Federated Farmers: Enforcement must be evidence based

The Council of Trade Unions' Helen Kelly

Farmers must assess risks on their farms objectively and do something to lessen those risks.

The Council of Trade Unions' Helen Kelly has been demanding a punitive approach to farm safety. This approach will not work.

We take this view not because we are complacent about farm safety. The death and accident rate on farms, for owners and workers alike, is too high.

More prosecutions, which Helen wants, and even higher fines for non-compliance, which WorkSafe demands, might satisfy ideology or make for impressive graph lines. But, according to WorkSafe itself, a heavy-handed approach is not an effective way to reduce the rate.

A culture change is indeed required. Farmers must assess risks on their farms objectively and do something to lessen those risks.

Technology and training must be harnessed to make equipment and jobs safer.

Of course a regulatory fallback should still be there. But any enforcement must be evidence-based.

So far we have seen WorkSafe treat wearing helmets on quad bikes as the apex risk on a farm. For a regulator, this is easy to enforce -- wearing a helmet versus not wearing a helmet.

Sharemilker Maria Carlson and her partner Phil Jones were fined $40,000 last Christmas for not wearing helmets and carrying passengers. There was no accident.

WorkSafe's obsession with enforcing helmet wearing has worked in one way.

Many more farmers are wearing helmets on their quads. But crucially it has made no difference to the injury rate. The enforcement scheme has not been clearly evidence-based.

ACC figures for new quad accident concussion or brain injury claims between 2006 and 2012 are less than 2 per cent of total quad bike injuries. Entitlement claims for the same period are less than 1 per cent. And helmets could not have prevented all of these injuries.

Wearing a helmet may, in fact, be more dangerous. A caught chin strap has killed a child on a quad. The operator is less aware of their environment with a helmet on.

The main risk on a quad bike is rollover and a crushing injury. Yet WorkSafe is ambiguous on whether installing roll-bars on the quad actually works and whether farmers ought to install them. We need WorkSafe to provide evidence they either work or they don't.

If they do, then farmers will fit them. Just look at the safety technology which goes into the modern car, and which customers are willing to pay for. The difference between a cheaper model of a car and its more expensive variant used to be mag wheels, leather trim and more power. Now it's all about safety braking and danger sensor systems.

Farmers will pay more for a machine they can be convinced is safer. They hold their lives as no less valuable than anyone else's.

Of course quads are far from the only risk on farm. Animals and heavy machinery are inherently dangerous. I have seen what an entanglement with a power take-off can do, and witnessed a serious run in with an angry cow.

More safety training is essential. I share scepticism with Helen that paper forms and civic events can be presented as a substitute for practical action.

Older farmers especially have a wealth of knowledge on safe stock management which we need to collect and share. Accidents with animals far exceed those from quad bikes. Let's get clever to reduce the frequency of these injuries.

Younger workers, city-raised youth and immigrant workers would appear to be most vulnerable. They were not brought up, for instance, learning never to walk too close to the back of a horse to avoid being kicked by it.

We have worked with WorkSafe in the launch of its Safer Farms programme in February. We welcome its strategy of education and collaboration with farmers as its own culture change.

The real work is ahead for both of us. Our members want to be safer. WorkSafe wants fewer deaths and injuries on farm.

Pointing the finger from the sidelines, however, is not going to make farms safer places, nor reduce the risks to the people who work on them.