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William Rolleston.
Engage don't enrage: that’s the message to WorkSafe NZ from Federated Farmers. National president William Rolleston said this as the new Health and Safety Reform Bill was debated in Parliament last week.
Despite much political bickering about the bill, Rolleston says Feds did not get sucked into political tit-for-tat.
“That is not what Federated Farmers wants to get out of our involvement in this legislation. [We want no] unnecessary bureaucracy and to have good outcomes for health and safety on farms,” he told Rural News. “I don’t think getting sucked into the goings-on of the last few days is productive.”
Rolleston says it was pleasing to see the definition of a workplace in the legislation and the recognition that farms are workplaces and place of recreation. That distinction is much clearer in the amendments. On the interaction and tactics of WorkSafe NZ with farmers, Rolleston says this depends on individual inspectors and individual farmers.
“We have to work on that relationship and if WorkSafe wants to engage farmers they have to do it in a way that doesn’t enrage them. WorkSafe is getting that message and we are seeing better interactions.”
Feds wants feedback from farmers – it has asked for it all year – about what they see as unreasonable demands by WorkSafe NZ.
“So we can feed that back to them. Conversely, I’d expect WorkSafe to feed back to us any issues they have with particular farmers who are behaving badly.”
Rolleston says the new legislation is for education and engagement, not just straight enforcement.
A huge reduction in ACC claims from on-farm accidents over the last five years is due to thousands of small, practical decisions being made in sheds, yards, paddocks and around kitchen tables across the country, says Safer Farms ambassador Lindy Nelson.
Certainty and a clear understanding of the needs of rural communities is a critical outcome in the series of government reforms that are taking place at present.
Waikato farmers have been told that the Government’s new planning system legislation and the region’s Plan Change 1 (PC1) “won’t mesh together very well”.
Red meat farmers are using higher farmgate returns to make their farms more resilient, says Federated Farmers meat and wool industry group chair Richard Dawkins.
Newly appointed Federated Farmers vice president Sandra Faulkner says she is honoured and excited to hold the role.
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson says his party – NZ First - isn’t opposed to the “trade element” of a free trade deal with India.
The managing director of a company seeking to build a solar farm in Canterbury says receiving fast-track approval is a “really positive outcome”.
Retiring MP and dairy farmer Mark Cameron is blasting the Green Party for proposing to ban the use of synthetic fertiliser and cutting cow numbers.
A huge reduction in ACC claims from on-farm accidents over the last five years is due to thousands of small, practical decisions being made in sheds, yards, paddocks and around kitchen tables across the country, says Safer Farms ambassador Lindy Nelson.
Wayne and Ange Moxham of Horowhenua have just been named as Fonterra's top organic performer for milksolids. As well as providing organic milk to Fonterra, the couple also sell Udderly Organic milk to more than 100 outlets in the region and are embarking on another exciting venture producing organic gelato. Reporter Peter Burke went along to see their farming operation.
Certainty and a clear understanding of the needs of rural communities is a critical outcome in the series of government reforms that are taking place at present.
