The Person Who Never Signed In: A Falling Tree, a Collapsing Gate and Your Duty to the Public

Earlier this year a tree being felled at a residential property in Queensland fell the wrong way. It crossed the road, struck a passing car and brought down nearby powerlines. The driver was injured. On 3 November Workplace Health and Safety Queensland issued an incident alert about it. The same week WorkSafe Victoria charged a fencing company after a steel gate collapsed and seriously injured a member of the public at a Tullamarine hotel in November 2024. Neither injured person was a worker. Neither had signed an induction or seen a safe work method statement. Both were owed a duty all the same.

The Duty That Reaches Past the Fence Line

Every WHS and OHS law in Australia extends the primary duty beyond workers. A business must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that other people are not put at risk by its work. The WHSQ alert specifically names the primary duty to people who are not workers. It is one of the easiest duties to underweight because most safety systems are built around the crew.

Inductions, toolbox talks, PPE and permits all assume the people at risk are the people on the job. Members of the public do not attend prestarts. They do not know where the drop zone is. They drive past at 60 km/h without any idea a tree is about to come down.

Ask yourself:

• Who could be hurt by your work who will never appear on a sign-in sheet?
• Does your risk assessment name them specifically, such as drivers, pedestrians, residents or hotel guests?
• Do your controls work for someone who has had no briefing at all?

An Exclusion Zone That Stops at the Crew

The tree felling alert is a clear example of controls drawn too tightly. Its list of recommended controls includes a felling plan, exclusion zones that take in roads and footpaths, traffic control where a tree could reach a road and mechanical felling or sectional removal from an EWP where clear felling is unsafe. The closing advice is the line I would pin to the wall: arborists and land clearers should check that exclusion zones cover the public, not just the crew.

An exclusion zone is often set by where the workers stand. The real test is where the hazard can reach. A tree's fall zone does not care about the property boundary.

• Is your exclusion zone measured from the hazard outward or from the crew inward?
• If it touches a road or footpath, who controls traffic and pedestrians?
• Have you planned for the tree that is leaning, hollow or affected by wind?

Products That Leave the Workshop

The Tullamarine charges show the same duty from another direction. WorkSafe alleges Lee Brothers Fencing had no documented welding procedure, did not ensure welding was done and supervised by competent people and did not have the welds inspected before the gate was supplied and installed. These are allegations only and the case has not been decided.

What interests me is where the risk landed. The work was done in a workshop. The harm happened months later at a hotel, to someone with no connection to the business at all. When you make, supply or install something, your duty travels with it.

• Do your quality checks treat structural welds and fixings as safety controls?
• Would your records show a competent person inspected the item before it left?

Seeing Your Work From the Footpath

Try this on your next job. Stand where a member of the public would stand, on the footpath or in the car park or at the hotel entrance. Look back at the work. What could reach you from here? What would you need to know that nobody has told you?

If the person most at risk from your work this week is a stranger, have your controls been designed with them in mind?