New Zealand Safety Council

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Editorial ~ October 2012

[NOTE: Website is currently under Re-construction]

10th Anniversary of Council

New Zealand Safety Council sets a new entry level Benchmark for Safety Professionals

New Zealand business still has a major problem when seeking to employ the services of an occupational safety & health [OSH] practitioner. Whether recruiting for a permanent staff member or seeking an OSH Consultant, where do seekers begin?

There is no single NZ benchmark that can currently be used

You could ask: is the potential OSH Practitioner Certified by any NZ professional body?

If not you could ask why not? This does not however give assurance of competence against an agreed list of competencies.

Academic qualifications, at whatever level, do not prove competency. It is the proven projects that have been completed across a range of OSH topics that make up the daily work of an OSH Practitioner and demonstrate the ability to run a safety system.

In 2004 the New Zealand Safety Council launched the Register of Safety Professionals [RSP] but this had the failing of not setting a minimum standard for safety practitioners but endorsed the senior members of NZSC who had held senior roles in larger organisations.

In 2006 we added the Register of Accredited Safety Auditors [ASA] for those who had completed all the requirements of the competency based, level 6 NZQA qualification, for auditing.

In 2012 we have now reviewed our overall registration processes and have issued a new minimum entry level Certification Standard for jobs usually referred to as Safety Adviser.

This is the grade of Associate Safety Professional with NZSC.

Under the Trans Tasman Mutual Recognition Act 1997 it is a requirement that all skilled peoples trades/teachers etc and safety practitioners, from either NZ or Australia are able to have their qualifications recognised, should they seek employment across the Tasman.

We have looked closer to home and identified the Australian OSH Standards from http://training.gov.au as most relevant for New Zealand’s purpose. NZ does not have a recognised OSH Diploma at level 5. There is also an Australian level 6, advanced Diploma, which equates to the NZ level of safety manager [our RSP grade]

Adopting these Australian standards would enable a rapid transition to a single standard for NZ and Australia.

We will be taking this proposal to the Government shortly and have floated the idea with some senior NZISM members already. We firmly believe it is the best way forward for all parties and will also serve as a wake-up call to those wannabe safety practitioners who are unqualified, many of whom are working as OSH Consultants.

The New Zealand Safety Council’s position is that Ionisation Smoke Alarms be

BANNED FROM SALE in New Zealand

One of the major risks to everyone of us is fire at night when we are blissfully asleep.

The

NZSC SMOKE ALARM REPORT raises many serious issues, was sparked by yet another house fire involving a fatality, to Papakura pensioner Freda Birch, in June.

The vital point is that Freda had approved ionization detectors fitted by the NZ Fire Service, they did not work and Freda died. Freda could have been any one of us. In 2003 Colin Zonnerfield lost his wife and four other relatives when a horrific fire engulfed his house in Waihi. Colin slept through the creeping toxic smoke, only awakening when the fire flashed over, which was too late for the family members trapped in the basement. Similarly to Freda, Colin had approved ionization detectors fitted with fresh batteries.

New Laws For A New Decade

Gran t Nicholson reports:

It has been a relatively settled year for the law in the health and safety area, with judges

sharply towards $40,000 per offence.
quickly getting to grips with the approach to sentencing mandated by the High Court in late 2008 and defendants feeling the pinch as average fines rose mmmm

2010 i s shaping up as a more challenging year, due to an impending change in the Health and Safety in Employment Act (‘Act’).

In 2008, the Department of Labour persuaded the then Labour Government to make several changes to the Act, but they were not passed before the election. In December 2009, Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, announced she was going to adopt Labour’s changes, and that National would also change the definition of serious harm.

So, as a health and safety practitioner, what does this mean for you? Probably quite a lot, with the devil being in the detail.

The definition of serious harm

The first important change relates to the definition of serious harm. As most readers will know, the definition is important because it is the threshold for reporting incidents to the Department of Labour. These reports can and often do lead to investigation of workplace accidents by inspectors and to almost all enforcement actions by the Department.

As things stand, the term serious harm is defined in Schedule 1 of the Act. The definition has six parts and is fairly easy to understand. The new law hasn’t been released yet, so we don’t know what it will say.

Labour Minister, Kate Wilkinson has, however, announced that it will be different. All physical injuries will be serious harm if the employee is unable to perform normal duties for ten days or more. This can be contrasted with the current law, which requires the victim to be hospitalised for two days or more.

Other permanent injuries, diagnosed occupational illnesses and one-off events like electrocution or loss of consciousness, will continue to be serious harm as well, regardless of duration of the harm.

Tim e will tell whether this change increases or decreases the burden on employers. According to the Minister, her intention is that employers be spared from the need "to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with what can be minor matters". It is hard, however, to reconcile this goal with the proposed change, given that Labour’s consultation documents had indicated changing the definition was likely to lead to a potential doubling in the reporting of incidents.

Without a substantial increase in resourcing for the Department of Labour, which appears unlikely in the current political and economic climate, there is a risk that employers will be put to the expense and inconvenience of additional reporting in circumstances where the Department of Labour has little or no ability or enthusiasm to investigate or offer support after the newly notified incidents.