If you thought the NSW Government was content with simply regulating business, think again. In a manoeuvre so audacious it would make a pickpocket blush, the State has now handed unions the keys to the prosecutorial kingdom in work health and safety (WHS) matters—complete with the right to pocket the fines. Yes, you read that correctly: unions can now commence prosecutions for WHS offences and keep the spoils. The only thing more remarkable than this legislative largesse is the resounding silence from the so-called guardians of business—the employer groups—who, apparently, couldn’t muster a peep of protest.

Let’s be clear: this is not some arcane regulatory tweak buried in the footnotes of Hansard. This is a seismic shift in the balance of industrial power, and it has been delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer wrapped in union bunting. For decades, the prosecution of workplace safety breaches was the exclusive preserve of the state regulator. The rationale was simple: justice must not only be done but be seen to be done—free from the taint of vested interest. Now, the fox is not only in the henhouse, he’s been handed the deed and a set of bolt cutters.

Under the new regime, unions can initiate criminal prosecutions for WHS breaches and, should they prevail, retain the fines as a sort of industrial bounty. This is not merely a case of marking your own homework; it’s being paid handsomely for every red cross. The potential for conflicts of interest is as obvious as it is alarming. Imagine, if you will, a future where the union’s legal war chest is funded by the very fines it levies against employers—an incentive structure as perverse as it is lucrative.

And where, you might ask, were the employer groups as this legislative Trojan horse rolled through Macquarie Street? Nowhere to be seen. The Business Council, Ai Group, the Chamber of Commerce—all missing in action, as if rendered mute by the sheer audacity of the proposal or perhaps paralysed by a surfeit of consultation invitations and canapés. Not a single submission, not a solitary press release, not even a sternly worded letter to the editor. The silence is as telling as it is damning.

Perhaps the employer groups have grown weary of fighting a government that views business as a necessary evil, to be tolerated only when it’s paying taxes or providing a convenient villain. Or perhaps, in the age of ESG, they are simply too cowed to be seen opposing “safety”—even when the cure is worse than the disease.

Whatever the reason, the result is clear: unions now have a direct financial stake in the prosecution of workplace safety offences, and employers have been left to wonder whether their supposed representatives are up to the job. In the end, the only thing more dangerous than a union with prosecutorial powers is an employer group without a backbone.

Welcome to the new industrial order in New South Wales: justice for sale, silence for hire, and business left holding the bill.