Selwyn Times: September 20, 2016

20
Tuesday September 20 2016
Your Local Views
Health and safety rules
endanger businesses
Hororata-based Selwyn
Sawmills is closing due
partly to the costs of
meeting new health and
safety requirements.
Co-owner
AJ Halliday
writes about
the need to
find a sensible
balance on
health and
safety matters
Having watched the politicisation
of Health and Safety for
the last several years, it comes
as little shock to most of the
‘doers’ (primary producers and
manufacturers) to see established
family businesses being
forced to close their doors due to
restrictive and expensive edicts
from Worksafe NZ.
In my experience, there is a
huge disparity between what the
legislators (ie career bureaucrats
in Wellington who have never
picked up a chainsaw or driven
a forklift) consider ‘safe’ and
‘actual’ risk.
To judge actual risk, you need to
be reasonably knowledgeable in
the operation of a process and
the machine involved.
Is the ‘safest’ option for a
fencer not to use a post driver
because he can’t guard it to the
level demanded by Worksafe?
How does this affect his productivity
and efficiency if he has to
dig the holes by hand? Is he not
at further risk of back injury by
digging these holes? And what
about the cost to the economy
of this labour intensive process
– fencing prices would treble!
(And seriously, how would you
guard a post driver anyway?)
One inspector from Worksafe
commented to me that ‘administrative
controls’ (procedures
and techniques to minimise
risk) are not acceptable anymore.
For hundreds of agricultural
and manufacturing processes,
administrative controls are the
only tools available to the business
owner.
Ear muffs are considered
an administrative control to
reduce noise in processes where
machinery simply can’t be reengineered
to create less noise.
So to follow this argument to
its logical conclusion, should
every work venture that involves
chainsaws be banned despite
being one of the most effective
tools ever invented?
In my eyes, primary producers
are the backbone of the New
Zealand economy and despite
Government assurance that it
is trying to stimulate growth in
the regional economy, it appears
there is very little incentive to
continue employing people, paying
taxes and rising compliance
costs, and generally contributing
to nationwide fiscal health
through rates, insurance and
banking.
I have a strong personal belief
in Health and Safety, but with
the punitive approach exhibited
by Worksafe, how do you fight
to save a marginal business, and
equally, why would you bother?
Lincoln car parks debate
Lynn Townsend
(right) responds to
Spokes Canterbury
chairman Don
Babe’s view on
the removal of car
parking on the main street
of Lincoln in last week’s
edition
It seems a shame that Don
Babe feels as bad as he does about
visiting Lincoln township.
All because there are too many
cars and not enough people??!!
If you want to get to know people
you need to make the effort
to fraternise and socialise with
them. They won’t come to you!!
When I go to Lincoln I don’t go
to watch cars go by or park either.
I go, because I want to conduct
some business in one of the
shops, perhaps have a convivial
ale in the local hostilery , post
a letter, and more often than
not say gidday to a friend who I
might not have seen for a while.
SELWYN TIMES
But there is one thing that
frustrates me more than anything
else, when I visit my beloved
Lincoln town, and that is when I
cannot get a car park within the
close proximity of where I want
to go. This situation is getting
progressively worse. How will it
be when we have two cycleways
on Gerald St at the expense of 75
car parks.
I won’t be able to meet my
friends will I – because I am
damn sure I won’t be biking
there.
I don’t know about car parking
in New York but I do know something
about it in Lincoln.
I think the best example of
what car parks can do for a business
is the Lincoln Supermarket.
How that business has grown
since it was surrounded in car
parks. Always lots of cars there.
Not many bikes.
•To read Babe’s column last
week go to www.starmedia.
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