Julian Hughes: Safety reform bill needed to move past 'she'll be right' culture

Photo / Ben Fraser, Rotorua Daily Post

We all know that too many Kiwis die at work each year, but we seem less willing to do something meaningful about this unacceptable situation, writes Z Energy's Julian Hughes.

New legislation that impacts every working New Zealander is, almost by definition, a process riddled with complexity and angst. And so it is with the Government's Health and Safety Reform Bill.

Two years after it was recommended by a government appointed Taskforce into Health and Safety in New Zealand, the bill is still labouring its way through the political process. Recent reports and a late delay in reporting back the Select Committee findings indicate there's plenty of concern, fear of the unknown, concerted lobbying and the predictable political unease.

While all legislation should pass through a robust process and change should be expected, it is important that last minute changes do not detract from the original purpose of the Bill and the multiple tragedies from which it was conceived.

For while the genesis of the Bill was the Pike River tragedy, where 29 men lost their lives, what the Pike River Royal Commission made clear was the issues they uncovered pointed to much wider systemic issues including a failure to learn from previous tragedies.

The Taskforce and, more recently, the inquiry into safety in the forestry industry, backed up these findings and pointed to multiple failings in workplace health and safety, including a workplace culture that did not support safe work.

In New Zealand, we experience a Pike River on our farms every year. The only difference is that they occur one at a time. Approximately 25 farmers die on our farms as a result of workplace accidents every year.

Individually, these deaths don't capture newspaper headlines, public attention and the grief of a nation, but collectively they share many of the same origins as Pike River - a deeply-rooted and deficient cultural approach to safety where people believe 'it will never happen to me' and 'she'll be right'.

Pointing fingers or singling out parts of our economy is not useful because the problem is not confined to certain industries. More importantly, if we want to see real change then we all have a role to play. On average someone is killed at work in New Zealand every week. That's double the workplace fatality rate of Australia and four to six times higher than for workers in the UK.

So what should we do about this, and what has it got to do with the law? A look at workplaces that do not harm people suggests the answer is a simple approach: focus on leadership and build a culture that does not accept workplace harm as an inevitable consequence of work.

Culture and leadership are concepts that can be hard to pin down. We can all recall a father with a chainsaw, jandals and lawnmowers, some driving we'd rather forget - these are the times we've literally said 'she'll be right', and it has been. Or the times we haven't said anything because it probably would be all right and it felt awkward to suggest otherwise.

This cultural context underpins our poor safety performance as a country. It's the safety culture of a young nation and it requires real leadership for us to begin to change.

This brings us neatly back to the Government's Health and Safety Reform Bill and the notion of leadership. While the legislation may appear complex, its three core principles are simple:

1. People who create risk are best placed, and ultimately responsible, for managing it, regardless of how they decide to organise their business or allocate the work.

2. While we all have a role to play, those in governance and senior management roles are ultimately accountable.

3. Workers have the right to be involved in the decisions that impact their health and safety, including the right to be engaged and represented.

It has been widely reported that there has been late and intensive lobbying by organisations representing farmers and small business owners seeking to water down or exempt themselves from elements of the Bill.

At this late stage, dilutions to the Bill could see New Zealand yet again miss the opportunity to provide a robust legal framework for all New Zealand workplaces. The legislation will not in itself keep people safe, but the signal it sends and the expectations it sets will help to shift our poor workplace health and safety culture.

The Government has a real opportunity to create a legacy that all working New Zealanders will benefit from. It is now more than ever before when leadership is needed to ensure the Bill is passed and we can get on with building safer workplaces in New Zealand.

We know that leadership and engagement creates safe work. Legislation that focuses on these key areas has a "once in a generation" opportunity to shift our 'she'll be right' attitude and make real inroads into a culture that has accepted injury and death as a normal part of going to work.

Julian Hughes is Z Energy's general manager for health, safety, security and the environment.