Editorial: All the World’s a Mine Site

THE kind of logic Council are applying to the Scone saleyards induction is ridiculous, what’s next all users of the publicly owned footpaths must attend an induction each year?

See: Council Overkill at Saleyards

Elizabeth Flaherty, editor.

The workplace safety procedures for entering a mine site for example, are very different to someone walking on the footpath owned by the Council or a patient entering a state government owned hospital.

The relative risks of a hospital compared to a mine site are staggering when you consider that in Australia more than 18,000 people die every year as a result of medical error and another 50,000 suffer a permanent injury.

But we are not required to undergo a half hour safety induction for a hospital visit each year.

Council’s logic that every saleyard is different is akin to saying every hospital is different, or every Council owned park is different and therefore a safety induction is required to use any of these facilities.

Imagine being transferred from the Scott Memorial Hospital to the John Hunter Hospital and staff saying because each hospital is different you will need to undertake another safety induction before they will treat you.

By that rational you’d need a safety induction for the ambulance and the rescue chopper too.

Council require everyone who steps foot on the saleyards to undergo the induction, even if you are just going to sit in the stands and watch the sale.

Are they going to ask children on school holidays watching the sale to do the induction or will parents have to sign an additional form?

When I recently took photographs I was told I’d have to undertake a safety induction.

Clearly there is an overzealous bureaucrat, who I am betting has a background in the mining industry and is now  taking a cookie cutter approach and applying mining policy to the Shire and turning it into a mine site.

And perhaps it is again one rouge Council employee who has made a bad decision, but ultimately these bad decisions are the responsibility of the General Manager who has endorsed this approach.

And again this issue has political ramifications with many users now saying they will sell their cattle elsewhere because of the bureaucracy being imposed, so where are the Councillors who should be taking leadership on this issue?

Why aren’t these issues being weeded out by the General Manager before they are imposed?

Why aren’t the Councillors questioning these decisions on behalf of the people they represent instead of swallowing without question what Council staff are telling them?

Many of the Councillors own or manage properties where they work with livestock and heavy vehicles everyday, if they don’t apply same standards on their own properties of a half hour induction for everyone who steps foot on their own property, why do it to the ratepayers of the saleyards?

Users of the saleyards are going to a meeting today at 2:30 to implore the Council to apply some commonsense, it is a shame commonsense was not applied to this policy prior to it being implemented.

Elizabeth Flaherty
Editor of scone.com.au

Related Stories:

• Council Overkill at Saleyards
• Council Responds to Saleyard Criticism
• Council Concedes Changes Needed