General information about work health and safety law, not legal advice. The regulations and Acts are linked at the foot of this page with the version read; they are the official text to check.
The ruleQueensland’s section 48, printed whole
Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (Qld), s 48, Remote or isolated work
“(1) A person conducting a business or undertaking must manage risks to the health and safety of a worker associated with remote or isolated work under part 3.1.”
“(2) In minimising risks to the health and safety of workers associated with remote or isolated work, a person conducting a business or undertaking must provide a system of work that includes effective communication with the worker.” Maximum penalty: 60 penalty units.
“(3) In this section”: “assistance includes rescue, medical assistance and the attendance of emergency service workers.” “remote or isolated work, in relation to a worker, means work that is isolated from the assistance of other persons because of location, time or the nature of the work.”
Two notes sit under subsection (1): the first points to section 19 of the Work Health and Safety Act, the second to part 3.1 of the Regulation for general risk management.
Reading itFive words that carry the rule
- Who
- The duty is on “a person conducting a business or undertaking”, not on the worker.
- Isolated
- The test is whether the work is “isolated from the assistance of other persons”, and the section names three causes: location, time, or the nature of the work. Distance is only one of them.
- Assistance
- A definition, not a separate duty. It tells you what the worker is isolated from: rescue, medical assistance and the attendance of emergency service workers.
- Manage
- Subsection (1) carries no penalty of its own; it sends the reader to part 3.1, and its note to section 19 of the Act.
- Communication
- Subsection (2) is the one with a penalty: 60 penalty units in Queensland. It asks for a system of work, and that system must include effective communication with the worker.
None of these words says what the communication must be, how often a worker checks in, or what happens when a call is missed. The section leaves that to the business’s own management of the risks under part 3.1.
Whose workerThe duty behind the section
The note under subsection (1) points to the primary duty of care in section 19 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld). Section 19(1) puts a person conducting a business or undertaking under a duty, so far as is reasonably practicable, to ensure the health and safety of “(a) workers engaged, or caused to be engaged by the person; and (b) workers whose activities in carrying out work are influenced or directed by the person; while the workers are at work in the business or undertaking.”
Among the things section 19(3) lists that the business must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, is “the provision and maintenance of safe systems of work”. The duty in section 19(1) reaches past a business’s own employees: it takes in workers the business engages or causes to be engaged, and workers whose work it influences or directs.
New South WalesThe same section, its own penalty
New South Wales has the same section 48 in its Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025, which repeals and replaces the 2017 Regulation. Subsection (1) says the business must manage the risks “in accordance with Part 3.1”; subsection (2) asks for “a system of work that includes effective communication with the worker”; and subsection (3) defines assistance and remote or isolated work in the same words as Queensland. The penalties are New South Wales’s own: a maximum of 73 penalty units for an individual and 364 penalty units for a body corporate.
VictoriaThe general duty, and one mining rule
Victoria’s Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 (amendments as at 29 July 2026) speak of an employee working alone in one place only, regulation 415, and it binds the operator of a mine: the operator must make sure, so far as reasonably practicable, that there is a means of effective communication with an employee working alone at an isolated location at the mine.
For a guard who is an employee, the rule is the employer’s general duty in section 21 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. Section 21(1) requires an employer, so far as is reasonably practicable, to provide and keep for its employees a working environment that is safe and without risks to health. The maximum penalty is 1,800 penalty units for a natural person and 9,000 for a body corporate. Section 21(3) carries the duty to a contractor the employer engages and to that contractor’s employees, such as a guard supplied by a security firm, in relation to matters the employer controls, or would control but for an agreement limiting or removing that control; this guide does not go further into that subsection.
Section 21(2) lists failures that breach that duty, among them failing, so far as is reasonably practicable, to keep plant and systems of work safe and without risks to health, and failing to give employees the information, instruction, training or supervision they need to work safely.
Side by sideWhere the working-alone rule sits
Queensland and New South Wales put the communication requirement into a section of its own, with its own penalty. Victoria has no such section: its one working-alone rule, regulation 415, binds mine operators only and carries no penalty of its own, since a note ties it to the employer’s duty in section 21. For other work that general duty, including safe systems of work, applies without naming communication. The other limits on a guard’s work, from the licence itself to the power of arrest, are in the licence guide and the arrest guide.