Video company and director prosecuted over sexual harassment

A Victorian video production company was fined $40,000 with conviction for failing to provide a safe working environment or minimising the risk to employees, after an employee reported being sexually harassed (WorkSafe Victoria v Indimax Film Productions Pty Ltd [2025]).

The incident

Indimax Film Productions Pty Ltd (Indimax) is a video production company located in Port Melbourne operated by a sole director. Employees of Indimax travelled around Victoria to meet clients and shoot videos.

On 29 July 2022, WorkSafe’s Advisory Service received a report from an employee of Indimax (worker) that the sole director had sexually harassed them. The worker reported directly to the director.

Safety measures

An investigation uncovered that between 1 April 2022 and the incident, Indimax did not:

provide a written policy and procedure to its employees that discusses sexual harassment and stated what appropriate action would be taken to protect employees;
have clear and confidential mechanisms for reporting sexual harassment, or alternative reporting avenues where the manager (as in this case) was not the appropriate person to report to;
train managers to uphold, apply and model the appropriate behaviours in the policy; and
induct and train employees on the policy.

The Court also noted that there appeared to be a complete disregard of the risks to employees.

Charge and sentencing

Indimax pleaded guilty to failing to provide a safe working environment to its employees, but disputed the worker’s allegations. After the contested hearing where both the worker and director gave evidence, the Court found several of the allegations against the director were proven, including that he:

placed his hand on the worker’s shoulder/back and squeezed;
placed his hand on the worker’s mid-thigh and squeezed; and
flipped the tag on the worker’s pants back into her pants.

Indimax was subsequently fined $40,000 with conviction.

In a separate proceeding, the director was charged with, and pleaded guilty to, being aware of circumstances that could give rise to the existence of a risk and being in a position to make decisions about control measures that Indimax could have put in place to minimise the risk occurring. He was fined $15,000 without conviction.

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