SafeWork NSW just landed its largest fine since the Code became enforceable, and still not one psychosocial prosecution

SafeWork NSW announced on 28 August that Fitzmoore Group Pty Ltd had been fined $390,000 over a fall through a skylight void in October 2023, prosecuted under sections 32 and 19(1) of the WHS Act. It is the fifteenth conviction SafeWork NSW has secured since the psychosocial Code of Practice became an enforceable benchmark on 1 July 2026, and it is the largest single-conviction fine of that window so far, ahead of the $555,000 Wumbulgal fire and explosion conviction in July. Cumulative post-1 July enforcement now stands at $2,817,600 across 15 convictions. Six of those 15 have named a company director or officer personally alongside the business, a rate of roughly two in five. The Fitzmoore matter also shows the enforcement pipeline lengthening: an October 2023 incident reaching conviction now suggests the more serious cases are working through the District Court on a longer timeline than the lower-court prosecutions that dominated the first weeks after commencement. Every one of the 15 convictions is a physical or chemical hazard. Fifty-eight days after the Code became enforceable, there is still not one psychosocial prosecution on the record. That is worth stating plainly, because the absence is often read as reassurance. It is not. SafeWork NSW named psychosocial risk as a funded, targeted enforcement priority in its 2026-27 Regulatory Statement, and it runs the largest dedicated psychosocial inspectorate in the country. The reason no psychosocial case has reached court is that these matters take time to investigate and prosecute, not that the regulator has deprioritised them. What the physical convictions do tell you is the shape of the enforcement that is coming. The pattern is consistent: secure the company conviction, then, where the officer had the knowledge and the authority to act, name the officer personally under their section 27 due diligence duty. Section 27 does not distinguish between a fall hazard and a workload or bullying hazard. The first psychosocial case to reach a NSW court will be run through the same mechanism, against the same duty, with the same question asked of the officer: what did you personally do about a risk you knew existed. The practical test has not changed since the Fusarelli and Patti officer convictions in early August. An officer's reasonable-steps defence against a psychosocial finding looks identical to one against a chemical exposure: a dated hazard identification record, named controls, a review cycle, and evidence the officer engaged with it rather than delegating and forgetting. A folder of policies is not that evidence. A dated risk register with an officer's name against a review date is. The window to build that record as a standing discipline, rather than assemble it after a notice arrives, is the time between now and the first psychosocial prosecution.