The section sets six positive obligations that an officer must take reasonable steps to discharge. The evidence test is what distinguishes an officer who has discharged the duty from one who has not.
| Limb | Obligation | What it looks like in a junior miner | Evidence a board should keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| (a) | Acquire and keep up-to-date WHS knowledge | Every director completes an onboarding WHS briefing. Each receives an annual refresher on mining-sector WHS developments. | Induction pack, training log, external advisor briefing notes, regulator correspondence log. |
| (b) | Understand the operations and their hazards | Directors conduct annual site visits. The CFO and Co Sec shadow a critical risk review. New directors are walked through the hazard register. | Site visit log with dates, directors present, critical risk briefings attended, hazard register review signatures. |
| (c) | Ensure appropriate resources and processes | WHS budget is ring-fenced. Contractor management procedures are in place. PPE program is current. Emergency response plan has been tested. | Approved WHS budget, management system documents, contractor pre-qualification records, ERP test reports. |
| (d) | Ensure incident information and response | A real-time incident reporting channel reaches the board within twelve hours of a high-potential event. A standing critical-incident protocol exists. | Critical incident protocol, incident log, board minutes evidencing timely receipt, near-miss reporting rate. |
| (e) | Compliance systems | WHS obligations register is maintained. Regulator notices are logged and closed. Compliance calendar is operating. | Obligations register, regulator correspondence log, compliance calendar with completion evidence. |
| (f) | Verification | Directors verify that the processes in (c) and (e) are actually operating. This is the limb most commonly under-evidenced. | Internal audit reports, board committee site verification notes, KPI verification records, external audit of WHS management system. |
Under the WHS Act, an officer is anyone who makes or participates in decisions that affect the whole or a substantial part of the business, or has the capacity to significantly affect the PCBU's financial standing. Directors sit squarely inside that definition. So, typically, do the MD, CFO and Company Secretary.
In practice a junior mining board should treat every director as an officer and each should understand that the duty is personal, not delegable, and not extinguished by the absence of an incident.
Every director of an ASX-listed mining or exploration company is an officer under the Model Work Health and Safety Act. That status carries a positive duty, s27, that does not depend on any incident occurring. Regulators have prosecuted officers of small and mid-cap mining and exploration companies under s27 in recent cycles, and the pattern in those cases is consistent.
This article is a companion to our broader article on director duties for ASX mining directors, which covers the full duty surface across the Corporations Act, ASX Listing Rules, JORC, WHS and environmental law.
It is not that the directors did not care about safety. It is that they could not produce evidence that they had actively discharged the six limbs of the due diligence test. Officers who could show what they did, survived.
The pattern in WHS prosecutions of junior miner officers is not indifference. It is an absence of evidence.
WHS prosecution pattern · Officers who could show what they did, survived
Three patterns account for most of the weakness junior mining boards show when s27(5) evidence is tested.
Directors do not visit sites because the schedule is busy, because the site is remote, or because the company is still in early-stage exploration and the Chair thinks the risk is low. Every one of those reasons is understandable and none of them satisfies the duty. A one-day site visit per director per year, minuted, is the minimum.
The board receives an HSE report at every meeting. The report contains incident counts and severity. What it does not contain is confirmation that the incident information reached the board within a defined time window, or that the board responded. Make the reporting cadence explicit: a critical incident protocol that triggers a board notification inside 24 hours.
The board accepts management's assurance that processes are in place. No director has verified that they are actually operating. Verification does not need to be adversarial. It can be a director shadowing a management system audit, or attending an emergency response drill. What matters is that it happened, and is minuted.
The single highest-value operational habit a junior miner board can develop is a named site-visit rhythm. Three elements make it work.
Four moves. Done in one board cycle, they take s27(5) from a generic obligation to a working evidence layer the Chair can produce on demand.
Forty duties across nine categories, WHS section pre-populated for s27(5) evidence audit.
Get the template →Five overlapping sources of personal liability and the Chair's evidence test.
Read article →Where the insurance gap meets the WHS evidence gap at renewal.
Read article →Tuned for the junior miner operating rhythm: quarterly lodgement windows, AGM timing, tenement renewal cycles, and the regulatory news that actually matters.
Book a 30-minute Compliance Walk-Through. We'll show you where s27(5) evidence is thin and what a live verification log looks like on your operations.