His own crew, his own ABN and a 15% income share settled the classification question
An injured flower-farm labourer sought workers' compensation. A Victorian court found he ran his own business - and that decided the question before it.
The Supreme Court of Victoria has delivered a practical lesson for HR and employment teams on the line between an employee and an independent contractor - the classification that decides who is covered by workers' compensation.
In a decision handed down on July 31, 2026, a man who had picked and grown flowers in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges for years was injured. According to his account, he suffered a severe back injury after using an auger in January 2021. He sued the flower-farm company, Gardens of Distinction Pty Ltd, arguing he was its employee - or at least a "deemed worker" - under Victoria's Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013.
The label carried real consequences. If he was a "worker," the workers' compensation scheme would cover his claim. If he was an independent contractor, ordinary negligence law would apply instead. The company's defence was filed on instructions from the Victorian WorkCover Authority, the scheme insurer. A second insurer, Insurance Australia Ltd, took part as a non-party because it had a direct interest in the answer.
Rather than run the whole trial at once, the court separated out one question to decide first: was the man a "worker" of the company? The court answered no. That was the only question decided. The court did not rule on the injury, on negligence, or on any damages, and the broader proceeding continues.
The reasoning is the part worth reading closely. The court weighed the substance of the whole relationship rather than the labels the parties used. It found the man had run a labour-supply partnership that dissolved in the first half of 2017, and that he traded afterwards under his own business name, "Rohingya Farming Business" - supplying both labour and flowers to several buyers, not just this one farm. He brought his own crew of workers, paid them himself, invoiced with GST, managed his own tax, and took no annual or sick leave. Across the period examined, income from the company made up only "slightly more than 15%" of his total earnings. The business, the court found, "was not subordinate to" the company and did not depend on it to exist.
A written document sat at the centre of the dispute: an unsigned, typed agreement dated September 25, 2020, stating the man would work four days a week for the company. He and the non-party insurer relied on it to argue an employment relationship. The court was not persuaded. It found the document was never signed, and that the man - on evidence the court accepted from the farm's owner - "never ... actually follow[ed] ... any of [the] rules" it set out. The tax invoices showed nothing close to four days a week. In the court's view, the arrangement after the document looked no different from the loose, episodic supply that had run for years.
The farm's owner gave evidence that he regarded the man as a contractor, that the man was skilled and needed little supervision, and that he could do little about the man's lateness or absences. The court described him as a generally open and forthcoming witness whose evidence it broadly accepted, while finding that on one specific point - his account of holding money back to secure attendance - his evidence could not be relied on.
On the "deemed worker" argument, the court applied the Act's schedule 1 test for contractors, which includes an 80% personal-service requirement and an 80% income threshold. Neither was met: a substantial share of the services came from the additional workers the man supplied, and his income from the company fell well short of 80% of what he earned from the same class of work. Either way, the court found, he was carrying on an independent business.
So the preliminary question was answered no. On the issue decided, the man was found to be neither a common law employee nor a deemed worker of the company.
For HR and workplace policy leads, the signals are familiar but worth restating. Classification turns on the substance of the relationship, not on a contract, a job title, or who regards themselves as the boss. Control counts - but so do the markers of a genuine business: your own crew, your own ABN and invoices, GST, self-managed tax, multiple clients, and no employee-style leave. A document that nobody signs or follows carries little weight. And the "deemed worker" route has firm numerical gates - the 80% personal-service and income thresholds - that a genuinely diversified contractor will often fail to clear.
The court said it would discuss the form of orders and costs with the parties. The preliminary question is settled; the wider proceeding has not concluded.
