Independent views By Brendan Horan

An attitude inherent in New Zealand culture, it sits alongside number 8 wire to fix everything. Certainly New Zealanders are a 'give it a go”, DIY, fix it folk; our ancestors had to be given distance and access to resources.

Times though have changed technology and machinery today is vastly more complex and we now live in a global community with huge resources at our finger tips and only hours away. Danger from our machinery and vehicles in the work place is quite different and vastly more complex to what our fore fathers faced up to. The Attitude that 'It'll be right mate” is no longer acceptable.

Fantastic out come on our roads this weekend, fatality free but sadly not the norm. Police in the Eastern Bay of Plenty where fatalities exceed the national average are scratching their heads as to how to manage so many pointless road deaths, many due to vehicles which are driven in a reckless, dangerous and unsafe manner. Lack of warrants and registration are all too common as is a lack of a focus on safe driving behaviours, a care free attitude which is creating killing fields on roads and in particular rural roads. No amount of police enforcement or road safety engineering seems able to fix reckless attitudes.

The same can be said for safety in our forestry industry with 24 fatalities between 2007 and 2012 and 371 serious injuries between 2011 and 2012. In today's economy ill prepared workers desperate to find employment are entering the industry. Significant as well is the Contractor competition for what work there is, both factors generate a recipe for cutting corners.

The focus must be about a worker competencies and attitude, ensuring all employees of forestry contractors carrying out forestry operations receive adequate training on workplace health & safety, and adequate training on how to perform their jobs safely. Ensuring workers are well equipped and performing their job safely and competently in accordance with work practice guidelines, that industry knowledge is transferred down to employees on the ground.

It is about as well the Government taking note of the recent independent taskforce report into forestry work place safety. The task force reports significant systematic safety failures. Forestry industry leaders report little confidence in the new Workplace Health & Safety agencies 10 year vision to fix the depth of the industry's problems, they should be fixed now not over another 10 years. A must to fix as well is the underlying factors that are attributable to the root-cause and mentioned above. The lack of a think-safe culture across the system 'It'll be right mate” is no longer acceptable.

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