What "Reasonably Practicable" Actually Means Under Victorian OHS Law

Why this phrase matters more than any other three words in the Act

Open the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic) and you will run into the same qualifier again and again: employers must ensure health and safety "so far as is reasonably practicable." It sits inside the core duties in sections 21, 22, 23 and 26. It is not a throwaway phrase or a legal hedge — it is a defined legal test, set out in section 20 of the Act, and it is the test WorkSafe inspectors and the courts actually use to decide whether a manufacturer did enough.

Most plant managers have heard the phrase a hundred times without ever seeing the definition. That gap is where trouble starts: "reasonably practicable" gets treated as a synonym for "whatever we can afford" or "industry standard," when the Act says something much more specific.

The statutory test: section 20

Section 20(1) of the OHS Act 2004 sets the underlying duty: where the Act imposes a duty to ensure health and safety, the duty-holder must eliminate risks so far as is reasonably practicable, and if elimination isn't reasonably practicable, must reduce those risks so far as is reasonably practicable.

Section 20(2) then lists the matters that must be weighed in working out what is (or was, at the relevant time) reasonably practicable:

• the likelihood of the hazard or risk concerned eventuating
• the degree of harm that would result if the hazard or risk eventuated
• what the person concerned knows, or ought reasonably to know, about the hazard or risk and any ways of eliminating or reducing it
• the availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or reduce the hazard or risk
• the cost of eliminating or reducing the hazard or risk

That's the whole test. Five matters, weighed together — not a checklist where ticking the cheap ones lets you skip the rest.

It's a balancing test, not a cost cap

The order those five matters appear in is not accidental, and it is not how most people read it on first pass. Cost is the last factor considered, not the first, and WorkSafe Victoria's own published guidance on how it applies section 20 is explicit that no single matter — including cost — determines the outcome on its own. The test applies "a clear presumption in favour of safety," and the weight given to cost shrinks as the likely severity of harm grows.

WorkSafe's guidance puts it bluntly: where the degree of harm is significant — death or serious injury is a realistic outcome — it is "extremely unlikely" that cost could ever be disproportionate enough to justify skipping an available, suitable control. And where a business genuinely cannot afford the control a risk requires, WorkSafe's position is not that the risk becomes acceptable — it's that the business "should not engage in the activity that gives rise to that hazard or risk" at all.

That is the single most misunderstood part of this test on a factory floor. "We can't justify the cost" is not, by itself, a defence. It's an admission that starts a different, harder conversation: can this process run at all without the control.

What this looks like for an actual control decision

Take a real example: an unguarded pinch point on an older press. A plant manager weighing whether to retrofit interlocked guarding versus relying on operator training and a warning sign is, whether they realise it or not, running the section 20(2) test:

Factor	What it actually asks
Likelihood	How often is a hand near that point during normal operation and changeover?
Degree of harm	Crush injury, amputation — not a scratch
Knowledge	Is interlocked guarding a known, standard control for this class of machine?
Availability/suitability	Does an off-the-shelf or fabricated guard exist that fits this press without disabling function?
Cost	What does it cost against what it prevents?

Run that table honestly and a warning sign next to a known amputation risk doesn't survive contact with the first four factors — cost barely gets to matter, because the likelihood and severity are both high and a suitable, available control exists. That's the same logic underpinning the hierarchy of controls: elimination and engineering controls sit above administrative controls and PPE precisely because they don't depend on someone doing the right thing every single time, and section 20 is the legal reasoning that sits underneath that hierarchy.

Documenting the reasoning is the actual compliance task

The test isn't just something WorkSafe applies after an incident — it's something a duty-holder is meant to apply prospectively, and be able to show they applied. "We thought about it and decided it was too expensive" is not a record. A defensible position looks like: here's the hazard, here's what we knew about it, here's what controls exist and what they cost, here's why we chose what we chose (or why we're staging further controls over time).

That written reasoning — not just the control itself — is what turns a decision into something audit-ready. It's also the difference in outcome when something does go wrong: a business that can point to a genuine section 20 assessment is in a different position to a regulator than one that can't, and that gap shows up directly in the numbers covered in what a WorkSafe breach actually costs against staying compliant.

The practical takeaway

"Reasonably practicable" is not a synonym for "reasonable effort" or "what's affordable." It's a five-factor legal test set out in section 20 of the OHS Act 2004, weighted toward safety, where cost only wins the argument when the risk is genuinely low-likelihood, low-severity, or the available controls are genuinely unsuitable or unavailable — not simply expensive. For anything with real potential to seriously hurt someone, the practical bar is closer to "do it, and document why" than "do what you can justify on the budget."

FAQ

What section of the OHS Act actually defines "reasonably practicable"? Section 20 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic). Section 20(1) sets the underlying duty to eliminate risk so far as is reasonably practicable, or reduce it if elimination isn't reasonably practicable. Section 20(2) lists the five matters that must be weighed to work out what that means in a given case.

What are the five factors in section 20(2)? The likelihood of the hazard or risk eventuating; the degree of harm that would result if it did; what the person knows or ought reasonably to know about the hazard and ways to control it; the availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or reduce it; and the cost of eliminating or reducing it.

Can a manufacturer skip a control because it's too expensive? Not on cost alone. WorkSafe Victoria's published guidance on how it applies section 20 states that no single matter, including cost, decides the outcome by itself, and that where the degree of harm is significant it is "extremely unlikely" that cost could ever be disproportionate enough to justify skipping an available, suitable control. If a business genuinely can't afford the controls a risk requires, WorkSafe's stated position is that it shouldn't be running that activity at all.

Is this the same test used in other Australian states? The wording is specific to Victoria's OHS Act 2004. Victoria did not adopt the harmonised model Work Health and Safety laws used in most other states and territories, so while the concept is similar, this article is about the Victorian section 20 test only — check the relevant Act if you operate across state lines.

How should a plant manager document a reasonably practicable decision? Record the hazard, what was known about it and the controls available, what those controls cost against the risk they address, and the reasoning for the control chosen (or for staging further controls). That record is what makes the decision defensible to WorkSafe and is part of being audit-ready, not the control measure alone.

Book a site assessment with Ardmor and we'll walk your plant's actual control decisions through the section 20 test — likelihood, harm, knowledge, availability and cost — so you have a documented, defensible position before WorkSafe ever asks for one.

This article is general information for Victorian manufacturers, not legal advice. Last updated: 20 September 2026.