Comcare just told PCBUs where their obligations actually live

On 20 August 2026, Comcare re-published its full list of 26 Approved Commonwealth Codes of Practice as a single inventory. On its own, that looks like routine housekeeping. In context, it's a useful reminder of something PCBUs consistently get wrong: treating a Code of Practice as background reading rather than the actual benchmark a regulator will hold them against. A Code of Practice isn't law, but it isn't optional either. Under the model WHS Act, a Code is admissible evidence in a prosecution of what is "reasonably practicable" in the circumstances it covers. If a PCBU has departed from what a relevant Code recommends, the onus shifts, they need to show their own approach meets an equivalent or higher standard. Most organisations that fall short here aren't ignoring the Code outright. They've read it once, filed it, and never mapped their actual controls back against it. Commonwealth jurisdiction PCBUs have their own Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work, sitting inside this 26-code framework. Every state and territory has its own equivalent Code covering the same subject matter, tailored to local legislation, but the underlying test is consistent everywhere: can you show, hazard by hazard, which Code applies, who's accountable for the controls, when they were last reviewed, and what evidence exists that the control is actually operating, not just documented. That's the practical takeaway from Comcare's re-publication. It's not new law. It's a signal that the Codes are the surface a regulator expects PCBUs to be actively working from, not a document that sits in a compliance folder untouched between audits. If your hazard register doesn't currently show, for each hazard, which Code it maps to and who owns the control, that's the gap Comcare just pointed at.