WorkSafe NT, as the police presence throughout the Territory, must be beefed up and empowered

IT’S time the Northern Territory got its work safety record up to scratch — too many families are suffering, writes Unions NT’s Joel Bowden

Unions NT general secretary Joel Bowden says the NT’s safety record for workers needs to improve

WHEN our children cross the road, we ask (make) them to hold hands and stay together looking left, looking right and looking left again. When our kids ride to school in the morning we make sure they wear a helmet, stay together and use the safest route to school. For us it’s all about safety.

We recently fixed their bikes and upgraded their helmets just to make sure all is good and safe.

Now sometimes my wife or I ride with the kids to school as they are only young and learning the road rules and other nuances that come with riding to school.

When I don’t ride them to school its plays on my mind all morning. I’ve even gone to the extreme on a few occasions where I drive past the school to check their bikes are in the bike enclosure and know they have arrived safely at school.

But they are our beautiful children, who we love dearly and if something happened to them I just don’t know what we would do.

We are teaching our kids, like all other families, about safety and as parents it’s our responsibility to instil the safety ethos with our children from a young age.

Why do we do this? Well for us it comes down to that dreaded feeling in the pit of your stomach when you see your children graze their knee or fall off the bike for the first time. But more than that, it’s about allowing them to grow up and become adults and tackle the world without receiving a terrible phone call from school or someone else to let you know there’s been an accident and your child is hurt.

But accidents do happen. Sometimes it’s due to bad luck, sometimes it’s due to inexperience. Sometimes it’s someone else’s fault, but sometimes it’s negligence and rushing without considering the ramifications or consequences.

In recent weeks we have had two major accidents on work sites in the Territory. One in Palmerston and one in Tennant Creek. Now I’m not prejudging the current WorkSafe NT investigations underway in Tennant Creek or Palmerston police station but the facts are the Northern Territory is the most dangerous place to work in the country by a long way.

WorkSafe Australia statistics for 2017 show that the Northern Territory was the most dangerous and workers were more likely to be killed at work to the tune of 255 per cent compared to the next worst state or territory, Tasmania and 1275 per cent compared to the best state or territory being the ACT. Tasmania has a ratio of 2.4 workers per 100,000 and the ACT a ratio of 0.4 workers per 100,000. The statistics are damming and something has to change here in the Territory.

Most recently a family lost a father, a mother lost a son while working on the roof of the Tennant Creek fire station. He went to work and never came home.

In another case, a wife received a phone call to tell her that her husband had been crushed by a 1.5 tonne electrical board and was in hospital in a critical condition.

We have most recently learnt of a 35-year-old worker who had both legs amputated as a result of a workplace accident at Middle Point where he was operating a tractor with a trailing turf mower.

Now, imagine being injured at work or receiving the phone call to advise you that a loved one had been electrocuted, crushed or run over by a huge mower. Unfortunately, this has happened recently to three families and sent their lives into a tailspin that none of use untouched by tragedy of this kind can understand.

Unless we do something about it, the likelihood is it will happen again and another family another community and another worker will be seriously hurt or killed at work.

It starts with you and me making sure we teach our children to be safe from a young age. More importantly, it must be ingrained in the culture of workers and employers into the future. WorkSafe NT, as the police presence throughout the Territory, must be beefed up and empowered. Workers and employers need to work in unison and target ZERO incidents, ZERO fatalities.

Regulators, employers, workers and unions must commit to changing the safety culture in the NT because no one deserves to go to work and be hurt and no one should be killed at work.

Just think about the feeling when the phone call comes through and a loved one is involved in an accident, or worse still, a family member of yours is killed at work.

If that means it takes longer to complete a job, so be it.

If it means more breaks because of the NT heat, so be it.

If it means greater preparations and precaution, so be it.

And if that means safety has affected the bottom line, then try putting a price on a human life and make that phone call to the family of an injured worker because a short cut today could be the result of an accident tomorrow.

Joel Bowden is general secretary of Unions NT