— Two reviews critical of Army training and health and safety.
— Failures were recorded in a string of serious incidents, including involving the SAS.
— NZDF refuses to release copy of a review into training to the Herald as it would jeopardise national security.
Reviews into Army safety and training identified a raft of failures after a string of serious injuries and deaths, including at the elite NZSAS.
Herald inquiries have identified two separate reviews — one into training and another into health and safety — critical of the army’s own systems.
The reviews were said to have been sparked by incidents of “serious harm” which then identified a string of shortfalls.
But NZDF says those incidents of serious harm were not connected to the health and safety failures identified, and training gaps were not solely responsible for the injuries sustained by soldiers.
Herald inquiries were prompted by serious training incidents in the NZSAS and other incidents across the Army. Regarding the NZSAS, the Defence Force (NZDF ) has held Court of Inquiry investigations into serious incidents in 2022 and 2023 that followed fatal training incidents in 2017 and 2019.
WorkSafe attempted to prosecute NZDF over the 2019 death of NZSAS Lance Corporal Nik Kohatoea but was told by the High Court it could not bring a case when the elite unit was training for operations.
Across New Zealand from 2001 to 2019, 34 people died in work-related incidents. Serious injury events were suffered by 32 NZ Army personnel between 2016 and 2020. NZDF has been asked for more recent figures.
The new reviews come after a 2013 independent review that made 20 recommendations for health and safety improvements after the 2010 Anzac Day helicopter crash that killed three people and seriously injured another.
The Herald was told in August Major General John Boswell ordered the Army Safety and Training Review “in response to a number of events of serious harm in training”.
Assistant Chief Army Training Colonel Aidan Shattock said the training review was completed in 2021 which led to NZDF setting up the “Training Branch of Army General Staff” in December 2022 “to address doctrinal and process shortfalls identified through the review”.
The Herald has sought and been refused a copy of the review through the Official Information Act with NZDF saying its release would jeopardise national security.
The Army Safety Training review was followed by a review of the Army’s health and safety system completed in 2023.
The minute summarising the health and safety review said it was seeking to find whether the Army was “adhering to NZDF standards and best practice”.
It found it was not — although the identified issues weren’t urgent and a number had already been identified in an earlier review.
The review described those with responsibility for health and safety as sidelined and disconnected from the command chain with only “informal” lines of communication.
While it said there were projects underway to fix “deficiencies in personnel, equipment and resources that can be directly related to Army H&S” there “appears to be no overarching understanding or higher awareness of this work”.
There was also no “Director of Safety” as existed in other services with the review saying the lack of someone in such a role “contributes directly to the lack of direction” identified through interviews.
Health and safety specialists were seen as “advisors” in an area that “lacks authority and recognised formal or technical lines of communication”, the minute said.
There did not appear to be a system-based approach to health and safety and there was no sign of regular reporting and support. Information seemed to be shared on “relationship networks” or in response to demands from higher in the command chain.
The review was also critical of the system used to monitor safety across the Army — the Safety Event Management Tool. It said it was “difficult to access and requires a time-consuming manual process to extract data” and “doesn’t support analysis or trend identification”.
“This results in an inability to provide H&S trends and link prevalent issues across commands.”
The system was “inadequately implemented” and appeared to be “rushed” when introduced, was no longer supported by its provider for fixes or upgrades and was “mandraulic” when mined for information.
Shattock said the Army was seeking to align with the Australian Army training system as part of Plan Anzac “to benchmark against a world-class training system”.
A feature of the health and safety review was the focus on reaching the ISO 45001 certification which was described as “a key event that will require focused effort and form a main H&S workstream to adopt it successfully”.
Shattock — in August — said changes were being made to align the Army with the ISO standard “which is in line with the NZ Defence Force approach to health and safety”.
A few months later, NZDF says it has now abandoned the ISO standard “due [to] its lack of agility in catering to the constantly changing environment within the NZDF”.
“We are constantly seeking to learn from events and improve the system,” it said in a statement this month.
It also said there were “numerous factors” involved when serious harm happened during training and “the harm that occurred cannot be attributed only to training shortfalls”. It said the health and safety issues identified in the review were not considered directly or indirectly responsible for serious harm.
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for 35 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.
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