Five metres was never an exclusion zone
- Safety Jon
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
A South Australian slashing contractor has been fined $30,000 after a 79-year-old man was struck in the head by metal debris ejected from a tractor-mounted slasher.
The man suffered catastrophic brain injuries and later died in hospital.
The incident occurred at Salisbury Plain on 05 Oct 23. The contractor was sentenced in the South Australian Employment Court on 23 Jul 26 after pleading guilty to a Category 2 offence under the Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA).
The machinery was operating approximately five metres from the man. The contractor’s own safety documents required slashing to stop whenever a person came within 30 metres, while the manufacturer specified a danger zone extending up to 100 metres.
This was not an unidentified hazard, an unusual mechanical failure or an unforeseeable chain of events. The danger was known, documented and printed on the machine, yet the work continued with people standing well inside every identified exclusion distance.
What happened
Guy Warren Jackson, a sole trader operating as Jacksons Slashing, had been engaged to conduct vegetation clearing at a Salisbury Plain property. While the slashing work was underway, the 79-year-old man and another person were clearing weeds around an entrance gate near the operating tractor.
A piece of metal was picked up and ejected from the slasher, striking the man in the head. According to SafeWork SA, the manufacturer’s manual and warning labels advised that debris could be discharged at speeds exceeding 300 km/h.
At that velocity, a piece of scrap metal, wire, stone or discarded hardware does not need to be especially large to cause catastrophic harm. A slasher does not distinguish between vegetation and the debris concealed beneath it, which is precisely why guarding, area inspection and enforced separation are required.
The distance tells the story
There are three distances that matter in this case:
Distance | What it represented |
Approximately 5 metres | The man’s reported distance from the operating slasher |
30 metres | The contractor’s documented stop-work distance |
Up to 100 metres | The manufacturer’s specified danger zone |
Even the contractor’s own 30-metre requirement would have placed the man six times further away than he reportedly was. The manufacturer’s danger zone extended substantially further again, reflecting the unpredictable direction, velocity and travel distance of material ejected by rotating blades.
An exclusion zone is not a suggested buffer to be applied when convenient. It is an operational boundary that must be established, communicated, monitored and enforced before the plant is engaged.
The procedure existed, but the control did not
SafeWork SA found that the contractor knew slashing could throw debris and had recorded the hazard in his own safety policy documents. Those documents required the operation to cease when anyone entered within 30 metres of the machine.
The court found that no safety precautions were taken on the day. Deputy President
Lieschke observed that the prevention measures were simple and required no technical expertise.
That distinction matters because documentation is not the control. The control was stopping the machine, clearing people from the danger area and preventing them from re-entering while the slasher remained operational.
A procedure can support a control by defining what must happen. It cannot replace the physical act of making it happen.
This is where safety systems regularly become detached from operational reality. A risk assessment records an exclusion zone, a safe operating procedure instructs the operator to stop and a manufacturer’s warning identifies the danger, yet production continues because the people nearby are considered visible, familiar or unlikely to be struck.
None of those assumptions alters the trajectory of metal leaving a slasher at high speed.
The duty extended to the bystander
Section 19(2) of the Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA) requires a person conducting a business or undertaking to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that other persons are not put at risk by work carried out as part of the business or undertaking.
The duty is not confined to employees. It extends to bystanders, customers, visitors, members of the public and anyone else who may be affected by the work.
Mr Jackson pleaded guilty to a Category 2 offence under section 32. A Category 2 offence involves a failure to comply with a health and safety duty that exposes an individual to a risk of death or serious injury or illness.
The prosecution did not depend upon the victim being employed by the contractor.
The relevant question was whether the work created a risk to a person and whether reasonably practicable precautions were taken to control it.
What reasonably practicable looked like
The available controls were neither novel nor technically demanding. Before slashing commenced, the operator could have:
inspected the work area for metal, rocks, wire and other material capable of becoming a projectile;
confirmed the manufacturer’s required exclusion distance for that machine and operating environment;
ensured all people understood the danger zone and where they were required to remain;
used barriers, signs or another suitable means to identify the boundary where site conditions required them;
stopped the slasher immediately if any person entered the exclusion zone;
ensured intake and discharge guarding, including deflectors or chain curtains, was fitted, maintained and suitable; and
coordinated the slashing and weed-clearing activities so they did not occur within the same danger area.
SafeWork SA had already issued a slasher safety alert following the incident. The regulator identified deflectors, chain curtains or other suitable guarding, protected power take-off shafts, compliance with manufacturer specifications and keeping bystanders away from operating equipment as necessary precautions.
The decisive control remained straightforward. If a person was inside the danger zone, the blades should not have been turning.
Contractor engagement does not reduce the need for coordination
This prosecution concerned the slashing contractor’s duty, but the broader contractor-management lesson should not be missed. Where a business commissions work or controls a workplace, it must determine who may be affected, how simultaneous activities will be separated and who has authority to stop the work.
A contractor arriving with their own machinery and safety documents does not automatically establish that the work will be controlled. Contractor selection should test competence, plant condition, operating requirements and the proposed system of work, while site coordination should confirm that people will not be permitted to undertake other activities inside the contractor’s danger area.
Where multiple businesses hold duties, those duties can overlap and cannot simply be transferred by contract. The required consultation, cooperation and coordination must produce a controlled workplace, not merely another folder of prequalification records.
Understanding the $30,000 fine
The court initially assessed the offending as warranting a $100,000 fine. That amount was reduced by 40 per cent for the early guilty plea and contrition, then reduced further after considering the contractor’s financial position and the statutory requirement to prioritise compensation to the victim.
The contractor was also ordered to pay $19,967 in compensation for funeral expenses and a $424 Victims of Crime levy. The resulting $30,000 penalty should not be misrepresented as the court valuing a person’s life at that amount, because sentencing reflects the offence charged, the offender’s circumstances, plea, means and applicable statutory principles.
It nevertheless demonstrates the limits of prosecution as a safety control. A sentence delivered almost three years after the event cannot restore the person who died or undo the consequences carried by his family.
The practical lesson
This incident involved a known hazard, a manufacturer-specified danger zone and a documented requirement to stop work when people approached the machine. At approximately five metres, the victim was not marginally inside the contractor’s boundary, he was deep within an area the contractor’s own system said should never have contained a person while the machine was operating.
The failure was not a shortage of paperwork. It was the failure to translate known information into a firm operational condition: no person inside the exclusion zone, no exceptions, and no rotating blades until the area is clear.
That is what an exclusion zone means. Anything less is simply a line in a document waiting to be disproved by the work.
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