Key Point
- Directors and other executive officers have personal
obligations for safety and need to take active steps to
discharge these obligations.
Safety is quite rightly a key concern in the energy and
resources sectors. Legislation imposes high standards on
companies and individuals to ensure safety standards are upheld
in the industry.
In each State and under Commonwealth legislation, an
"executive officer" (noting that specific legislation
for the mining and petroleum industries may call these
"executive officers" by different names) may,
depending on the circumstances, be personally liable for the
safety breaches of a company. In essence, executive officers
must ensure that the corporation complies with the applicable
safety regime. The focus is to make individual managers
directly and personally responsible for the safety performance
of a business, as an added
