NZ is still killing too many workers

at Pike River. So Chris, tell me some statistics about workplace safety in New Zealand. How are we going?

one in terms of not killing workers. The UK is around number four and we're number twenty five. So we're not doing very well if we compare ourselves internationally, and that's crossing the country somewhere in the order of five point four billion dollars per year because of death injuries, rehabilitation, compensation and so on. So we're talking something that's a big problem.

that New Zealand has. Because of ACC, employers don't have to worry about being sued by workers if they are injured or worse killed at work. But that means the low fault liability side opens up employers to not having to worry too much, not so much about workplace health and safety. So since fifty plus years it's I think

that's fifty two years now since ACC came in. The imperative that I grew up with in the UK of if you're injured at work, you sue and your employer if they lose a case in court, your employer has to pay. Those imperatives don't exist so much in New Zealand.

And when we did the deal, when we changed from workers' compensation to ACC, part of the deal was that New Zealand would have a strong regulatory system, and so we got ACC, but we didn't get the strong regulatory system that led us to eventually the Health and Safety and Employment Act. Hell of a lot of time was spent arguing about whether something was a hazard or a significant hazard. What was the difference perception. One person's significant hazard was

somebody else's just minor hazard. So we got all the way through to fifteen years ago with Pack River, just before Pike River. We with hindsight, yes, but it was pretty obvious to people on the inside. We had a system where the then Department of Labor Health and Safety team was under resourced, underfunded. They if they send an inspector to Pike River, they didn't have enough expenses that they could claim to stay overnight and actually go to the mind to see what was wrong or what was right.

So we lost twenty nine men up Pike River, and the whole series of reports the Royal Commission and people saying yeah, we need to do better. When we kill or seriously injure a worker, they suffer, but so does their family and their far out and their co workers,

and it just it ripples through the economy. We got work Safe no longer part of what became Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and we were promised that underpinning the new Act would be a whole lot of new approaches to regulatory system, the regulatory system, and that would include a proof codes of practice, up to date guidance, new regulations, not more regulations, but new regulations that recognized how things

have changed over the years in the economy and New Zealand. Unfortunately, most of that never happened. The draft regulations on plant and equipment were consulted on, extensively, agreed to be jolly good, well written, up to date, modern, and then there was this long silence. They just quietly got shelved change of government.

Along that journey, of course, we also had Fakari when twenty two people died at on for and then others subsequently, there was a major distraction in there for Work Safe, doing the investigation and taking the prosecution. It absorbed not just I think it was about fifteen million dollars in cost, but also a hell of a lot of time. So we've got a new government and the Minister would like to reform the system. But to do what And this is something I'm writing about at the moment for the

fifteenth anniversary of Pike River. What do we get instead of what we've got? Well, there's a consensus view that the Act is perfectly good. In my view, we could rename the Act from Health and Safety at Work Act to the Wealth and a Safety at Workout, because what it's actually doing is talking about how a business should be managed, how it should be operate rated, including getting directors, the officers of the business involved in how it is functioning.

They do. Directors do that already most of the time for the financial side.

we're really getting the message across. I think it's unfor fortunate that we talk about the law as if it's a cost for business. It isn't. And what I just said, if you want to think it through, carefully read the Act and realize why it should be renamed the Wealth and Safety at Work Act. It's about how to run businesses better, more effectively without wasting money on workers who aren't there because they're sick or injured or worse dead.

Is all of those on costs and the five point four billion we could eliminate them with effective health and safety. So that's my big take on what's wrong.

for everybody to rally around and provide support. So we're down here to make sure that that's happening, that the families are supported, that the other miners are kept in touch with what's going on, and that people are assisted to get through this this agonizing time that we wait to get the rescue BEFO underway. Once that happens, then obviously the next thing is to ask the questions about what happened, why happened, and at some point we need to be involved in that as well.

to be asked. You know, what did happen and why did it happen and if anything could have been done to prevent it.

the world. We've been conveying those messages to our members down here of support, and I think it's it's that sort of stuff, that solidarity that helps get the mining community and their families through an incident like this.

I was back in the UK when the British changed finds to unlimited if it went into the Crown Court, a bit like sending the case to the High Court in New Zealand. That puts shockwaves through New zeal As, sorry, through the British industry. And yes there've been multimillion pound fines in Britain, but it's pushed businesses to thinking seriously. So make sure that we've got the right fines and

penalties in place, including a charge of manslaughter. And there have been a few people in New Zealand who have grossly negligently allowed the deaths of workers. So we need the deterrents I think we need I keep looping back to this. We need to get up, to grow up and start thinking of the Health and Safety Work Act as an impediment to business, to start thinking how important that is for better business. The second thing that we

need is directors and officers. In the legislation, an officer is a director, the chief executive or somebody else who's got significant influence in a business. I think a lot of businesses, big businesses where the directors are now asking questions, have understood what needs to happen. I'm not sure that everybody has really got the message. So so there's a need to get the message over to all directors. How

do we do that? Every year a director has to tell the company's office that yes, there's still a director and yes these their contact details. Perfectly simple for a joined up approach across government for the company's office to send all such directors an email reminding them, and the emails written by WorkSafe a reminder of their responsibilities. Under

the Health and Safety Work Act. Every business does a GST return, so it's all of the contact details are known to ID and they could also send an email on behalf of work Safe, so there's no breach of the Privacy Act here. They could send an email from work Safe to all businesses reminding them of their responsibilities, and then there's no excuse. Nobody can say, but I

didn't know. I didn't know you had an email that told you, and the the one through I r D could because the I r D knows the sort of business are involved in. It could point the direction, point you in the direction of better more informed advice on the work safe website. So what else could we cover? What else do we need to do? I think that would if my wish list, you know, if if Father Christmas was a real person and was in the in the game of delivering my wish list for Christmas, that

those things would be it. I'm not sure whether the minister is listening. I don't think the minister has read the report that several of us wrote that the Public Health Communications Center published last week. She said that she hasn't read it. Will this government listen? Will they realize that we're killing too many people at work, We're making too many people sick because of work, and it's costing US five and a half billion a year.

people should not drive. Why wouldn't you want to drive there? Well, because there's a road worker doing something improving the road, repairing the road, putting in new pipes, whatever it is, and it's not very nice to run over people who are working on the road, so we divert the traffic round road cones and sometimes we put somebody with one of those lollipop signs or better still, traffic lights. Do we have too many road cones? Yeah, we went too

mad with them at one stage. I think it's about three years ago now the industry started to think about how to improve high safety, the work on the road safety, and that they've gone too far with road cones are just something that you wave around, a sort of shroud waving thing. We weren't doing it well enough. So we've now arrived at a point where there's a risk based

approach to highway working. It's going to take time and money to introduce that and make it safer for everybody on the roads and to have fewer road cones but also better temporary traffic management on the roads. Was that because the Minister got grumpy about road cones and introduced the hotline to report road cones? Now, the industry was doing it already, and I think what the Minister needs to do is pay attention to that as an object lesson and how to encourage business to do it. Itself.

have died almost instantly. The bigger picture the investigators described is damning. They say there was a production before safety culture at the mine, an unsuitable ventilation shaft, only one exit, and no planning for a coal mining emergency. And even though the mining company was young and inexperienced, the Department of Labour allowed it to operate without adequate monitoring.

to face criminal tis chargers. That's unlikely to happen, but the inquiry has recommended major improvements in workplace safety regulation to prevent similar disasters in the future. Kroen I Malone ol Jazeera.

them through. Unfortunately, they lifted too high and hit overhead power lines and the operator of the plant, the mobile plant, was killed. I don't want to anticipate what the investigation has shown on what works they would want to do.

But if I now generalize from that, if you know that workers are going to be operating machinery in the vicinity of overhead power lines eleven thousand volt power lines, and you don't do things to anticipate the risk of hitting those power lines or simply coming too close to them, and the power line is discharging and killing the worker, if you don't anticipate that, when we know it's one of these stupid everybody knows if they work in the sector,

that that will kill if you don't anticipate that. In my book, that's gross negligence, and that's language that I grew up on originally in the UK before I came to New Zealand simple negligence. Now maybe not the manslaughter charge. It simple negligence where somebody strained their back because they tried to lift something that was too heavy. That's one of the biggest costs to the country musculos collegial disorders.

But gross negligence is relatively rare. It's relatively rare, but an awful lot of the cases that work Safe takes. And I've read the district court decisions of probably two or three hundred out of the one thousand since the Health and Safety at Work pack came in, and there couple of one hundred that I think would have been gross negligence where a manslaughter charge could have been taken.

What does it mean in practice? If somebody is prosecuted in Australia or the UK, the prosecutor has to prove what I call gross negligence. They have to prove that somebody, there's a lovely old English legal work, that there was a contumious disregard for the safety of the worker, it

was beyond disgraceful. If they convinced the court that that's the case, then there could be a prison sentence or there could be a very large fine for corporate manslaughter, and that would be different from in the UK the unlimited fines that exist under the Health and Safety Workout, the British Health and Safety Workout. Is it needed? I think it is needed here in New Zealand because we have had cases where a corporate manslaughter of charge should

have been laid but couldn't. There's another bit of legislation that's missing, and that's disqualification of directors. You can disqualified directors in the UK. I'm not sure about Australia, but certainly in the UK if they have again, if they as a director have done something that caused death or serious injury, disqualify them for five years. But again the prosecutor has to prove to the court that's needed. This is an awful lot of me wanting to sound like

a nasty chap. It's probably because forty odd years ago I worked as a regular cheap person. I was an inspector in the UK. I think we can do better with encouragement and getting businesses to understand that we're talking about improved profitability. But there are some people in New Zealand who really should be taken out of being directors

because they have been recidivists. And I won't name anybody in a podcast like this, but there are recidivists and they should be disqualified as directors, and in some circumstances may be convicted of a manslaughter charge.