Up to us to make farms safer

The Bill recognises the difference between an industrial site and a farm, which is also used for recreational activities.

The long-awaited report back to the Select Committee on the Health and Safety Reform Bill has now occurred.

We don't totally know what we are getting. The Labour Party will be opposing the legislation. The Council of Trade Unions doesn't like it. The Government has signalled a Supplementary Order Paper to amend the Bill before it goes through its final stages before becoming law and there are regulations to be drafted to sit under the eventual Act as well.

Besides this, WorkSafe New Zealand has considerable discretion how it implements the new Act and the interpretation courts put on the sections and regulations will keep a whole lot of lawyers busy for some years to come.

What we do know, though, is positive. The politicians on the select committee have shown they have listened to the submissions, in one form or another, of thousands of hard-working New Zealand farmers on what will work, what might work, and what is plain silly.

What is clear, is we have achieved recognition that farmers can't realistically be held accountable for accidents to people who are on the farm and the farmers can't alert those visitors to the risks.

Federated Farmers and Fish and Game New Zealand may disagree on many things, but we are of one mind on this issue.

The Bill now acknowledges the difference between an industrial site and a farm where it is part of our culture for people to use the farm for a whole range of recreational activities.

Liability to recreational visitors is only to extend to where farm work is actually being carried out on that part of the farm at the time. Farm buildings and their immediate surroundings will be a workplace, but not the farm itself, unless there is work being done at the time in that particular location. The farmer's home is not a workplace.

For other people who come on to the farm to work, however, the situation is less clear. From an equity point of view, it makes no sense for a farmer to be liable for an accident to a contractor doing specialist work on the property, such as tree felling. It is appropriate that the farmer check off the forester's credentials first, but expecting a farmer to know all about what is safe or unsafe in a specialist area, such as in forestry, is quite simply unreasonable.

In particular, the responsibilities of a farm owner towards the activities of a sharemilker are a major area to be tidied up.

The Council of Trade Unions has made much about the removal of an obligation for a worker representative from smaller-scale operations. The reality though is that this imposes a cost on the obligation to provide formal training, without necessarily providing for any greater degree of safety on the farm. It's another attempt to impose the model of the larger-scale industrial urban workplace, or mining operation, into a much smaller scope and less formal farm environment.

Plenty of opportunities have arisen for getting safety training and the WorkSafe "Safer Farms" toolkit is also useful for guidance on how to make farms safer.

That in the end it what it is about -- we do need to reduce the accident and injury rate on farms. Relying on regulatory formulas has not so far worked very well to achieve that. The Government has in effect acknowledged this.

By doing so, it has challenged farmers to find non-regulatory means -- i.e. smart ways -- to reduce the frequency with which we have accidents and injure and kill ourselves on farms. The buck stops with us.

Katie Milne is Federated Farmers' Health and Safety Spokeswoman.