The short version
Under the model laws a duty cannot be handed to someone else. More than one party can hold the same duty at the same time, and each has to meet it to the extent they can influence and control the matter.
Where duties overlap, the parties have to consult, cooperate and coordinate with each other so far as is reasonably practicable. That is an obligation in its own right.
So the useful question on a shared site is not "whose responsibility is this". It is "have we agreed, in writing, who is doing what, and does everyone on the ground know".
Who counts as a worker
Under the model laws, worker is broad. It takes in employees, contractors and their employees, subcontractors, labour hire staff placed with you, apprentices and trainees, students on placement, and volunteers.
That breadth is deliberate. It closes off the argument that a duty disappears because of how the engagement was papered.
Victoria gets to a similar place by a different route: employer duties that extend to independent contractors and their employees in relation to matters over which the employer has control, alongside a duty owed to other people who may be affected by the work.
Labour hire: two duty holders, one worker
In a labour hire arrangement the provider remains the employer and keeps duties to the worker it placed. The host controls the workplace, the plant, the task and the supervision, and holds duties too.
Neither one is relieved by the other being there. The provider cannot rely on the host having a good site, and the host cannot rely on the provider having done an induction it has never seen.
The gap I find most often sits in the middle. The provider has inducted the worker into being a labour hire employee, and the host assumes that covered the site. It did not. Two different things were inducted, and the specific site, its plant and its hazards were in neither.
What that looks like on the ground
A written agreement on who does what: induction, supervision, plant, personal protective equipment, incident reporting, and who has authority to stop the work.
A site induction owned by the host, covering the actual site: the traffic layout, the plant, the exclusion zones, the emergency arrangements, who to report to and how to raise a problem.
Verification of competency for the specific plant and the specific task rather than a card that says something general. If someone is going to run a telehandler on your site, the question is whether they can run that machine, on that ground, in those conditions.
Named supervision, so it is clear who is watching the work rather than who is nominally in charge.
An incident reporting path that reaches both organisations, and a shared understanding of who notifies the regulator if the incident is notifiable, so it does not end up with each party assuming the other made the call.
Consultation arrangements that include the contractor's people, because they are workers for consultation purposes too.
And a records position that survives an audit: who was on site, what they were inducted into, what competencies were verified and by whom, and what was raised and closed out.
The part people get wrong
The most common mistake is treating this as a paperwork exercise between two head offices. Contracts get signed, inductions get filed, and then on site three crews turn up on the same morning and nobody has agreed who controls the yard.
The second most common is thinking that a principal contractor arrangement moves the duty. It changes who coordinates. It does not empty anyone else's obligations out.
The third is the short engagement. A crew arrives for a few hours, often out of normal times, and the induction gets compressed to a signature because everyone is under time pressure. That is exactly the situation where the site knowledge is thinnest and the risk is highest.
Licensing
Some Australian jurisdictions run labour hire licensing schemes, with their own rules about who has to be licensed, what a host has to check, and what happens if you engage an unlicensed provider.
They are not uniform, and the position has changed over time in more than one state.
If you use labour hire, check whether the jurisdiction you operate in has a scheme, and whether your provider currently holds a licence under it. That is a specific check against the current register.
Where to check the current position
Safe Work Australia publishes model guidance on duties, including how overlapping duties are meant to work. Each regulator publishes its own material, and WorkSafe Victoria publishes the Victorian position.
Labour hire licensing sits with a separate authority again in the states that have it.
Where a decision turns on the detail of who holds what, check the current instrument for your jurisdiction or get advice. I can help you map the arrangement and put the agreement together.
This is general information about the documented position, not advice about your situation, and the detail varies between jurisdictions. Check the current instrument for the state you are working in, or ask me and I will help you work out which one applies.
Written by
Jim Rimmer · WHS Specialist
I'm Jim Rimmer, a WHS specialist with more than 32 years leading safety across agriculture, food processing, manufacturing, mining and logistics.
More about Jim Rimmer and his background