Farmers at the Whangarei seminar soak up advice on dealing with new health and safety regulations. Photo / Mike Barrington
Farmers at the Whangarei seminar soak up advice on dealing with new health and safety regulations. Photo / Mike Barrington
New national health and safety regulations are ushering out the "she'll be right" era on Northland farms.
A change in farm culture comparable with the move to sustainablity in farmers' attitudes toward the environment was under way, a seminar in Whangarei heard last week.
The seminar, organised by Purua dairy farmer Sue Shepherd, had several speakers giving farmers advice on compliance with the Health and Safety at Work Act which became law last year.
OnFarm Safety New Zealand managing director Bronwyn Muir explained how the legislation had followed pressure to improve workplace safety after 29 men died in the 2010 Pyke River mine tragedy.
There had been initial resistance to rules requiring quad bike riders to wear helmets, but the shift in farm culture had since made helmetless riders a noticeable minority.
Ms Muir said 30 of the 133 people who have died in New Zealand agricultural accidents from 2011-13 had been riding quad bikes.
She told about 35 farmers at the seminar the new laws had officials now looking at farm governance and questioning who had made decisions affecting health and safety.
Farmers needed to record any safety incidents in writing, draw up employment contracts for staff and have written plans in place to deal with anything hazardous happening on their land.
The Health and Safety Association and the Institute of Safety Management represent workplace health and safety professions in New Zealand.
Ms Muir warned health and safety providers were not regulated and she suggested her audience check the credentials of anyone who came up the farm drives with safety measures to sell.
Staff training
The need for farm staff training, workplace vehicle maintenance schedules, contractor management and regular reviews and audits were also among procedures Ms Muir recommended while urging farmers to take ownership of the health and safety challenge and turn it to the advantage of their businesses.
Doing what was right to keep all people and stock on a farm healthy and safe was the objective rather than achieving minimum compliance, she said.
OnSide co-founder Michael Falconer described a cellphone app his firm has developed to help farmers manage health and safety issues.
Emphasising that all injuries were preventable and the new legislation was about keeping people safe, not ticking boxes, he said up to 20 people were killed annually and 13 injured daily in farm accidents involving getting tangled in machinery, falling from heights (a 2m fall can be serious), drowning, hazardous substances and other causes.
The OnSide app functions include helping sign in farm visitors and telling them about any risks on the property, displaying a farm map and building a risk register, reporting safety incidents and making sure everyone knows what to do in an emergency.
"You can't be a great business manager without strong health and safety leadership," Mr Falconer said.
David Templeton from Northland Inc told the farmers they could be eligible to apply for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise capability development vouchers to subsidise health and safety training and software up to a maximum of $5000 a year per business.
The business must pay at least half of the training costs.
Further research and development funding could be available through Callaghan Innovation. Call 0800 422 552 or email info@callaghaninnovation.govt.nz to find out about Getting Started Grants.
Speakers at the seminar in Whangarei were, from left, Mike Goodison (WorkSafe), Bronwyn Muir (OnFarmSafetyNZ), Mark Coates (WorkSafe), seminar organiser Sue Shepherd, Michael Falconer (OnSide), Melanie Sweet, David Templeton (Northland Inc) and Charmaine O'Shea (Johnston & O'Shea accountants).
Extension 350
The seminar was also told about Extension 350, a Northland regional economic vitalisation extension initiative designed to lift the on-farm performance and profitability of 350 Northland farms through sharing knowledge to improve farm systems.
Funding for the programme will be finalised before the end of the year. Recruitment of the delivery team and participant farmers will begin later this year and continue into early next year with the programme fully operational in 2017/18.
WorkSafe Northland assessment manager Mike Goodison said that as the regulator his organisation didn't endorse any system, but required farmers to have acceptable systems in place to deal with any risks arising in their business.
While people were worried about liability if cannabis growers, hunters or other trespassers on their land were gored by a bull, farmers were not responsible for health and safety incidents they didn't know about, he said.
There was a $1000 instant fine for business owners who didn't provide staff employment contracts, so Mr Goodison urged farmers to complete their paperwork as advised by earlier speakers and said there was good information on the www.worksafe.govt.nz/ website.
Quad bike questions
WorkSafe inspector Mark Coates took questions from the floor about quad bikes. Spelling out the need for helmets and keeping children off the machines, he said: "What we are after is farmers identifying risks around quad bikes and having a plan to manage those risks."
While stressing some documentation was a good thing, Mr Coates described a Ruawai farmer who had nothing written down, but had a good health and safety programme to identify and manage risks on the farm, train staff and monitor the ongoing situation.
Prosecutions usually involved an element of reckless behaviour and WorkSafe wasn't looking for liability if duties of care for staff were carried out effectively, he said.
Summing up at the end of the seminar, Whangarei accountant Charmaine O'Shea approved Bronwyn Muir's advice about getting all health and safety issues written down.
She liked Michael Falconer's "exciting app" and his approach that farm injuries were a failure and solving health and safety issues improved profitability.
David Falconer was ribbed about the Northland Inc "free lunch" and the WorkSafe "riskbusters" were praised for their "open and honest" answers to questions.
Ms O'Shea described how a person received burn injuries in a fire on a farm she owns in partnership with her brother.
The WorkSafe inspection had not been "a big scary ugly thing" and she had learned from the incident.
"No matter how good you think you are, accidents happen," she said. "For me, doing it right is the thing to do."
Ms O'Shea told farmers in her audience they were "the converted" because they were attending the health and safety seminar.
"Now you are going to go out to be the champions of change and spread the word for us," she said.
