This page is an educational summary for professionals working with AI. It is not the law and not legal advice. Always work from the current authoritative text linked below.
What does WHS Act section 19 do?
Section 19, headed "Primary duty of care", requires a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers it engages or causes to be engaged, and workers whose activities in carrying out work it influences or directs, while at work. Subsection 19(2) extends the duty to other persons put at risk by the work. Read the current compilation on the Federal Register of Legislation.
Who does it bind?
Every PCBU covered by the Commonwealth Act, which applies in the Comcare jurisdiction. The provision mirrors section 19 of the model WHS laws as adopted in most jurisdictions, Victoria excepted; the text verified here is the Commonwealth version.
What do practitioners get wrong?
Dropping the qualifier. Each limb of section 19 is qualified by "so far as is reasonably practicable"; restating the duty without it turns a qualified duty into an absolute one. A second error is reading subsection 19(3) as an exhaustive checklist: it opens "Without limiting subsections (1) and (2)", so the listed sub-duties illustrate the duty rather than bound it.
Where does AI use touch it?
Deploying AI changes systems of work under paragraph 19(3)(c), and paragraph 19(3)(f) covers the information, training, instruction or supervision workers need to use AI tools safely. See AI rollout is a WHS change and AI safety controls and the duty to verify.
Bottom line
Section 19 is the anchor duty of the Commonwealth WHS regime: a qualified, non-transferable obligation on every PCBU that reaches AI-driven changes to how work is designed, supervised and performed.
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