Workplace deaths in Australia hit 222 in 2025, the largest yearly toll since 2012. Each one was a person who went to work and did not come home. Meanwhile, the nation’s wastewater is telling a second story, with ice and cocaine consumption at record highs. Two bad trends, one country. So it is fair to ask whether the duty of care we demand from every employer reaches the harm that keeps growing.

The Workplace Toll Keeps Climbing
Safe Work Australia figures put the 2025 count of workplace deaths in Australia at 222. First, vehicle collisions led the causes. Falls from a height came next, then objects falling on workers. Out in remote Australia the danger is sharper, with workers there eight times more likely to die at work than the national average.

Worker fatalities are not the only warning sign, and injuries are rising too. Serious workers’ compensation claims reached 147,200 last financial year, up 40,600 or 38 per cent on a decade earlier. The Australian Council of Trade Unions points to mental health as the sharpest rise. Serious claims went from about 6,600 to 17,900 in ten years, which makes psychological injury the fastest growing category of workplace harm.

What the Law Says About Workplace Deaths in Australia

The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 gives every person conducting a business or undertaking a primary duty of care. They must ensure the health and safety of workers and others, so far as is reasonably practicable. Comcare’s regulatory guide says that covers psychological health as well as physical health.

That guide also spells out what “reasonably practicable” means. A business weighs how likely the harm is and how bad it could get. It weighs what it knows, or ought to know, about the risk, and what ways exist to remove it. Safe Work Australia counts government departments and agencies as examples of a business or undertaking, so the principle covers public bodies as well.

The Queensland Law Handbook gives the common law version. A duty of care arises when a defendant should have foreseen that their conduct could hurt someone, and courts judge that by what the defendant knew at the time. Intoxication does not lower the standard of care a defendant owes to others.

Canberra Already Accepts the Principle Online
Government uses this logic when the harm happens online. A May 2026 paper from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts outlines a Digital Duty of Care under the Online Safety Act 2021. Online services would have to assess their risk of serious harm at least once a year. They would also have to act on foreseeable dangers and report on whether their measures work.

The penalties have teeth. According to the paper, maximum civil penalties for egregious and systemic breaches will match the Competition and Consumer Act, where ACCC maximums recently rose to $100 million. It also says frequent harmful content, or a failure to deal with it, may count as evidence of a breach.

If that is the test for online services, why should frequent harm from illicit drugs count for less?

Record Drug Use Is a Foreseeable Harm
Between August 2024 and August 2025, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission tested wastewater at 64 treatment plants. The Guardian reported on 29 April 2026 that methamphetamine consumption hit its highest level since the program began in 2016, rising from 8,405kg to 15,971kg. Among the 34 nations covered by the Sewage Core Group Europe, only the United States consumes more meth.

Other drugs climbed with it. For example, cocaine reached a record 7,985kg. Ketamine hit a record, and heroin reached record levels in cities. Across meth, cocaine, MDMA and heroin, estimated consumption rose 21 per cent in a year, and the combined market value went from $11.5bn to $14.3bn. Meth made up 77 per cent of that spending.

Cannabis is a more mixed picture. The Guardian says national use fell between 2024 and 2025, though it remains the most consumed illicit drug. Citing the most recent government health survey, the Legalise Cannabis Party says more than 11 per cent of Australians use it regularly, about 2.4 million people, and eight million adults have tried it. Meanwhile, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s 2022 to 2023 household survey found 1.6 million Australians over 14, or 7.5 per cent, had ever used crystal methamphetamine. One per cent had used it in the previous 12 months.

ACIC chief executive Heather Cook spoke of “persistent, elevated demand for major drugs across jurisdictions”. She said the figures represent “real harm and real consequences playing out in hospitals, homes and communities across the country.”

Why Worker Fatalities Point to a Bigger Question
Let’s be straight about what the sources do not show. None of them proves that drugs caused workplace deaths in Australia, and the safe work figures do not split causes by substance. But foreseeability does not need one proven cause. The question is whether a risk was known and whether anyone took reasonable steps.

So the policy record deserves a hard look. Liberal drug policies, loose readings of existing rules and thin enforcement can each send a message that drug use carries little consequence. Then public indifference can follow. When record consumption barely makes the news, a country risks treating a foreseeable harm as normal. Cook said the data reinforces the need for sustained, coordinated national responses.

What Reasonable Steps Look Like
Reasonable steps are not a mystery. Workplace law already points to information, training, instruction, supervision and monitoring of conditions at work. A national response to workplace deaths in Australia can borrow that thinking and put prevention first. Drug testing and early prevention intervention can stop harm before it reaches a hospital, a worksite or a family.

Australia has the language it needs. A duty of care covers workplaces, courts test it by foreseeability, and government is building a version for the online world. Workplace deaths in Australia sit at a thirteen year high while drug consumption sits at records. Applying the same standard to both is simply consistent.

WRD News
Sources:

• Regulatory guide – Primary duty of care
• Duty of care
• Duties under WHS laws
• Issues paper on a Digital Duty of Care
• Duty of Care
• A Digital Duty of Care for Australia—Developing a duty of care framework for online services used by Australians
• How many Australians use cannabis?
• Australia’s use of methamphetamine has doubled in a decade, wastewater monitoring reveals