Glenn Parsons: New Zealand company sentenced over death at Murray Goulburn site in Leitchville

A Shepparton worker who was crushed to death at a factory near Echuca should not have been on the job unsupervised. The company now faces a hefty fine.

A New Zealand engineering company which left workers unsupervised during a dangerous job at the old Murray Goulburn cheese factory in Leitchville has admitted “work should have stopped” before the fatal accident.

Andrew Buchanan Engineering was on Thursday convicted and fined $300,000 in the County Court, after earlier pleading guilty to breaches of workplace health and safety laws.

Judge Phillip Coish said the company’s director, Andrew Buchanan, had returned to New Zealand during a dangerous phase of the job removing heavy equipment from the factory.

He said Mr Buchanan now “frankly admitted the work should have stopped” before worker Glenn Parsons was crushed to death.

Mr Parsons, 59, of Kialla, and his offsider, hatched a plan to load a condenser into a standard shipping container, using equipment ill-suited to the job.

Workplace safety investigators concluded the company should have used an open-top container for the job, which would have allowed the condenser to be lowered by crane, instead of dangerously manoeuvred in from the end.

The old Murray Goulburn cheese factory at Leitchville.

Glenn Parsons was crushed to death in a workplace accident at the old Murray Goulburn cheese factory.

Judge Coish said the two experienced, capable workers were left unsupervised, with “no safe system of work” available to them.

Had someone from the company been on site, the job would have gone ahead differently.

Mr Parsons was crushed under the 770kg condenser, calling out to his work mate, “I can’t breathe”, as people scrambled to free him.

His workmate, who suffered a broken leg, yelled, “everything is going to be fine … just hang in there”, but Parsons succumbed to his injuries.

Judge Coish said the job site was complicated, with the company, Murray Goulburn, and two Australian subcontractors all having different areas of responsibility.

He said the plan to load the condenser into the shipping container had “significant flaws from its inception”, ultimately leading to what Mr Parsons’ partner described as her “worst nightmare, when the man you adore and love does not come home from work”.

Mr Parsons’ sister previously told the court her brother “never should have died that day, he had years of life to look forward to”.

Prosecutors have dropped charges against Mr Andrew Buchanan.