The test in one line
Under the model work health and safety laws, the duty holder is a person conducting a business or undertaking, usually shortened to PCBU. If your organisation is not a PCBU, the model WHS Act does not apply to it, and neither does the first aid duty that sits inside it.
The volunteer association exclusion
Safe Work Australia states that volunteer associations, as defined in the model work health and safety laws, are not PCBUs and are therefore not covered by the WHS Act. This applies whether the association is incorporated or unincorporated.
A volunteer association becomes a business or undertaking, and therefore a PCBU, if it employs one or more paid workers to carry out work.
Safe Work Australia, Volunteers, WHS duties, and its legislative fact sheet Volunteer organisations and the model WHS Act. The definition itself sits in the definitions section of the model WHS Act as adopted in your jurisdiction. Checked 9 September 2026.
That is a genuinely different starting point from the one most first aid material assumes. Almost every commercial page on this subject opens by telling a club what it must provide. The first question is whether the Act reaches the club at all.
Does your organisation pay anyone to carry out work for it?
No, volunteers only
Volunteer association
Not a PCBU. The model WHS Act does not reach you, so there is no work health and safety first aid duty. An obligation can still arrive from a sector regulation, a funding agreement, an insurer or an affiliation rule.
Yes, even one person
PCBU
The primary duty of care applies. You must provide first aid adequate for the workplace, and your volunteers count as workers alongside paid staff.
Working through it
| Your situation | PCBU | What follows for first aid |
|---|---|---|
| Volunteers only, nobody paid to carry out work for the organisation, incorporated or not | No | The model WHS Act does not apply. No WHS first aid duty. Sources two, three and four on the start page may still require training |
| One or more paid employees, however few hours | Yes | The primary duty of care applies. You must provide first aid that is adequate for the workplace. See how many first aiders |
| Paid contractors engaged to carry out work for the organisation | Likely yes | Turns on the actual arrangement rather than the label on the invoice. Worth advice if this is your only paid engagement |
| You employ nobody, but you share a workplace with an organisation that does | No, for you | The other organisation carries the duty for that workplace, and it extends to people its work could affect, which can include your volunteers |
The middle row is the one to watch. A club that takes on a part time administrator for six hours a week has changed its legal position, and generally nobody at the club realises. The threshold is one paid person, not a payroll.
If you are a PCBU, your volunteers are workers
Where an organisation is a PCBU, the model WHS laws treat volunteers as workers. They are owed the same primary duty of care as paid staff. This is the point community organisations most often get backwards. Having volunteers does not put you outside the Act. Having only volunteers and no employees does.
So a service with two paid coordinators and forty volunteers owes those forty volunteers a duty, including in its first aid arrangements. A committee-run club with forty volunteers and nobody paid does not have that duty under the Act, because the Act does not reach it.
Safe Work Australia, Volunteers. Safe Work Australia also publishes a separate legislative fact sheet on volunteer officers and their duties, which is worth reading directly if you are a committee member or board member, because the position for officers is treated separately from the position for the organisation. Checked 9 September 2026.
An important limit on this page
Victoria works differently
Everything above describes the model work health and safety laws, which apply in the Commonwealth jurisdiction, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia.
Victoria has never adopted them. It runs the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, which is built around employers and employees rather than PCBUs and workers, and its first aid guidance uses different numbers. If your organisation is in Victoria, read states and territories before relying on anything above.
What still applies when WHS law does not
Falling outside the WHS Act is not the same as having no responsibilities. Being outside one Act only tells you about that Act. The following are separate and are the reason most volunteer-run organisations end up training people anyway.
Ordinary duty of care
An organisation that invites the public onto a ground, into a hall or into a program owes them a duty of care at common law, independently of work health and safety legislation. What that requires in a given situation is a legal question about your specific facts, and this reference does not attempt to answer it. It is raised here so that nobody reads the exclusion above as meaning that nothing matters.
Conditions attached by somebody else
These are contractual rather than statutory, they are specific to you, and they are the most frequently overlooked source of a genuine first aid obligation.
- Funding agreements. Government and philanthropic grants often carry workforce or safety conditions. Read the agreement, not a summary of it
- Insurance. Public liability and volunteer cover can carry conditions about supervision, qualifications and incident recording. Ask your broker what your policy actually requires, in writing
- Affiliation. State and national sporting bodies commonly set conditions on affiliated clubs, including for coaches, officials and game day. These are set by your association, not by government, and they differ between sports
- Venue hire. Council and private venue terms can require a qualified first aider present for certain activities or attendance numbers
- Licences and registrations. Where an activity is licensed, the licence conditions are their own source of obligation
None of these can be looked up in one place, because each one is a document written for you. The practical step is to gather them, read the safety clauses, and write down what each actually requires. That is a half hour of work that resolves more uncertainty than any general guide can.
Incorporated association obligations
If your organisation is an incorporated association, its rules and its state incorporation legislation govern how it manages itself. Those obligations are administered by the fair trading or consumer affairs body in your state or territory, and are separate again from work health and safety.
What to do with the answer
If you are a PCBU, the next question is scale, and the ratios everyone quotes are on the how many first aiders page, along with what those ratios legally are.
If you are not a PCBU, do not stop. Check whether a sector instrument names you, on when it is genuinely mandatory, then gather the conditions listed above. If none of them require anything, you have arrived at a real and defensible answer: the decision is yours, made on the risk of what you actually do, and the events and game day page is the practical place to make it.
Continue
Disclosure
Published by SKLD Training, which sells first aid and CPR training, on behalf of Allens Training Pty Ltd, RTO 90909. This page tells a large number of community organisations that no law requires them to buy what we sell. Full disclosure.
Instruments on this page checked 9 September 2026. This is a description of public instruments, not legal advice.