The Feds launch their Health and Safety Manual

NZ farmers have a poor record on farm bike safety, and the Federated Farmers campaign to improve this with their Health and Saftey manual that is keen to address some of these issues, should be supported by all.

Bikes have got bigger and more powerful over the years, but sometimes these attributes are not always an advantage for inexperienced riders and injuries can result. These bikes have become an essential tool for efficent farm management on many farms, but unless the safety record improves their use could become burdened down with rules and regulation.

It is in the farmers hands to ensure adequate training is given to the inexperienced, and better care should be taken when in use, or the consequences of accidents could become very expensive.

Donald Aubrey - Federated Farmers agricultural health and safety spokesperson summarized speech

Federated Farmers Otago provincial president Mike Lord  wrote a telling commentary in his first provincial newsletter this year. Over Christmas, he was driving in the Otago countryside, when he came around a bend to find an unhelmeted farmer cruising on a quad bike in the middle of a very narrow and winding back country road.  Now this is enough to get the blood pressure and adrenalin rushing to avoid adding to the holiday road toll.  Mike wasn’t going hell for leather and through sensible driving had time to avoid a potentially serious road traffic accident.  

 But what got to him, really got him steamed, was that this farmer had two similarly unhelmeted children along for the ride. This unhelmeted farmer was being foolhardy with his own safety and the children he had aboard.  In an emergency stop these kids would have been catapulted and it’s this kind of cowboy behavior that invites knee-jerk calls for impractical regulations and controls.  Although quad bikes are known by some as all terrain vehicles they don’t take kindly to road surfaces and sealed roads in particular. 

 The anecdote of the quad bike would probably get talkback hosts calling for regulation. However, even in heavily regulated environments, such as the highway, 48 motorcyclists were killed on the road in 2009 with a further 1,369 injured.The key message I wish to convey here is one of changing culture.  This is what today’s launch of Federated Farmers Health and Safety Manual is about and creating a professional and effective workplace health and safety culture is key not just to saving premiums, but to slashing the social and economic impacts that radiate out from any single incident.

 It is instructive that this manual comes from the request of Federated Farmers members.  Farmers recognise health and safety is an important part of good business practice. Farmers get the importance of health and safety because each farm worker in New Zealand generates around $279,000 in gross revenue.  By way of comparison, for tourism, that sum is around $80,000.

 Our remuneration survey with Rabobank shows that farm workers are remunerated very well in comparison to non-farmers.  Workers receive a lot of instruction and training to make them these productive dynamos.As farm revenue comes at fixed points in the year, farm safety failure can cause a shock to a farmer’s cash flow.  It provides a compelling reason to take farm safety seriously and by seriously, that means having the policies and processes in place.

 ACC data, after all, puts the cost of farm accident related treatment and compensation in 2009 at $78.5 million.On top of that, we know that through various accounts, agriculture parted with some $150 million in premiums.A 2008 NZIER report revealed that workplace health and safety across all sectors cost $1.2 billion directly, but the indirect cost, the cost on families, society and the wider economy, ballooned out to well over $12 billion.The cost of not taking farm safety seriously is found in prosecutions and the courts increasingly take a dim view of employers who fail to take reasonable steps. In the case of a recent quad bike fatality, an employer was prosecuted under the Act for not ensuring the rider was appropriately trained. This led to a $78,000 fine and a $60,000 reparation payment to the late employee’s family.

 This $138,000 bill does not reflect considerable legal and other costs.  It does not take into account the effect of the prosecution on the business and its managers.If we want to prevent regulation then we need to improve our safety record. We saw this in May’s results for the Department of Labour’s quad bike safety campaign, with 56 written warnings or improvement notices issued after 162 farm visits.