between informal representation and regulatory involvement, making it a significant tool in the HSR’s compliance toolkit.

Disputes like this rarely play out as simply as they’re often reported

While experienced observers may view the usage of PINs by HSRs during bargaining as an industrial tactic, it’s no less significant for having been raised at that time.

Checklist: receiving a PIN from an HSR

1. Acknowledge receipt immediately – Respond to the HSR in writing within a few days to confirm you have received the PIN and taken it seriously, even if your full response will take longer.
2. Investigate the alleged risk – Conduct a thorough assessment of the safety concern raised, including site inspection, document review, and consultation with relevant workers to understand what the HSR has identified.
3. Document everything – Keep detailed records of your investigation, findings, and any corrective actions taken; this creates a contemporaneous record if the matter escalates to the regulator.
4. Take corrective action – Where the HSR’s concern is valid, implement practical remedies before the PIN deadline (usually 14 days) and communicate progress to the HSR.
5. Provide a substantive written response – Before the deadline, give the HSR a formal response explaining what you found, what action you took (or why you consider the risk not serious), and your reasoning; this reduces the likelihood of escalation to SafeWork NSW or WorkSafe Victoria.

Conduct a WHS Audit before this arises

If a PIN can land on a business regardless of what’s actually motivating it, the only real protection is being able to answer for the business’s systems on the day it arrives. That means having current risk assessments for the hazards in the workplace, documented control measures, and evidence that they’re actually being followed – not a folder of policies nobody’s looked at since they were written.

So the question worth asking now: when did you last conduct a WHS Audit? When were risk assessments and control measures last reviewed, and could they be produced today if someone asked?

What it costs to get this wrong

This isn’t hypothetical. In November 2024, a Queensland court fined a state government agency $425,000 after a worker died deploying equipment during an operational task. The agency had known about training deficiencies related to that task for 10 years. Multiple near-miss reports had been filed over that decade, flagging the same gap. None of it led to the risks being eliminated or addressed via control measures.

Psychosocial risk follows the same logic

The same principle extends to psychosocial hazards, which businesses are now expected to manage with the same rigour as physical risks under the WHS codes of practice. Citation’s own research shows the gap this creates: in manufacturing, logistics and industrial businesses, 94.5 per cent of employers felt confident they were meeting their health and safety obligations, yet only 72.2 per cent felt sure they could manage psychosocial risk, and 25.5 per cent had no formal safety processes in place at all. Confidence and compliance aren’t the same thing, and the businesses most at risk are often the ones that feel most assured.

Checklist: WHS Audit

1. Plan and scope – Define the audit’s objectives, scope (which areas, systems, or hazards will be covered), audit timeline, and assemble the audit team; notify relevant staff and gather preliminary documentation.
2. Review systems and documentation – Assess written policies, procedures, incident records, training logs, risk assessments, and compliance documentation against legislative requirements and best practice standards.
3. Conduct site inspections – Walk through the workplace systematically, observe work practices, inspect hazard controls, equipment maintenance, and environmental conditions; photograph key areas and take notes.
4. Interview key personnel – Speak with workers, supervisors, HSRs, and management to understand how systems operate in practice, identify gaps between documented procedures and actual behaviour, and gather insight into safety culture.
5. Report findings and track remediation – Document observations, classify findings by risk level (critical, high, medium, low), provide clear recommendations, and establish a follow-up schedule to verify that corrective actions are implemented and effective.

Getting ahead of it

Navigating workplace safety is a lot to manage on top of running a business. Citation Safety gives businesses the tools, advice and support to build genuine, demonstrable safety practices – not just paperwork that looks good until an inspector arrives.

From WHS audits and gap assessments through to our digital WHS Software platform and around-the-clock Safety Advice Line, we can help businesses identify where they stand against The Code of Practice.

If your business operates in a high-risk sector, or you’re simply not sure where the gaps are, get in touch with our team for a confidential conversation about what needs to happen next