I was motivated to write this article after reading an article in the Sunday-Mail newspaper of 18 June 2006, portion of which reads:

A Brisbane service station attendant held at gunpoint while working alone at night has been awarded $84,000.00 compensation, Judge Wally Tutt found that the service station owner had breached its duty of care to provide a safe workplace for the female attendant by not providing a security guard at night and that the decision could have ramifications for businesses that have employees working alone at night, including service stations, convenience stores, bottle and video shop (service station was at Kingston).

At that time the concept of duty of care was fairly new to our way of life, and until 1998, I did not have much idea of what it meant or would mean in the years to follow. I was in charge of the South Eastern Police Region based at Surfers Paradise. Chief Superintendent Ken Morris was my Operations Co-ordinator. We had become aware of the efforts of then Detective Senior Sergeant (now Assistant Commissioner) Mike Condon, the officer in charge of the Logan District Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB), about the effectiveness of security cameras in businesses particularly in Logan Central.

Mike and his staff members had found that many of the cameras were ineffective in that they were operating with worn out tapes or were poorly positioned in the premises. I must say I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Detectives were involved in correcting ineffective practices but realised that it would be in their interests to spend the time and effort on this task. (In recent years we have all seen how major crimes continue to be solved through footage captured on closed circuit television cameras.)

I was soon to hear of a Logan District function which was being headed by Mike to draw attention to business people of the effectiveness of cameras in their premises. Ken Morris, the District Officer, then-Superintendent (and later Deputy Commissioner) Kath Rynders, and I attended.

We were surprised at the roll-up and the range of subjects covered. Two subjects which appealed to us were a lecture by then Crown Prosecutor (now Judge) Kerry O’Brien on ‘duty of care’ and a demonstration of security glass panels intended to be used as partitioning to separate patrons from attendants. It was brought home to us that the proprietors of 24/7 service stations particularly had a duty of care to provide a safe working place for their employees and one way to do this was by using the glass partitions demonstrated to us.

We were also told that it was only a matter of time before held-up employees would be suing their employers because of the lack of protection afforded to them from offenders who had jumped counters, threatened them and stole money from them. (In fact Ken knew of a barrister who had commenced to specialise in duty of care actions.)

This was no surprise to us because there had been several incidents in the region of sole employees—some of them female—being held up in service stations late at night and robbed. One I distinctly recall was where a female attendant was relieved of her clothing to prevent her leaving the service station to call for assistance.

We run a similar function in the Gold Coast District and had a very good response from business people. Unknown to Ken and myself, Mike had got onto the management of BP and had received a commitment to place the glass partitioning in some ten service stations in south east Queensland. Their intention was to leave sufficient space at the bottom of the partitioning through which a loaf of bread and a two litre container of milk could be passed. (I heard at the time that this was the practice followed in service stations in the United States of America.)

I was so pleased to hear of this commitment that I contacted the most senior person possible in BP to compliment him on the company’s commitment. While BP had a trial of the glass partitioning in one of its service stations at Brisbane Road, Ebbw Vale, for some reason unknown to Mike, Ken or myself, BP never carried through with its promise. The only thing I have seen in service stations in recent years is the provision of a few stainless steel strands across the space between customers and the attendant.

Returning to the concept—duty of care—I believe that a lot of employers will find out the hard way what this means when they are on the receiving end of some of their employees who have not been provided with a safe working place.