And that's the rub that sees us nail more workers with either death or as bad, a serious accident that they either don't fully recover from, or spend a long time in recovery. I don't disagree that CMS charges may not be the answer to close that gap, but I am certain more/better enforcement will. — Steve H

My point regarding that was even if the NZ statistics were a sixth of what they are now, and less than those of countries we normally compare ourselves against, would we not still be asking the same question of why are we still killing our workers after each high profile death? I agree with your points that under the current regime we need to look at the levers that may shift the return on investment in "safety" towards a reduction in the total number of workers killed, and that may bring down our statistics to (directly) killing only (say for argument's sake) 20 workers a year as apposed to 68 per year. Which would be great that 48 workers didn't die because of work, but what about those remaining 20 - will it be ok to tell their families not to worry because at least 2 other workers didn't die as well? And when they ask why it was their family member, are we not back to the fact that the answers is "that's just the new accepted value for the human cost of doing business"? That unfortunately their loved one was the unfortunate one that fell on the wrong side of the return on investment (bottom line)?

But also acknowledging the positive of not having to have that same conversation with those 48 other families - which is why you are right that we still need put in the effort in the short term (even if it is less effective) and not just push it off as we're never going to be good enough so why bother (trying to ward of anyone thinking I am advocating for a zero harm mentality?).

Matt & Andrew's argument appears to be that we're already spending enough to cover off safety in the workplace, and that being the case it's acceptable to have collateral damage of 50- 60 workplace deaths, and 2200plus serious harm accidents each year (with the serious harm stats steadily growing) — Steve H

As @Andrew has said - no we are not saying this. But an interesting thought is that there are in fact some situations where injury (and even death) is accepted as a potential outcome of work, such as jobs in the military, police, or even healthcare. The common aspect to this "acceptance" is that the work is primarily considered as required for the benefit of our society as a whole, rather than for the profits of an individual. So what would it look like if all work was organised where maximising the benefit to society as a whole is the primary KPI used to allocate our resources?

I've looked up the accident rate and it's slightly higher per km for cyclists than drivers, and the likelihood of injury is greater. — Garth Forsberg

I am guessing that is all vehicle/cycle accidents? Be careful comparing aggregated data as the risks for riding a bike a short distance within the CBD is a completely different from commuting to/from work or long distance rides on open roads.

If there is an accident while riding a bicycle on company time, would the riders vehicle third party insurance cover damage to any other vehicles or property. — Garth Forsberg

I would expect the company's public liability I surance would cover any damage done to other's property by an employee while on company business - best bet is to check with your insurer to confirm it's covered by your current policy or if the policy needs amending.

And would that change if company officers potentially could face Corporate Manslaughter charges? — Steve H

My opinion - I don't think so.
Corporate Manslaughter legislation is likely to be too rare of an occurrence to cause any sort of real deterrent (i.e. "it will never happen to us" mentality), especially to the boards of the types of companies the laws are generally pitched at targeting. And in fact they could have potential negative (unintended) consequences if it drives business owners / boards even further towards a compliance mentality and to focus more on statutory risks rather than operational risks, i.e. focusing on limiting liability when an incident does occur rather than managing risks developing into an incident in the first place.

One issue with a stronger "legislation is the answer" mindset is, in an economic system where resource allocation is based on maximising an allegory measure of "societal good" (i.e. the profit motive, GDP, continual economic growth, etc.), that no matter what additional consequences are put in place the final question will inevitably be "what is the return on investment?" (even if it is not specifically those words) - with regards to legislative safety requirements it becomes either "do we really have to do this?" or "what is the lowest compliance we can get away with?" because any resources not spent on those things can be seen to be put to "better use" elsewhere to either grow the business or provide better returns to the shareholders.
And just to be clear this isn't a "corporations are greedy, unfeeling monsters" attitude, rather it's to call out that this is the system those businesses operate in - that if they don't make those hard decisions and continue to "improve" to ensure they stay profitable / grow, the inevitable is another business will out compete them by doing so. It is the reason why when answering the question of "what is reasonably practicable" so much of the effort is spent looking at what other companies (our competitors) are doing rather than what our company could do.

Potentially it is a case that we have got as far as we reasonably can within the current paradigm - and that we should be more concerned that all western countries seem to have hit the "safety plateau", rather than that NZ's plateau is higher than any other country's. Leading to the question being more to consider what could be the next societal shift that will have a significant broad impact on safety?

How are the workers being killed? — KeithH

Because they do not have the resources they need for the work (time, tools, materials, training, supervision and mentoring, workers and spare capacity to allow time off without impacting others, etc.

and, Why are workers being killed?

Because our current economics system drives businesss to continously "improve" efficiency of work using financial profit maximisation as its main KPI.

Some interesting approaches to providing PPE. Can someone please point me in the direction of the HSWA Regulations that say it is legal to ask employees to contribute (money) to providing PPE when PPE is required - Maybe I've missed it — Robb

I would say this is a case of a combination of a couple of regulations effectively allowing this situation to be legal:

1. The worker has a duty under S45 to comply with the reasonable instruction to wear safety boots while working.
2. Under R15 / R17 of the general workplace regulations the company must provide the worker with work boots while working, and that the work boots are of a suitable size and fit and reasonably comfortable for the worker.
3. Under R16 the worker may choose to provide their own work boots if they do not want to use the company supplied ones.

This leads to it being acceptable for a company to either offer a selection of (previously determined reasonably comfortable) work boots for the worker to choose from, or the option to purchase any work boots up to a certain limit (being a $ value that should allow the purchased comfortable work boots in any reasonable situation) - so this covers R15 / R17 for the company.
If the worker wants to choose to wear another type of work boot that is outside of the above criteria they are free to supply their own (suitable) work boots under R16 (with no obligation for the company to cover any of the cost of these work boots as long as the decision to supply their own is genuine and made voluntarily).
A lot of companies will cover the cost up until what they would have spent on the work boots if they had provided them as an act of goodwill (and potentially also as evidence that the worker's decision to supply their own work boots is in fact truly genuine and voluntary).
It would be a rare case where a worker could claimed that they couldn't find a pair of comfortable work boots for the $200 that seems to be the common contribution, but as @Steve H mentioned there may be special cases where the work boots may need to be special ordered.

In the case you cite, the beak sided with the driver, probably should have been appealed by the Police Traffic Prosecutor, but that's their call. — Steve H

I can't remember but I don't think the prosecution had any grounds to appeal - they can't appeal just because the don't like the judgement.
Again from memory; They had would have had an open-and-shut case for speed in excess of the posted limit, but they pushed for a conviction of reckless driving based on the excessive speed. The defense was that the police by that stating the driving was reckless simply by the fact of the excessive speed alone did not met the requirement to "regard to all the circumstances" as required by section 7 of the Land Transport Act, and so had no case.

My point is, even now, there are folk out there who will try and do less if they can get away with it, hence their question "is there a legal requirement for me to incur cost by having to do this" — Steve H

Prescriptive standards in H&S are good in theory, but in practice do they not tend to exacerbating the problem? Since:

1. They are typically used more as a justification of the maximum effort required rather than the minimum standard accepted (this is exactly what you are saying, the pushback of "where does it say I have to do more than this?"), and
2. They push the conversation to start off as an interpretation of those rules rather than starting at the actual risks needing to be managed.

My point, since the prescriptive standards will never cover 100% of all cases, is they are only beneficial if your risk management process is "I have a risk to manage, what knowledge is there that I can apply to my situation, and where does that general knowledge end and I need to start considering this on a case by case basis", but they can quickly become a hinderance if your process is "I've just got to do what the book says"

Back to using the speeding example - no judge would side with the driver if their argument was just "I think it's perfectly safe for me to drive at 100kmh through a normal 50kmh residential street" as there is no real additional considerations to that case than what is already covered in the "rule book". But they would have to consider it in a case like the reckless driving prosecution example above, or if the argument was "that it would be reasonable that the speed limit on the road should have been set higher due to the expert opinion of X, Y and Z who is sufficiently experienced in determining the appropriate speed limit for NZ roads" (the trouble is you will likely never get someone that is suitably qualified to be your expert witness and side with you in this case).

Back to the original topic (or more correctly, back to the comment on the original topic) - if the purpose of the tertiary education is to provide training and evaluation to gain competency in H&S risk management, then as per Andrew's comment - what the law says, and how it works shouldn't even factor into it.

But if its purpose is for competency to manage legal compliance, then the law and how it is applied definitely needs to taught... but then you are more legal council than H&S advisor/manager and probably should actually be doing a LLB rather than a H&S cert/diploma.

[Special case is would be the statutory powers of a H&S Representative in the act - but that is why they need to complete the Unit Standard which covers those part of the act].

In my opinion this is actually one of the biggest issues in the H&S profession - we are not clear on what the role is and who we are there to support (or when we are clear is is somewhat illogical). Most H&S coordinators are generally dealing with legal compliance issues (or in a lot of cases, issues that we incorrectly deem as legal compliance), H&S advisors are generally supporting the workers to manage risks and navigate through the company's various H&S processes, and H&S managers are supporting management to develop those H&S processes to [cynically] keep the company out of court. While we may think there is a clear career progression up the ladder from Coordinator to Advisor to Manager, I would bet that there is no other "profession" where the "focus" at each step through their professional development process changes so drastically.

(Maybe this rant is better in the "Why are we still killing our workers" thread... but I already need to finish my "The answer is capitalism, just ask Rasmussen" post for that one.)

And back to the original question - I would start with self-education using the court summaries. http://www.nzlii.org/nz/cases/NZHSE/ is a reasonable central database for information on past court summaries, most judges are good provide context around the reason for their decisions for convictions or sentences. Regarding the law, these interpretations can be much more critical to understand how the legislation is actually applied in practice rather than what is actually written in the Act and secondary legislation.

Sadly, there are still dinosaurs out there who will ask "is there a legal requirement to do this or that", so personally I favour a prescriptive approach to a minimum standard, embellish all you want after achieving that.. — Steve H

Normal answer to that is - "yes, but it is vague that you have to manage the risks of your work" and then turning the question back to them with some vein of "could someone potentially get hurt? And is there anything we could reasonably do now, that we would wish we would have done if they did end up getting hurt)?"

I look at it this way, the road rules could say, do a H&S assessment and then drive at the speed that your assessment tells you you will arrive safely- not really going to work is it (although in the absence of traffic enforcement, that is what happens frequently)

Except if you are equating it to the HSWA approach each driver would be expected to make that assessment based on the relevant knowledge available regarding the risks - which would include considering the available knowledge regarding their own vehicle safety, the safety of other potential vehicles on the road, the engineering of road design, weather patterns, the maintenance schedule for the road they are driving to assess current condition of the road, notifications of damage to the roads (fallen tress, slips, etc.), work scope of any construction of maintenance road works, etc.
Most people would never be able to spend the time/effort to be proficient in evaluation all this information before driving - and this is the reason we have prescriptive speed limits on our roads. Any person can look at that red 80kmh sign and consider - someone (or more likely a team of someones) has taken all that relevant information for this road and used their expertise to determine a suitable speed which this road should be driven at... so essentially every driver right is making that "H&S assessment", it's just based on the most efficiently communicated information they have (the speed limit sign).
Wasn't there a case last year were police prosecuted a driver for reckless driving because he was traveling at 100+ kmh through a speed limited (unattended) road works site, and the judge sided with the driver that it wasn't reckless because an assessment of the actual risk was determined to be low - from memory; the road he was driving on was in good condition and hadn't been disturbed by the road works and there was no road workers present that he could have injured - so essentially at that time the risk assessment was that he was essentially driving on the normal road in that area and so 100 kmh was a reasonable speed to travel at.

employee falls of and fractures wrist, cannot drive a car, and this car usage is his main task. Their HS was not even consulted — Janene Magson

To be honest - the issue isn't "H&S" wasn't consulted, it is that it seems that their procurement process doesn't include to identify and assess new types of equipment for risk prior to purchase and/or use.

We must keep reminding ourselves that we work in occupational health and safety :wink:
They looked at the work being done my motorbike and deemed that to risky, they considered walking but time constraints were an issue (plus if they were using the mountain bike trails for access would it not be a risk of having a crazy mountain biker like the one you have had to deal with taking them out on a blind corner or the other side of a jump!).
They considered what they could do to minimize the risk while riding - not screaming down the hill pulling off sick air! - and set the expectations for the work. Seemed like decent risk management to me - rather than calling the worker a risk based on a hobby they have outside of work and pulling the "can't do it cus of H&S" card.

We do however get a percentage back in external training costs if they haven't been here long — Sarah Kay

If that external training is required by the company to provide information/instruction for the safe use of tools/equipment/substances/etc. to do their work safely, I would expect that would also be covered under S27 and you should not be recovering any cost of that training if an employee leaves shortly after being trained.
If it is skills/professional development training then nicely no issue, but S27 relates to "...anything done, or provided, in relation to health and safety", so would include safety training.

On a slight tangent / extension, I was recently asked to look into work methods to undertake environmental monitoring a a large forest area, with an extensive network of cycle trails. They were proposing using motorbikes or quad bikes and were concerned about being hit by mountain bikers! To do the work on foot would take in excess of 40hrs. It could be ridden in less than a day. The motorbike expert assessed the terrain as 'highly challenging requiring an expert level of skill'. The monitoring is being done by mtn bike. The requirements: any monitoring personnel must have undertaken a competency assessment from an SME, their bike must have been inspected / serviced by a suitably skilled person (bike mechanic) and they must keep their wheels on the ground. They love their work day (although I'm sure they'd love to jump a little more ;-). — Matthew Bennett

You entire post is a great illustration of what risk assessment should look like - it is not about stopping unsafe work from occurring, but about enabling work to be done safely.

And your example at the end is right on the mark for this - including considering the match between the workers and the work. I am sure that there was at least a few moderately skilled recreational mountain bikers in the company eager to take on that work - and by setting the expectations around the work you are able to select the lowest risk method to complete the work.

And also the point of thinking outside of just the risk to your worker, and consider the system as a whole. The fact that having any employee be made to drive a car (because the potential consequences of cycling are more serious in a car vs cyclist accident) actually exposes a significant greater number of people to that risk (other pedestrians / cyclists that the worker may now interact with in their car). So if you are considering the risk to everyone that (may) be affected by this choice, cycling may actually be the safe option.

The US Chemical Safety Board has a number of good safety videos available relating to both process safety and worker occupational safety. Just done a quick check but there are a couple of videos which might suit what you need:

• Blocked In - insufficient process plant Management of Change resulted in isolation valves being installed between a pressure vessel and its pressure relief valve, which were then left closed resulting in an explosion. (https://www.csb.gov/videos/blocked-in/)
• Simultaneous Tragedy: Fire at Evergreen Packaging - A heat gun used to warm fiberglass resin (to speed up the hardening of the resin during cold weather) cause the resin to ignite causing a fatal fire inside a confined space. Although this video doesn't specifically mention the mid-job change of work method (to use the heat gun), rather it covers this under sufficient planning of work. I think this is a good talking point regarding ensuring workers understand the agreed work plan so that they can be better recognise when they are starting to work outside of the agreed scope, and a change to the work method needs to be reassessed and agreed on. (https://youtu.be/mF1fHHUcstg - released today)

Lots more videos and safety alerts on their website or YouTube channel.

We expect these businesses and services to:
comply with all relevant COVID-19 legislation requirements
have the appropriate infectious disease controls and management systems in place to reduce the likelihood of their workers being infected by COVID-19, and
notify us if a worker contracts COVID-19 and work activities are a significant contributing factor to their infection. — Thomas Jones

Just to clarify this, the preceding sentence to this is:

We expect some businesses and services to do more. These are businesses and services that carry out work that must be performed by a vaccinated worker. The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Order 2021 specifies who those workers are.

So would that effectively be that WorkSafe NZ only expect to be notified by businesses who are covered by the Vaccinations order? Which as of tonight is back to ports/airports, correction, medical and education. So a very limited scope of who should be notifying.

Just my opinion (as like you say I haven't seen any official WorkSafe NZ advice) but unless the worker is involved in any of the specified types of work under S23d(i-v), or is working directly for a workplace with an increased risk of Covid infected people being present (e.g. MIQ facilities or hospitals ED departments or wards) then it is likely that their work is not a significant contributing factor to contracting Covid, and therefore not notifiable.
In other words (as @Stephen Small said above) unless the chance of getting Covid is higher from interacting with people at work than from interacting with people in the general community, in my opinion it wouldn't meet the threshold for notifying.

My test would be to look at the potential sources of the infection - and if the source of infection and worker could reasonably swap places, it wouldn't be notifiable; e.g.

• a delivery driver contracts Covid from from interacting with another worker or non-isolating customer - given suitable training/experience either of these people could take the place of the delivery driver, and so not notifiable.
• a housekeeping staff member at a hotel being used as a MIQ facility contracts Covid from either another worker or a person isolating - since it is not reasonable to consider the housekeeping staff member and the person isolating could easily swap places (i.e. the infected person can't work, and the non-infected staff member shouldn't be in MIQ) then the work could be a significant contributing factor and the illness could be notifiable.
• A worker in a Covid testing lab is potentially exposed to Covid from test samples - since the worker and the samples can't swap places the work could be a significant contributing factor and the illness could be notifiable. Although this would probably also fit into the specified case of work with micro-organisms under 23d(i).

And now we have set the standard for preventing a few few days off work its seems to me we have to keep maintaining that standard for years to come. — Andrew

And is that mainly due to H&S yet again being used as the scapegoat for actions taken to manage other business risks - does this leave us with the only two (logical) options being for the majority of businesses to either:

• continue to manage the risk of sickness in the workplace by providing workers who contract a communicable disease sufficient sick leave for the worker to isolate and recover from the disease before returning to work, or
• Admit the response was over-cooked for the business's occupation H&S risk associated with Covid (and that it was primarily done to manage business continuity risks and not for worker / workplace safety)...

Of course I think most will cop-out with the usual "these are/were unprecedented times"...

My comment on the "claimed to be on the basis of science..." was mostly just that a the press conference (from memory) Chris Hipkins said that the change to 3 months exemption was from looking at evidence from NZ and the rest of the world.
One Study published in Science a year ago looking at immune responses 6+ months post infection study seems to imply immune response still present at the 3-6 month mark (but that is just from the abstract and my layman's reading of it!) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7919858/
The legal exemption period for self-isolation for community cases / household contacts is covered in schedule 1 & 2 of the revised order - https://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2022/0046/latest/whole.html#LMS647794

it is also seeking to tackle the wider causes of injury and illness by pursuing organisations with 'upstream duties' in the supply chain, challenging the contracting models in particular sectors, and putting the heat on senior people with officer duties sitting at the boardroom table. — Peter Bateman

I must be confused because aren't all those things essentially specified sections in HSWA? The only one that might not be is "challenging the contracting models in particular sectors" but that's only down to WorkSafe NZ targeting their resources to higher risk sectors.

Macfie notes that some within MBIE are uneasy at this new direction and would prefer WorkSafe "stick to its knitting" of enforcement. — Peter Bateman

The cynic in me interprets that as senior management is uneasy at more scrutiny of senior managers... in the guise of it taking away from scrutiny of "were the risk really is" in an organisation which is at the workface (or in other words the old fashion viewpoint that the workers create the risk)... the super-cynic in me thinks this may be because once they leave MBIE they will like be in a position where this increase scrutiny will really hit home for them... :joke:

This is not a technical situation at all,it is quite clear that the day 7 test is positive and the person is now a confirmed covid case (looking like asymptomatic and yet carrying spike protein and virus in their nose), and should be at home. — Jane

The problem is it is not clear at all - it could either be a case of:

• Failure of the Covid infection on the Friday to produce a sample with sufficient nasal viral load to produce a positive RAT result until the following Saturday (either actual viral load or failure to swab it well enough), or
• A new Covid infection that has now taken hold after a coincidental common cold / influenza infection causing the first set of symptoms at the same time as the partners confirmed Covid infection.

If I was betting on the balance of probabilities, my money would be on the first scenario.

Unfortunately this is a technicality as it is a case in how the rules are technically interpreted, and without any further clarification on restricting the scope how far back you should consider "symptoms" prior to a positive RAT as being related to the RAT legally (as per the Order) in this case he would be free to leave self-isolation.
In this case whether it is the right decision to leave isolation when you have just returned a positive RAT is a moral choice.

Which bit of your quote above says the household contact can leave with a positive day 7 test? — Jane

Because once the household case tests positive they stop being a household case and are now considered a positive case - and then you need to assess the positive case's isolation period, this being the earlier of either; the positive RAT, or becoming symptomatic. It could be reasonable to considered that the positive RAT result is due to being infected at the same time as his partner but a lag in the build up of sufficient virial load (or inaccuracy with previous RATs) resulted in negative results until this time, i.e. the onset of the symptoms relating to the positive RAT were 7 days prior to the test.

As I said - this is outside of the typical scenarios that the general self-isolation/testing rules cover but since there is no other advice given (or more correctly no scope of when / when not to apply the general rules) we are left in the uneasy situation of technically a person that has just returned a positive RAT also been considered suitable to leave isolation.