• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • BIGGEST COLLECTION of WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
      • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
      • Safety Acronyms
      • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
      • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
      • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
      • Safety Slogans List
      • Road Safety Slogans 2023
      • How to write your own safety slogans
      • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
      • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
      • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
      • Safety Slogans for Work
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL POSTS
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no Hierarchy of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • THEMES
    • Psychosocial Safety
    • Resiliencing
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychosocial Safety
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety
      • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
      • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
      • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
      • What is Psychosocial Safety
      • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
      • What is Psychological Safety?
      • Understanding Psychological Terminology
      • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
      • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
      • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Safety Legislation / $450,000: Is this what we want from prosecutions?

$450,000: Is this what we want from prosecutions?

May 19, 2016 by Admin 5 Comments

Judge's hold hammer on wooden table Great article by Health and Safety Lawyer Greg Smith recently published here on his blog: My Safety Thoughts. Look out for Greg’s new book, co-authored with Dr Rob Long: “Risky Conversations, The Law, Social Psychology and Risk” – I’ve had a sneak preview and it is an absolute cracker!

$450,000: Is this what we want from prosecutions?

by Greg Smith

I have written on the topic of safety prosecutions before (Do we need to rethink safety prosecutions?, Rethinking safety prosecutions part 2 and Is this really what due diligence was designed for?), and a recent article posted online by the Safety Institute of Australia Ltd (VIC: Company fined $450,000 after teenager dies in forklift rollover) has prompted me to write on the topic again, and ask the safety industry to really question what it expects from health and safety prosecutions, and whether the current system delivers against those expectations.

In brief, the prosecution arose out of a fatality on a  farm in Victoria.

The owner of a labour hire company, who was engaged to provide workers to pick snow peas on the farm, bought his 15-year-old son and two friends, aged 16 and 17 to help with the work. The owner left the property and soon after the boys began driving a forklift, which had been left unattended and with keys in the ignition, in an unsafe manner. The driving was described as driving fast around corners, skidding and drifting and not wearing seat belt.

Several hours later the owner’s son was killed driving the forklift when it tipped over.

The boys, who had been left  unsupervised, had not been provided with any safety induction or instructions at all, none of them were licensed to drive a forklift and two of them had no prior experience working on a farm.

The farming company was prosecuted for failing to ensure a safe workplace and pleaded guilty. They were fined $450,000

At this point, it is appropriate that I add a little bit of information about myself. I am a lawyer, so I have a vested interest in the prosecution process. I am a farmer’s son and have engaged in exactly the type of activity that led to the fatality – and worse. I have a son, and continually walk a fine line between introducing him to more and more responsibility and keeping him safe. I work in the safety industry and have spent the last 25 years of my working career trying to help organisations improve safety in their workplaces.

I should also say at this point that on the face of the summary of the case, there was an abject failure by a number of parties to properly consider and implement processes to manage health and safety risks in the workplace. A failure which, in my view, required a response.

My question is whether the “prosecution” response does anything for safety.

The legal profession talks about the penalties in legal proceedings in terms of general and specific deterrence. The idea that a penalty is designed to stop the individual or organisation from offending again, as well as sending a message to the broader community about refraining from unlawful conduct.

Even from a narrow, legalistic perspective, it is difficult to see how this type of prosecution is helpful.

While I am sure that a $450,000 fine had a reasonable punitive effect, I am not sure how much of a specific deterrent it was, over and above the death of a 15 year old boy. And I am certain that there are more productive ways to invest $450,000 in safety than injecting it into the Victorian Government coffers.

A $450,000 education campaign? Creating some dedicated “farm safety” inspectors?

Let’s get creative.

If all we want from safety prosecutions is to punish people and organisations who do not meet their legal obligations, then the current approach and increasing fines is probably appropriate.

But every safety conference I attend has regulators and consultants spruiking that we must learn from incidents and the only way to move safety forward is with a “no blame” culture, both of which are completely undermined by a system focused on prosecutions.

The fatality occurred in November 2014. The findings from the Court, the Wangaratta County Court did not emerge until April 2016. There is no written judgement, only press article summaries and media releases from the regulator.

the case is about proving the particulars of the charge. It is not about improving safety or making recommendations to address safety shortfalls.

And what did we learn? That teenage boys should not be left to drive forklifts unsupervised because they might do something silly? That people need to be told about hazards in the workplace? That access to equipment and machinery should be controlled?

Really?

What did we need to learn?

We need to understand why organisations like the farming company and the labour hire company had no systems in place to manage obvious risks.

How is it, that despite all of the regulators and all of the regulation, most organisations do not have anything remotely resembling a reasonable safety management process?

What if, rather than prosecutions, organisations who have had accidents could opt in to a safety learning program. In this case, for example, a detailed investigation and research project to understand all of the factors influencing the incident. Not just the role of the employers and workers, but also the regulator, the way safety information is made available and the best ways to help small and medium sized businesses implement a safety program.

  • The project would be paid for by the employer – so there is still a financial penalty.
  • Both the incident and the research could be highly publicised to add to the deterrent value.
  • Valuable lessons would be available within months, as opposed to meaningless factual statements after years.

Prosecutions can, and should still be reserved for the worst classes of offence but these would be very limited.

This is different from the current enforceable undertakings approach, because it is not designed to respond to the incident per se, but to understand the incident and create wider learnings.

And just a word on regulators – every major accident inquiry in recent times (think, Pike River, Montara, Macondo) has found serious failings in the performance of the regulator in the discharge of their duties.

What, if anything have we learned about the regulation and enforcement of safety in this case?

So, returning to my initial question: What do we it expect from health and safety prosecutions, and does the current system delivers against those expectations?

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Safety Legislation Tagged With: compliance, prosecution

Reader Interactions

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them belowCancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,509 other subscribers.

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Recent Comments

  • Rob Long on Validating, Endorsing and Supporting Zero
  • Rob Long on The Global ‘Zero Event’, This is Safety
  • Rob Long on The Global ‘Zero Event’, This is Safety
  • Matthew Thorne on Validating, Endorsing and Supporting Zero
  • rosa a carrillo on The Global ‘Zero Event’, This is Safety
  • Matthew Thorne on The Global ‘Zero Event’, This is Safety
  • Rob Long on Hopkins-Dekker on Reason and Other Laughs
  • Matt Thorne on Myth Making and Why it Matters to Safety
  • Rob Long on What’s Funny About Safety?
  • Rob Long on Perfection is Safety Child’s Play
  • Rosa Carrillo on Hopkins-Dekker on Reason and Other Laughs
  • Brent Charlton on Perfection is Safety Child’s Play
  • Anonymous on What’s Funny About Safety?
  • Rob Long on Zero Hour part 6 Knowing Yourself
  • Rob Long on Safety Cops and Safety’s Adoration of Power
  • Rob Long on Book Launch – “Zero, The Great Safety Delusion” – Free Download
  • Rob long on Don’t Be Dumb Like Me, the Typical Safety Keynote
  • Anonymous on Don’t Be Dumb Like Me, the Typical Safety Keynote
  • Joseph D Zinobile on Book Launch – “Zero, The Great Safety Delusion” – Free Download
  • Jason Martell on Safety Cops and Safety’s Adoration of Power

RECOMMENDED READING

viral post – iso 45003 and what it cannot do

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Series

Have You Had a Drink of SafeTea?

If You Can’t Manage Fallibility, You’ll Never Tackle Psychosocial Health

Embodiment, Myth and Psychosocial Risk

7 Golden Rules that are NOT Golden

Why Zero Vision Can Never Tackle Mental Health

If Psychosocial Health Matters, Stop Hot Desking

Effective Strategies in Mental Health at Work

CLLR Newsletter July 2023

Playing With Mental Health in Safety is Dangerous

STOP ‘BREAKING’ PEOPLE! The notion of Psychological Safety

More Posts from this Category

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Footer

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • BIGGEST COLLECTION of WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS, CHECKISTS, REGISTERS, TEMPLATES and APPS
  • Free Risk Assessment Template in Excel Format
  • Icebreakers and Games that Safety Trainers Play
  • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
  • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
  • Validating, Endorsing and Supporting Zero
  • Safety Acronyms

Recent Posts

  • Have You Had a Drink of SafeTea?
  • The Blessings of Fallibility
  • Safety as Zero, The Perfect Event
  • Validating, Endorsing and Supporting Zero
  • The Global ‘Zero Event’, This is Safety
  • If You Can’t Manage Fallibility, You’ll Never Tackle Psychosocial Health
  • Embodiment, Myth and Psychosocial Risk
  • Embodied Enactivity in Safety
  • The Meaning of Myth in Risk
  • Myth Making and Why it Matters to Safety
  • Icebreakers and Games that Safety Trainers Play
  • The Power of Safety Myths
  • What Do You Mean By Performance?
  • Hopkins-Dekker on Reason and Other Laughs
  • Perfection is Safety Child’s Play
  • Podcast – Dr Rob Long With John Morlan and The Risk Matrix
  • What’s Funny About Safety?
  • Zero Hour part 6 Knowing Yourself
  • Free Videos, Podcasts and Books on Zero
  • Don’t Be Dumb Like Me, the Typical Safety Keynote
  • If You’re Happy in Safety, Clap Your Hands
  • Safety Cops and Safety’s Adoration of Power
  • Zero Hour Part 5 – Surfacing the Unconscious
  • Zero Hour Part 4 – Zero and the Unconscious
  • Auditing the 7 Golden Rules of Zero, A Miserable Fail
  • 7 Golden Rules that are NOT Golden
  • The Non-Golden Rules for Leadership in Zero
  • Seven ‘Golden’ Rules for Zero and Yet No Ethic
  • Why Zero Vision Can Never Tackle Mental Health
  • Is this Your Safety?
  • SPoR Workshops Canberra 18-21 September
  • The Dominance of Zero as the ‘Common Denominator’ of Safety
  • Zero Hour Episode 3
  • Goal Setting and Zero
  • Zero as a Worldview
  • If Psychosocial Health Matters, Stop Hot Desking
  • Book Launch – “Zero, The Great Safety Delusion” – Free Download
  • Breach of Faith and Psycho-Social Risk
  • Zero Harm is Never Zero Harm
  • Why Would You Want to be a Safety “Geek’ or Hero?
  • The Mental Illness of Identifying as Safety
  • Zero Hour – Zero as a place holder
  • Zero Hour – Zero as a Philosophy
  • CARING ABOUT PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
  • Care is NOT a Factor and Yes, Your Model Matters
  • Care Ethics and the Ethics of Care, in Risk
  • FEAR AND CONTROL – Dialogue in a technological society
  • Of Course, Method Matters in Safety
  • Day 12 SPoR in Europe
  • Free Study Module Following-Leading in Risk August-September

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

No Evidence for the Religion of Zero

Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple

Paralysis by Precaution

Sensemaking and ‘Hapori’ – Essential for Tackling Risk in New Zealand

Three Cheers for the Safety Literalists

Data Cannot Drive Vision

None so Blind as Those That Don’t Want to See – Due Diligence

A Philosophy of Safety

Safety People Don’t ‘Save Lives’

Safety as Avoidance

There is no ‘Satellite Insightfulness’

Snap, Crackle, Pop. That’s the Sound we Love to Hear

Day 9 SPoR in Europe

The Social Politics of Risk Workshop

What is Critical Listening when Dealing with Risk?

Out of your (Unconscious) Mind

I’ve got a feeling this isn’t right, but…..

The Social Psychology of Risk Handbook, i-thou

All Risk is Subjective

Vision Can’t Come from Safety Compliance

OnLine Learning Modules with CLLR

Something Different To Safety

Am I stupid? I didn’t think of that…

OMG – Big Words and Safety

Foundations of Perception and Imagination in Risk

Spin, Nonsense Language and Propaganda in Safety

Safety Should NOT Be About Safety

The Tyranny of Metrics

Is Risk and Safety Perfectionism a Disorder?

The Tyranny of Absolutes

What Can Safety Learn From Desire Paths?

SPoR Convention Canberra 18-21 September 2023

The Emperor has no Clothes – Beyond Behaviour-Based Safety

iCue Diagnostic, What is Your Risk iCue?

The Ethics of Safety

Safety Superstitions

Auditing the 7 Golden Rules of Zero, A Miserable Fail

Brain-Centredness and Occular-Centredness in Risk

Psychosocial Safety, I think it is about a 7?

Overcoming Safety Indoctrination

More Posts from this Category

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,509 other subscribers.

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?


WHAT IS PSYCHOSOCIAL SAFETY