Safe Work Australia is part-way through a review of the model work health and safety framework as it applies to asbestos. The stated aim is to strengthen how the rules control the risks from asbestos-containing materials and, importantly, to support the prioritised removal of that material rather than leaving it managed in place indefinitely. For any business with asbestos on its books, this is the review worth tracking, because it reaches the documents your obligations are actually built on.
What is on the table
The review covers the model WHS Regulations, the model Codes of Practice and the supporting guidance, with the model WHS Act in scope where relevant. In practice that means the two asbestos codes most duty holders already work to, the one on managing and controlling asbestos in the workplace and the one on safely removing it, are the documents under examination. Changes here flow down into the state and territory laws that adopt the model framework, so this is not an abstract exercise.
The push toward prioritised removal is the part to pay attention to. The long-standing default in Australian asbestos regulation has been manage-in-place: if material is in good condition and undisturbed, you record it, monitor it and leave it. The review signals interest in shifting the emphasis toward getting higher-risk material out of buildings on a planned basis rather than only when it is disturbed or a building is demolished. If that thinking makes it into the regulations and codes, the long-term expectation on building owners changes from holding asbestos steady to having a plan to be rid of it.
How this connects to the national plan
This review is not happening in a vacuum. It feeds the Asbestos National Strategic Plan for 2024 to 2030, run by the Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency, the body formerly known as ASEA and now carrying an expanded silica remit. The plan set the direction. The framework review is one of the levers for turning that direction into enforceable rules. Read the two together and you get a fairly clear picture of where regulator attention is heading for the rest of the decade.
The consultation, and where it now sits
Safe Work Australia ran a public consultation on the review earlier in 2026, with a discussion paper and an online submission process through its consultation hub. That submission window has now closed; it ran to late April. So the moment to lodge a formal view has passed for this round. What comes next is Safe Work Australia working the feedback into recommendations for its members, the Commonwealth, state and territory WHS ministers, expected later in 2026. Any actual changes to regulations or codes would follow from there, on the longer timeline those processes always take.
Even with the submission window shut, knowing the review is live is useful, because it tells you which way the settings are likely to move and lets you get ahead of them rather than reacting once they are law.
New guidance for health and safety representatives
Running alongside the review, Safe Work Australia and the agency released new asbestos guidance aimed specifically at health and safety representatives in early 2026, a guidance document plus an asbestos checklist for HSRs. It is a sign of where the consultation emphasis is landing: on the people inside workplaces who are positioned to notice when asbestos is being managed badly.
The guidance is careful to set expectations. HSRs are not asked to become asbestos experts or to fix problems themselves. They are there to recognise poor management, ask the right questions and use the powers they have, which include requesting information, inspecting the workplace, issuing provisional improvement notices and, where work is unsafe, directing that it stop. The checklist gives them a practical way to gauge whether an asbestos register, a management plan and the day-to-day controls actually stack up.
What duty holders should do now
Two things. First, expect the manage-in-place comfort zone to narrow over time and start treating prioritised removal of your higher-risk material as the direction of travel, not a someday problem. Buildings with deteriorating or readily disturbed asbestos are the obvious candidates to plan removal for ahead of any rule change.
Second, get your asbestos register and management plan into the shape an informed HSR would now scrutinise them in. The new HSR guidance effectively publishes the questions your own staff and their representatives are being encouraged to ask. A register that is current, accurate and matched by real controls on the ground is the thing that holds up when those questions start coming, whether from an HSR, an auditor or a regulator acting on a strengthened framework.