Duty of care, standards and the hierarchy of control
Duty of care is personal as well as organisational. As an operator you owe a duty to yourself, your dogman, other workers, the public and property. That duty is discharged by exercising the care and skill of a competent operator: planning the lift, verifying capacity, refusing unsafe work and stopping when conditions change. A direction from a supervisor does not transfer your duty, and "the boss told me to" is never a defence.
Standards matter because they translate the general duty into specific practice. You should understand the role of Australian Standards for cranes, wire rope, lifting gear and earthmoving plant, and how a standard becomes evidence of the standard of care expected. Questions often test whether a standard is law (generally not, unless referenced by regulation or contract) versus a benchmark of reasonable practice.
The hierarchy of control runs: eliminate the hazard, substitute, isolate, engineer, then administrative controls, with PPE last. For crane work, elimination might mean prefabricating at ground level; engineering controls include rated capacity limiters, interlocks and slew restrictors; administrative controls include lift plans, exclusion zones and permits. PPE is the last line, never the primary control.
Trap: choosing a lower-order control because it is familiar, such as a toolbox talk instead of a physical barrier under a suspended load. Another trap is treating a risk assessment as a one-off document rather than a living process.
Rule of thumb: control the hazard at the source before controlling the person. Worked example: overhead powerlines near a lift are best controlled by de-energising and isolating, then by physical barriers and spotters, with PPE and signage last.