My thoughts exactly.

Sarah, what are your company's policies on wearing hard-hats?

My biggest issue with someone failing a pre-employment drug test is that is shows extremely poor judgement; that they are willing to try to get away with pushing the boundaries. Is that the sort of personality trait that you want in someone working for you?

Within the aviation industry, it's pretty much a deal-breaker. Although I wouldn't be surprised if some employers would take a much different view if someone fronted up about it and was under a plan for eliminating use.

Wouldn't more specific plans to deal with the most conceivable emergencies for ones business be a more effective approach to plan for and manage an emergency? — Riki Brown

Yes, focus on what you, as a business, are most likely to face internally. A general disaster response is usually outside the scope of a company's ERP, as Authorities will be giving instructions, individual's priorities are quite rightly with their families and homes rather than work, etc.

From a safety perspective, you also need to look at returning to work procedures. Have workflows been interrupted at a critical point, and how do you ensure that production is safe? Are your employees mentally able to continue working? etc.

While I agree with the sentiment, the two questions aren't directly comparable, unfortunately.
There are all sorts of biases that this particular question brings up. I would guess that somewhere close to 100% of those questioned drove a car, while around 14% of the UK population smoke. So, naturally, we expect that people would object more strongly to something that they were on the receiving end of.

But, humans are extremely poor at judging risks, particularly when the likelihood is low, or results won't be seen for a long time period.

In another question, 61% of people agreed that risk was “a natural part of driving”, whereas just 31% agreed when “driving” was changed to “working”.

Again, not equivalent; accepting a risk that you have control over, is vastly different to having a risk imposed on you. Its why everyone accepts risks at home that they would never accept in the workplace.

Well, I'm in neither camp, but I am the "Senior Person responsible for safety investigations" for a number of companies, and approved as such by CAANZ.
I believe Maritime has the same structure. Does this superseded PSPLA and NZISM requirements?

Any information released should be de-identified. So, the information provided relates to the incident, and causes. While the information collected will include a lot of personal info, this should not be released to the customer.

however, the regulation doesn't make any distinction between domestic and industrial.
Regulations that require exemptions are, by definition poorly written. These regulations were driven by
My son is seriously looking at commercial grade equipment, which ironically would be safer to operate than our domestic appliances.
So, as you can understand, this isn't a hypothetical for us. We are working with glass, hot liquids, and sanitising solution.
I don't want to fall foul of an over-zealous individual within the regulator. Been there, done that and don't want to do it again.

I don't think the law does have it covered.
My (non-hypothetical) example still stands. However, I'd like to see Worksafe prosecute a 10 year-old for employing themselves.

Don't get me wrong, there are definitely times and places where young people should not be, such as @Matthew Bennett's example. However, the blanket statements made in these regulations cover such a wide range of situations that it is prohibitive. e.g. Young workers can't work with machinery, which if you read a strict interpretation of the definition, includes the domestic appliances that my son uses for juicing.

Nefarious? Sometimes he can be a bit demanding, but I'd stop short of nefarious.

The end result is the same - a person under 15 cannot work in their own business?
Now I'd argue that this is not 'reasonably practicable' to not allow someone to work in their own business.

Interestingly enough, this wasn't even a consideration when it came to food licensing - it all had to be in his name, even if I countersigned.

From the definition in the Act:

In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, a person conducting a business or undertaking or PCBU—
(a) means a person conducting a business or undertaking—
(i) whether the person conducts a business or undertaking alone or with others; and
(ii) whether or not the business or undertaking is conducted for profit or gain; but...

(my emphasis)
clause (a)(i) implies that a PCBU is an individual. (e.g. a sole trader)

This is not a hypothetical scenario - my son is under 15, and manufactures food products for sale as a sole trader, as he is not yet old enough to be a company director.
As he is under 15, he falls foul of working in a manufacturing of goods for sale, as well as working with hazardous goods, as he has to sanitise equipment prior to use. I'd argue against the machinery part of the regulation as everything he uses at this stage is domestic.

Gotta wonder what happens when the PCBU is under 15.

Maritime (and aviation) have a couple of options that aren't available to land in that halons are allowed for use in these industries.
How ever the cost of maintaining these systems is fairly high.

Interesting. Do any of your safety management systems have government approval?

Our industry's operations manuals (including safety systems) have to be approved by CAANZ, and even Worksafe don't carry out investigations, the delegate it to CAA.
However, we have another government department expecting to be able to judge how safe an operator is simply by reviewing their manuals.
We have all seen companies who have excellent documentation, but an abysmal attitude to safety.

I think that this would decrease the pool of tenderers that the Gov't has to use.
There are already many companies who simply find that the hassle of dealing with Government entities is simply not worth the time.

I've got no idea why. Possibly something to do with our "DIY" attitude.
But, I agree - companies simply throwing more money at safety isn't the solution (generally). Far more will change when we all put safety ahead of lives.
How often, after an accident do people come out and say something along the lines of "we knew something like this was going to happen"?

Lets face it though, We, as a country simply put money ahead of safety, in every aspect of life.

How many people's first car purchase took safety into account?
How many of us would rather do a job at home rather than pay someone else to do it, without giving further thought into whether we can do the job safely?
How many of us do things in our private lives that we would never be able to do at work?

Workplace deaths require a culture change, which doesn't happen overnight, and rarely happen due to legislation change. What it does require is a desire to change.

Why aren't we including risk management principles and critical thinking in the education system from the earliest days if we are serious about reducing the number of workplace fatalities and injuries?? — Sheri Greenwell

I couldn't agree with you more. We need to teach people to be safe, and not discount their own safety. For me, this was one of the big learnings from Pike River. Everybody knew that it was a gassy mine; so why were people down there?
We've all seen posters with "Safety is everybody's responsibility" but it seems that everyone expects that Safety Managers will do this for them.

Hopefully, employers will see this as an opportunity to better enforce employees responsibilities. e.g. PPE use, safety reporting, consequences for safety device tampering.

I'm with Matthew on this one, and he's provided an excellent example.

Have you also considered the fact that in allowing cycling, you're reducing the risk to the general public posed by your employee driving? This would include risks such as legal liability, insurance, etc as well.

and there is of course the "stupid" factor that we can only limit by through pre employment vetting. — Steve H

No amount of pre-employment vetting though will eliminate someone making a mistake. I know, I've had conscientious friends killed by a moment of inattention. I'm in an industry with duty time limits, drug testing, and a general culture of safe operations because we've all lost friends to the industry. However, when something as simple as forgetting about an electric fence wire can result in a fatality, we do all we can, but eliminating this completely is near impossible.