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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-07-25 Daily Xml
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Motions

National Farm Safety Week

Debate resumed.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (12:16): I rise today to support this very commendable motion. I think it is an important motion. I think it is important that we acknowledge National Farm Safety Week, which has now been held for some 18 years or so. It does serve to concentrate our minds on the tragedy that often occurs on our farms—tragedy that involves not just those people directly working on the farms but, on occasions, family members who might not necessarily be occupationally engaged but die from other causes.

As the member said, we can talk about the statistics—and it is important to reflect on and examine the statistics and the wide variety of causes leading to death and injury on farms—but, after doing all that, it is about the incredibly personal stories and the impact that a death has or the impact that an especially serious injury has on wives and husbands, and brothers and sisters. In the vast electorate of Giles, there are a number of farms and grain properties. There are extensive pastoral areas.

In another life, I was heavily involved in the whole area of occupational health and safety and rehabilitation. As part of that other life, I would go out and do worksite assessments when people were injured or when people were killed. It was often a very difficult thing to do. Most of that work involved heavy industry, whether it was manufacturing, such as in the steelworks, or mining in the Middleback Ranges, at Olympic Dam and at other places. You got to see firsthand the direct impact of different safety regimes.

Prior to doing that sort of work, I used to work in heavy industry myself. It was almost a matter of course that in a place like the steelworks somebody would die on a relatively regular basis. In fact, it was almost factored into the managerial regime that deaths were going to occur. Very fortunately, and with a lot of agitation, this brought about major cultural change, to the point where there has not been a death in the steel industry in South Australia for many years. That was a massive step forward.

Farming is clearly different from the sorts of practices that you see in heavy industry and the sorts of resources that can be brought to bear on addressing problems. We have 13,500 farms in South Australia, so that is 13,500 different workplaces. The variety amongst those workplaces is very significant. When it comes to deaths in South Australia, the data varies depending on which database you look at. One database states that in 2017 three people in South Australia died; another states that four people died. In relation to the number of children killed on farms, the national databases differ as well. It may be due to whether or not the child was seen as being actively involved in work on the farm. Irrespective of the data, any death is one death too many.

Nationally, some 68 deaths occurred in 2017. Once again, different databases will give you different figures. Of those, tractors contributed to 13 deaths. Quads have received a lot of publicity over recent years, and there has been some controversy around how to best address these issues. Quads have led to 12 deaths and a number of horrendous injuries. Anything we can do to assist the farming sector to address this heavy toll is to be welcomed.

When you look at farming in comparison to other industries, it is way up there when it comes to death and injury. If you break it down by industry sectors, deaths are most likely to occur in the transport, postal and warehousing sector—that is a bit of a variety. Coming a very close second is the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector. In fact, those two industry sectors, along with construction, which comes in at third place, are by far the biggest contributors to worker deaths and injuries. These areas all receive attention in a myriad of ways in order to address this tragic loss of life.

The member for Heysen focused on some of the people he knew and the impact that those accidents have had. In my working life, when I was working in heavy industry and then in the occupational health and safety and rehabilitation field, some of the injuries I would come across were particularly horrendous and the long-term impact they would have on families was particularly tragic. There is some reason for confidence that things will improve because there has been a marked reduction in deaths on farms, and that is as a result of education, awareness and changing practices.

There has been a range of different approaches. If we continue on that, if we redouble our efforts, it will improve still further. As I said, in the steel industry deaths used to be relatively common, and now they no longer are. It is interesting to listen to some of the people I know who think there has been overreach when it comes to safety. However, as somebody who was exposed to the regime as it used to be a couple of decades ago, I think I would rather have that overreach and everybody going home after work than what happened in the past.

It was major cultural change and leadership change that brought about those changes in that industry, taking some of the risks of engineering out of the workplace wherever possible. I acknowledge that it is somewhat more complex when it comes to the farming community, given the sheer number of farms in South Australia and Australia and the demands that are placed on farmers and people who work in agricultural pursuits. The member for Heysen flagged a variety of activities that you have to engage in when you are working on a farm. Even though the work is not as hard and physical as it was once upon a time, that element is still there. Indeed, I was at the launch of what we hope is going to be a new port facility at Lucky Bay.

Time expired.

Mr BASHAM (Finniss) (12:26): I also rise to support this motion. As a farmer of many years, I certainly understand the risks and challenges that many farmers face with regard to farm safety, and it saddens me to see the statistics that we still have. Over 60 farmers around Australia die every year from farming accidents. There is good news, though, as we have seen significant downturns in the numbers from the 1990s. I think a lot of that can be attributed to solutions that have been found for some of the risks on farms.

Probably the greatest solution that has been found in my time of farming is the rollover protection systems that have been placed on tractors. Many accidents used to occur with tractors where, if a farmer was trying to pull something out and could not move it, the tractor would actually flip on itself and end up lying on its back, with the driver pinned underneath the tractor. The rollover protection systems that were implemented about 30 years ago have seen all that change. There is now protection around the farmers, either with a cab that is reinforced and does not collapse if the tractor rolls over, or with a bar, in particular, that stops the driver being crushed in the outcome of an accident like that.

I have been personally affected more than I would like by farmer deaths. While I was the chair of the South Australian Dairyfarmers' Association and the president of Australian Dairy Farmers, there were several incidents where dairy farmers were severely injured or killed. There are some very notable dairy farmers who, unfortunately, were killed, many of them in tractor accidents. Jeff Kernich is one that comes to mind. He started the business Jersey Fresh in the Barossa Valley. It is a great business that is a credit to him and his family. Unfortunately, Jeff was killed in August 2016.

It is a sad thing that this happens on farms, but it is something we have to address. We have to understand what is the leading problem here. Often, it is about communication. These people are often working alone, and either the job should not be done alone because it requires a second person to remove the danger but the farmer tries to compromise and do the job alone, or something unforeseen happens and the farmer is then trapped, most likely injured initially but not found for a significant time.

One of the key things that has also helped is access to mobile phones on farms. When they get into serious trouble, it allows people to make contact and seek help. It is not always available but it certainly helps. I know of one business near Mount Gambier that went to the extent of giving all their staff pagers, and if they do not respond to a page issued at a certain time, when they are out working alone, they go looking for them. There are things that can be done to help us in this space, and we may need to do more. We may need to establish some services where people can get themselves registered as working alone in vulnerable circumstances so that someone puts the phone call in to see whether or not they have been injured. There are many things we need to look at in this space.

I am also concerned about some of the other more recent injuries in the last few months. Back in April this year, there were two deaths 10 days apart. One of them was not far from my property at Mount Compass, at Yundi. The man who was killed there, Dominic Betschart, is the man who sold me my first piece of land. That is very close to home, when you have known the person for over 30 years. He was a retired farmer who was just doing someone a favour when something went wrong. Only 10 days later, there was another death, in the Barossa. All these deaths are very unfortunate and affect so many people. We need to make sure that we do everything we can to protect our workers.

The isolation and largeness of our properties makes this difficult and it is even more difficult in remote areas, where there is no coverage to make contact. I remember not long after leaving school—and luckily there was no injury in this case—I was up on Commonwealth Hill Station, where my friend's father was the manager at the time. We spent the day mustering. We were not that good at it because we found only four sheep in a whole day, but that is another story. When we got home that night, one of the other jackaroos, who had also gone out mustering on a bike, had not returned home by 8 o'clock.

The manager went out at 8 o'clock at night looking for him. Luckily, in this case he had a flat tyre and was unable to fix it. He had been sitting on the road since 7 o'clock that morning and he was only about an hour's ride from the homestead. That was a lucky one. He actually sat there all day. In those circumstances, if he had come off his bike and injured himself, who knows what would have happened. That is what we are dealing with, that sort of uncertainty.

It is so important to have this issue highlighted during National Farm Safety Week. The theme for this year—'innovative, safe and healthy'—is very much the case. It is not just about the accidents that occur but also about the mental health of farmers who we need to look after in this space. When farmers are under stress and overworked other things start to go wrong as well, so we need to make sure that we look after their wellbeing and their businesses.

Farmers in Australia, and especially in our state, are innovative. They come up with new ideas and they look at ways to do things more safely. The work that is done on those farms is a credit to them. The regulators actually do not always get it right. One thing that is being talked about at the moment that we have to be very careful about is the protection that is being retrofitted to quad bikes, which is not necessarily the best outcome. They do not necessarily achieve what is desired. We have to be very careful we get these things right and we do not make things worse. I think very careful consideration is needed when making these applications to retrofit devices on vehicles. We need to make sure that they achieve their outcome.

In conclusion, I think it is very important that we continue to adapt and change and particularly improve our communication networks around the regional areas of South Australia. There are still significant blackspots across areas of the Fleurieu Peninsula and other areas where you would have to travel huge distances to get mobile phone coverage if you had an accident on your farm. I think we have to be very vigilant in trying to get those blackspots filled.

We need to look at what we can do in this space to give farmers working in isolation the protection they need to be able to make sure that they get home safely to their families every night. As we are seeing, it is not just the deaths but also the horrific injuries that can occur with large machinery and other things. I commend this motion.

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (12:36): I rise to commend the member for Heysen's motion to the house and offer recognition to the farmers of my community and the entire Limestone Coast. Our region is justifiably famous for its wine, forestry and seafood products, all of which are reliant on a vibrant farming community and culture. You cannot visit the Limestone Coast without hearing about the Wagyu cattle at Mayura Station, Coonawarra's famous red wines or those freshly caught southern rock lobsters from Port MacDonnell. To quote Adelaide and Flinders universities' Regional Development Australia Limestone Coast report, 'The region is an agricultural, forestry and fishing “food bowl”, with an international reputation to match.'

Agricultural land occupies more than 70 per cent of our region. In Mount Gambier alone there are more than 300 businesses in the agriculture, forestry and fishing industries, which employ thousands of people. These industries are vitally important to the region's economy and also attract thousands of international visitors to our region each year, delivering a strong boost to tourism.

In particular, I would like to focus on the importance of paragraph (b) of this motion, recognising this year's theme as being 'innovative, safe and healthy'. Farmers often spend their days working alone and in hard to reach, remote areas. The lack of consistent mobile coverage is a big issue for those working in parts of regional South Australia where emergency services can be up to half an hour away.

I know farmers who use Twitter to communicate with each other but who cannot connect a phone call to the bloke who works down the road because of the lack of a reliable phone service. Like workers across all sectors, farmers should be able to have access to a safe workplace with strategies in place to assist should emergency situations occur. The basic fact is that farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in the country. At the Gen Ag 2017 conference, National Centre for Farmer Health representative, Jody Morton, said that 27 per cent of all Australian workplace fatalities were in the farming industry, but the statistics do not give the full picture, considering many farmers choose not to report workplace injuries.

I commend the South Australian government for recognising National Farm Safety Week. However, I think it is time for the government to guarantee reliable phone coverage to the farmers of regional South Australia to ensure an extra level of security and safety.

I would also like to take this opportunity to recognise Farmsafe Australia, SafeWork SA, the National Centre for Farmer Health and the University of South Australia's ifarmwell for their work not only in raising awareness and running programs on farm safety and injury and death prevention but also for their work in the field of mental health. A free, five-part module is offered by ifarmwell, aiming to equip farmers with resilience tools to reduce the negative impact that stressful situations have on their overall lives so they have more time and energy to focus on the things that make them happy and enjoy life.

It must be remembered that the future security of the farms depends on the whim of the weather. One good season can be followed by four terrible seasons, which can affect profitability, the entire farming workforce and also flow on to the community at large. To quote from the 2017 Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health Rural Suicide Prevention Forum report:

Even when seasonal conditions suggest a hopeful future, their personal experience reminds them of the realistic risk of future adverse conditions, such as too much or insufficient rainfall, too high or too low temperature, hail, frost, fire etc.

National Farm Safety Week and the programs of the South Australian farm safety organisations recognise the stresses farmers endure. Furthermore, I commend the work of Farmsafe and wellbeing organisations for their imperative work in making the farmers' workplace a better environment. Farming industries provide so much economic benefit to the region and the state. I believe it is important to support and protect our farmers now and into the future.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (12:41): I rise to support the motion by the member for Heysen:

That this house—

(a) notes that National Farm Safety Week was held from 16 to 22 July, raising awareness of farm safety issues across Australia, including South Australia;

(b) recognises this year's theme as being 'innovative, safe and healthy'; and

(c) acknowledges the united effort across the nation to reduce the deaths and injuries associated with health and safety risks on farms.

In its 20th year, National Farm Safety Week was held across the country last week. This year's theme was 'innovative, safe and healthy'. I certainly think that that is the key, as you, as a longstanding farmer on Eyre Peninsula in the seat of Flinders, would well understand, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Farm safety is a very significant matter. We have heard about the different statistics: 20 per cent or 27 per cent of deaths in industry are attributed to agriculture. We have today heard why some of those deaths happen. Sometimes it is just because you are a long way from help and are on your own.

You do not have to be on a far-flung station or property to have that happen. You could be on a property in any of our regional electorates and have just told your family, 'I am going down to do some sheep work,' out the back of the block or on another block, or you are going down to do some seeding or spraying. You could even be doing something with harvesting and operating on your own, although these days a lot of the time you are backed up with people operating chaser bins and have the freight people working around you as well.

I think in some of the accidents that have been highlighted and instances of what can happen, it is sometimes hard to get common sense regarding the regulation. I know we need it, but there are times when it does make it difficult just to operate machinery. I note the member for Finniss' comments about four-wheel quad bikes. I am the owner of a couple of those. I have a Yamaha 660 myself, and it weighs somewhere between 400 and 450 kilos, so it is substantially heavier than I am. It is a beast. and you need to understand how it operates.

Twice I have had to save myself with a motorbike coming over but aware of what could happen—just stick your right leg up and put it back on its wheels. It is a scary enough situation, but you have to be aware. Once I was trying to catch up with a stray dog that was not taking my commands too well and was heading towards the highway. I probably risked everything trying to pull him up and I fell off the motorbike. So, you do have to be aware, and that is one factor in what happens.

I note what the member for Finniss said. Many studies have been done with regard to quad bikes and trying to make them safer. There are far too many deaths: one death is too many, but too many deaths are attributed to quad bikes. They have looked at putting add-on technology like Lifebuoy and other rollover protection structures. I think the Lifebuoy is one that will flex, supposedly, if you go underneath it, but it can have adverse effects as well.

Two-wheel motorbikes also can be an issue on the land. Not so much these days, but in some of the pastoral country and inland country as well people still use horses. I remember my father, who was farming from 1933 onwards, could recount too many stories of people who came off horses and got hooked up in the stirrups and there was no way out—they just got dragged to their death.

With all machinery, and with operating any machinery, you have to be absolutely careful. I know that these days modern harvesters have a lot more tricks on them than when I was farming, but even with the old 1680 case rotary that I had when I was farming you could not put the machine into gear to operate it unless you were sitting on the seat. That certainly saved issues of putting it into gear and then, on your own, getting out the front watching the machine work, when you could get pulled into the front and into the machine and suffer terrible injuries or death.

Certainly power take-off shafts are another one. Sometimes people are weary—many people working for themselves or workers on the land working long hours—and forget, and power take-off shafts at the very least can possibly strip you naked if you get caught in one. They are operating, when going at full noise, at 540 to 1,000 revs per minute, and you are lucky if you get out with just having your clothes stripped off.

There have been too many times when people who, for whatever reason, have been caught up in these shafts; their clothes get caught in the elbow joints, they get flung around and have quite an horrendous death. I remember one harvest yelling out to a mate who did not seem to be aware of what was going on as we were unloading grain into a bin. I was on top of the bin and I was just screaming at him to get away from the power take-off shaft between the tractor and power take-off harvester that we had at the time.

Certainly with tractors and front-end loaders especially—and some of the deaths talked about today by other members involved front-end loaders—they are a machine, obviously, because they are a front-end loader, you can lift stuff up high, and your standard front-end loader you can still lift up stuff three or four metres, but then you get these high lift, manitose-style loaders where you can lift many metres into the air.

I have heard of some lucky escapes, but I am also aware of deaths, sadly too close to home, where people have been carting hay with even standard front-end loader tractors and loading the hay into a shed, on a truck or just coming across a paddock and not having the loader at the right height. For whatever reason, a round bale comes over the top of the loader, and guess where it goes next: it goes on to the person operating the tractor, and sometimes people have had very lucky escapes because they have had a roll-over protection structure on there, if it has been an open-air tractor, or they have a cab on there.

A good friend of mine from out in the Mallee had a very, very lucky escape but did suffer some ongoing injuries. The bale did not quite crush him on the tractor. There have been new regulations around rollover protection structures. I had to fit one to my tractor. There are different rules for whether you are an owner/operator or whether you have workmen or others operating your machines as well.

There are many ways you can get hurt. For instance, I have fallen in the box. I was not really operating my harvester, but I was changing the oils on it after I bought it and I fell in the box while I was showing my 18-month-old son—not that he remembers me showing him how the header operated. I sat on the edge of the box and forgot that the top few inches of the box was a loose flap that folded in and I tore my arm open and needed 22 stitches. I was lucky it was only my arm.

I want to talk about the innovations and what is helping as far as accidents go. It is about getting more mobile phone towers out, and I am certainly proud to say that on this side of the house, the Liberal Party is committed to getting more communication right across the country, with a $10 million policy as well as other regional policies, to make sure that we can make the regions a safer place to operate so that you have more of a chance, especially if you are on your own and you fall off that bike or roll that ute or whatever other issue happens, to seek help, as long as you can move your arm to reach into your pocket for your phone and ring 000.

The former Labor government failed at that, but we are certainly keen to promote that. I certainly support the motion of the member for Heysen. May we all keep working for better farm safety outcomes into the future.

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