He was commenting on a story this week about Tauranga's most dangerous jobs.
Gardening at home isn't a paid job of course but agriculture traditionally has been one of the country's most dangerous areas of work, along with fishery and forestry workers.
However, as we reported this week, the latest figures from Statistics New Zealand showed the injury rate for agriculture and fishery group workers, which includes forestry workers, fell from 242 per 1000 workers, to 233 in 2015.
Between 2008 and 2014, these workers had the highest rate of work-related claims.
The latest figures show dangerous professions now include cleaners, rubbish collectors and labourers. These professions had the highest rate of injury in work.
'Good excuse not to clean then.
Health and safety at work is no laughing matter, especially when you consider that so far this year, 45 people have died at work - higher than the number for all of 2015.
These figures might be a blow for the Government, which this year in April introduced tighter health and safety legislation, spurred partly by the Pike River tragedy.
The new rules were largely welcomed but the Labour Party criticised the fact that agriculture was excluded as a high-risk factor.
With the latest figures about fatal injuries at work so far this year, Labour's Associate Workplace Safety spokeswoman Sue Moroney has reiterated this criticism.
"Agriculture continues to be the sector with the largest number of deaths since the law change in April."
According to the latest data from Worksafe New Zealand, 15 deaths this year have been in the agriculture sector.
It seems bizarre that this sector is not deemed a high-risk industry when 33 per cent of New Zealand's workplace deaths so far this year have occurred in this sector, especially when it makes up just five per cent of the workforce.
Other lower-risk industries have had to implement tighter health and safety procedures, including the appointment of elected health and safety representatives who are trained in the new requirements.
In fact, for lower-risk industries, the laws might even seem a bit of a pain to some workers with endless memos from your health and safety representative not a priority when the most dangerous thing you operate is your iPhone.
When you are an office worker there are much fewer hazards - one memo we got this week was not to eat smelly food at our desks. Death by smoked fish pie anyone?
Yet if you are in a high-risk sector - which, if you look at the industries showing the most fatalities so far in 2016, these sectors would include agriculture, construction, forestry, healthcare and social assistance, and manufacturing - then you would welcome the fact that health and safety is overseen by an elected representative.
The agriculture sector, because it is not currently deemed as a high risk sector, does not have to meet this requirement for its workers.
Furthermore its lack of high risk categorisation indicates to employers in the sector that they do not have to take health and safety seriously.
It is nonsense that I get a health and safety representative concerned about the danger of smoked fish pie offending my nasal sensibilities in the office, when agricultural workers who operate dangerous machinery and work with beasts, do not have to have health and safety representatives.
When they announced the new law in April the Government said it would lead to a 25 per cent reduction in workplace deaths and injuries by 2020.
With just three years to go, there seems a lot is still to be done to get the figures down.
Leaving out agriculture as a high-risk industry - although it might help by getting the statistics to look better - it is not good for the thousands of New Zealand workers in this sector who do not fully benefit from tighter health and safety obligations on their employers.
