Recent statistics on farm safety by AgHealth Australia reported in an earlier article, have also garnered attention from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The focus is on the number of deaths associated with side-by-side (SXS) vehicles, and farming seems to be treated as a special work health and safety case. Farming is not exceptional but …
Last week, The Weekly Times, a prominent Australian agriculture newspaper, reported on some peculiar behaviours by farmers and quad bike owners. Under laws introduced by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, removing vital occupational health and safety (OHS) operator protection devices is permissible. Why would farmers remove a critical safety device and endanger themselves and …
The member magazine of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS), OHS Professional, continues to improve in the quality of its articles – less advertorial, more authoritative articles. The current edition, December 2020, includes two particularly good articles- one on the manufacturers’ withdrawal of quad bikes in protest and another on psychological health and …
The debate over the safety of quad bikes on farms continues but it is increasingly one-sided. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and workplace safety advocates continue to hold the line on the need to install operator protection devices (OPDs) to all quad bikes being sold in Australia. Farmers, often supported by commercial interests, …
It is established that several major manufacturers of quad bikes have “cracked the shits” (ie had a tantrum) and now refuse to sell their vehicles to the Australian market. How to respond to this type of action is to restate the facts and this is exactly what the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) did …
Last week the Australian Government accepted the recommendations of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about improving the safety of quad bikes. But the improvement in safety came not through occupational health and safety (OHS) laws but the Australian Consumer Law so how could the ACL help improve workplace health and safety further? After …
The Weekly Times newspaper has provided strong coverage of the arguments about quad bike safety for many years, especially, through the work of Fiona Myers and Peter Hunt. The June 19, 2019 edition devoted its front page, page 4, an opinion piece and a cartoon to the objection by the quad bike manufacturers to Operator …
