Labour's "Sovietised" Workplace Safety Measures Completely Miss The Point

The Government's initiatives to improve workplace safety announced today completely miss the point, says Hon Peter Dunne, leader United Future.

"The real issue is that current Occupational Health and Safety are not working, and ad hoc changes will not make a fundamentally flawed system any better."

"The last thing we want is the Sovietisation of workplaces through the establishment of special workers' committees which will end up achieving nothing but an extra layer of unnecessary bureaucracy."

"If the Government was driven by common sense rather than its incessant desire to pander to trade unions, it would be instituting a ground up review of Occupational Health and Safety legislation to ensure we develop a system that forces unsafe workplaces to become safe, but which does not penalise either innocent individuals or presently safe workplaces."

"Such a review would also look at the way in which other agencies impinge on workplace safety and whether their roles continue to be necessary."

"Such agencies include the Land Transport Safety Authority - which should be scrapped unceremoniously forthwith; the Maritime Safety Authority; and the Accident Compensation Corporation."

"Their overlapping jurisdictions add to, rather than alleviate the current problem," he says.

Mr Dunne says the ad hoc and superficial nature of the Government's proposed changes make it hard to take them seriously.

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