Comcare is about to tell you its 2026-27 enforcement priorities — will your evidence match?

On Monday 31 August, Comcare is running a 2026-27 Regulatory Update information session with CEO Colin Radford, General Manager Regulatory Operations Justin Napier, and Assistant Director Regulatory Operations Karen Palmer all on the panel. The stated agenda: an introduction to Comcare's 2026-27 regulatory priorities and inspection program, an update on the regulatory approach, WHS Law Reform, and Q&A. The audience is named explicitly, leaders, WHS and HR practitioners, and Health and Safety Representatives within the Commonwealth jurisdiction. That is a different kind of session to the guidance webinars regulators usually run. This is the federal regulator standing up its most senior regulatory operations staff to publicly commit to what it intends to inspect and enforce over the next twelve months. SafeWork NSW did the equivalent at state level in July, when its 2026-27 Regulatory Statement named psychosocial risk as a funded, targeted enforcement priority for the year ahead. Comcare's 31 August session is the first time a federal regulator has made the same kind of public commitment in the post-1 July enforcement window. For any PCBU operating in the Commonwealth jurisdiction, that makes 31 August worth calendaring. It also makes the following week worth thinking about, because the session sits inside a ten-day stretch that includes SafeWork NSW's own free small-business psychosocial seminar on 1 September. Two regulators, two public statements of intent, ten days apart. Between them they cover most of the employers reading this. ## Where the gap actually shows up Here is the part that catches most businesses out. A regulatory update session is designed to build awareness. It tells you where the regulator's attention is going. It does not, by itself, produce anything an inspector will accept as evidence that your organisation is managing the risk. When an inspector follows up, "show me your process" is not answered with "we attended the Comcare session" or "we're aware psychosocial risk is a priority this year." It is answered with three things, in writing, with dates attached: - **A documented hazard identification process.** Not a memory of a conversation, a dated risk assessment that shows what was identified, when, and by whom. - **Evidence of consultation with your people.** Not a survey sent once and filed away, an ongoing consultation record that shows workers were actually asked and their input was actually used. - **Actions that are assigned, tracked, and closed out.** Not a list of things someone meant to do, a register that shows who owns each control, what the status is, and when it was completed. Regulators are consistent about this distinction. RSHQ's audit of 61 resources-sector operations found the same pattern, worker consultation was often absent, integration into safety management systems was inconsistent, and training records were patchy, even where operations knew psychosocial risk was on the radar. Knowing the risk exists and being able to prove it is being managed are two different states, and only one of them survives an inspection. ## The two-week window Commonwealth employers actually have 31 August and 1 September are not the only two dates worth watching. Comcare's own Psychosocial Risk Management live learning workshop follows on 2 September, giving federal-jurisdiction WHS and HR teams a training channel to pair with the regulatory update. Together, the two Comcare sessions and the SafeWork NSW seminar form a genuine ten-day run of regulator-anchored content, three separate opportunities to hear directly from a regulator what it expects, inside a fortnight. The practical move is to treat each session as a checkpoint, not an endpoint. Register for whichever session matches your jurisdiction. Then, before or shortly after, pull the current hazard register and ask the same three questions an inspector would: is the identification process dated and documented, is the consultation trail real and ongoing, and are the actions tracked to closure rather than just logged. Where the answer is no, that gap is exactly what the next inspection will find, whether or not anyone attended the session that warned about it.