However, the most obvious manifestation of the new legislation and its associated regulations has been a massive increase in compliance costs imposed on businesses and community groups. Traditional events like Christmas parades and other community activities have been cancelled because of the impost of traffic management requirements, and it seems impossible these days for even the most minor road maintenance tasks to be carried out without the accompanying panoply of ubiquitous orange cones and stop-go signs.
But so far, there has been no significant improvement in health and safety in either the workplace, the community, or on the roads. There were 275,568 claims under consideration by the Accident Compensation Corporation in 2016 when the new legislation took effect – by the end of 2023 that number had swelled to 292,380. It is a similar trend with the road toll. In 2016 there were 326 road fatalities, but by 2023 that figure had risen to 340.
In fact, all the new legislation seems to have done is spawn a new growth industry in traffic management businesses. There are many such companies operating across New Zealand, costing taxpayers and ratepayers millions of dollars annually for their dubious services. Traffic Management NZ is one of the most prominent of these. It employs more than 650 staff, operates hundreds of vehicles and thousands of traffic devices. Traffic Management NZ has proved such a successful business that it was recently fully acquired by the Altus Group, Australia’s largest full-service traffic management business. Altus Group is in turn owned by Pacific Equity Partners, Australia’s leading private equity firm, currently managing assets worth around $11 billion.
The battalions of road cones up and down the country are the most obvious evidence of the traffic management companies at work. It has been reported that the cost of hiring an individual road cone is $4 a day. Given the hundreds of cones involved in a project it is easy to see how the costs of traffic management are so high. In some cases, it has been estimated that traffic management compliance could account for up to 20% of a project’s total cost. Auckland Council estimated last year that traffic management compliance was costing it at least $145 million a year.
The major manufacturer locally of road cones is RTL. In a description that few people would recognise as reality its website proclaims its mission to “engage with industry partners, regulatory bodies, and communities to share knowledge, collaborate on safety initiatives” and “to build lasting relationships, drive sustainable growth, and make a positive difference in the world.”
Bluntly, both the traffic management companies and the cone manufacturers have treated the 2016 legislation as a “cash cow” to grow their businesses, at the taxpayer’s expense, without, as the road toll figures show, any demonstrable benefit to road safety.
I now feel embarrassed to have supported that legislation when it was going through Parliament. At the time, I supported the proposition that our health and safety laws needed to be overhauled and brought up to date to be more relevant to current circumstances. But I never imagined the bureaucratic shambles and the profiteering at the public expense that would emerge as a result. Nor I suspect, did many of my colleagues across the House,
But it was probably too much to expect the hand-wringing previous Labour Government to have been prepared to deal with this growing monster. At the same time, the ongoing silence of the National Party about the mess its legislation has created has been self-serving and disappointing. Now, finally, it has fallen to ACT’s Workplace Relations Minister, Brooke van Velden, to do something about it.
Announcing a major review of the current approach to workplace health and safety, she recently observed that “Our health and safety culture can be summed up by the sea of orange road cones that have taken over the country. From Santa parades to property development, you can’t get a lot done without having to set up a barricade of cones. While they may improve health and safety in some places, in other situations their prevalence just doesn’t make any sense … Businesses and community organisations spend a huge amount of money trying to keep people safe, but it’s worthwhile asking: are the rules and expectations proportionate to the actual risks, and when should common sense prevail?”
Bravo Minister! But for the widespread consultation and review she has promised to succeed, it cannot get hijacked by the vested interests that have so dominated this issue since 2016. Therefore, for her ambition of a more common-sense approach – which naturally I applaud – to prevail, the pernicious dominance and numbers of traffic management and cone manufacturing businesses need to be broken. Exploiting health and safety rules for commercial gain, often at the taxpayer’s expense, the way they have done since 2016 should no longer be tolerated, especially when there has been no demonstrable improvement in the overall situation since then.
Van Velden’s challenge is to break this nexus and to restore a more sensible balance. There will be many road users, small businesses, voluntary and community groups, and kids of all ages who like Christmas parades and other community fun, wishing her every success.
Peter Dunne, a retired Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister, who represented Labour and United Future for over 30 years, blogs here: honpfd.blogspot.com - Where this article was sourced.
But so far, there has been no significant improvement in health and safety in either the workplace, the community, or on the roads. There were 275,568 claims under consideration by the Accident Compensation Corporation in 2016 when the new legislation took effect – by the end of 2023 that number had swelled to 292,380. It is a similar trend with the road toll. In 2016 there were 326 road fatalities, but by 2023 that figure had risen to 340.
In fact, all the new legislation seems to have done is spawn a new growth industry in traffic management businesses. There are many such companies operating across New Zealand, costing taxpayers and ratepayers millions of dollars annually for their dubious services. Traffic Management NZ is one of the most prominent of these. It employs more than 650 staff, operates hundreds of vehicles and thousands of traffic devices. Traffic Management NZ has proved such a successful business that it was recently fully acquired by the Altus Group, Australia’s largest full-service traffic management business. Altus Group is in turn owned by Pacific Equity Partners, Australia’s leading private equity firm, currently managing assets worth around $11 billion.
The battalions of road cones up and down the country are the most obvious evidence of the traffic management companies at work. It has been reported that the cost of hiring an individual road cone is $4 a day. Given the hundreds of cones involved in a project it is easy to see how the costs of traffic management are so high. In some cases, it has been estimated that traffic management compliance could account for up to 20% of a project’s total cost. Auckland Council estimated last year that traffic management compliance was costing it at least $145 million a year.
The major manufacturer locally of road cones is RTL. In a description that few people would recognise as reality its website proclaims its mission to “engage with industry partners, regulatory bodies, and communities to share knowledge, collaborate on safety initiatives” and “to build lasting relationships, drive sustainable growth, and make a positive difference in the world.”
Bluntly, both the traffic management companies and the cone manufacturers have treated the 2016 legislation as a “cash cow” to grow their businesses, at the taxpayer’s expense, without, as the road toll figures show, any demonstrable benefit to road safety.
I now feel embarrassed to have supported that legislation when it was going through Parliament. At the time, I supported the proposition that our health and safety laws needed to be overhauled and brought up to date to be more relevant to current circumstances. But I never imagined the bureaucratic shambles and the profiteering at the public expense that would emerge as a result. Nor I suspect, did many of my colleagues across the House,
But it was probably too much to expect the hand-wringing previous Labour Government to have been prepared to deal with this growing monster. At the same time, the ongoing silence of the National Party about the mess its legislation has created has been self-serving and disappointing. Now, finally, it has fallen to ACT’s Workplace Relations Minister, Brooke van Velden, to do something about it.
Announcing a major review of the current approach to workplace health and safety, she recently observed that “Our health and safety culture can be summed up by the sea of orange road cones that have taken over the country. From Santa parades to property development, you can’t get a lot done without having to set up a barricade of cones. While they may improve health and safety in some places, in other situations their prevalence just doesn’t make any sense … Businesses and community organisations spend a huge amount of money trying to keep people safe, but it’s worthwhile asking: are the rules and expectations proportionate to the actual risks, and when should common sense prevail?”
Bravo Minister! But for the widespread consultation and review she has promised to succeed, it cannot get hijacked by the vested interests that have so dominated this issue since 2016. Therefore, for her ambition of a more common-sense approach – which naturally I applaud – to prevail, the pernicious dominance and numbers of traffic management and cone manufacturing businesses need to be broken. Exploiting health and safety rules for commercial gain, often at the taxpayer’s expense, the way they have done since 2016 should no longer be tolerated, especially when there has been no demonstrable improvement in the overall situation since then.
Van Velden’s challenge is to break this nexus and to restore a more sensible balance. There will be many road users, small businesses, voluntary and community groups, and kids of all ages who like Christmas parades and other community fun, wishing her every success.
Peter Dunne, a retired Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister, who represented Labour and United Future for over 30 years, blogs here: honpfd.blogspot.com - Where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
Good thinking Mr Dunne. One thing that annoys me is the disregard now shown to travelers, probably largely as a result of the H&S requirements.
- Roads are now often closed completely resulting in major time and transport costs for travelers especially on highways where lengthy diversions through distant towns are necessary. In the past, total road closures were rare and even now many such closures are unnecessary, at least a single lane usually being possible and safe enough if drivers drive responsibly.
- Road works require motorists to reduce speeds to low levels for considerable distances even at times when there are no workers and the road surface etc doesn't require lower speed; the cones and lower speed signs are simply left out all night and all weekend. Aside from inconvenience and time costs for drivers, this practice has 'cry wolf' consequences encouraging disregard for speed reductions.
- Road works with stop/go arrangements occur at multiple locations in one route between centres, cumulatively adding hugely to travel time between those centres and making it almost impossible to predict the likely duration of any trip.
- Some road works employ temporary traffic lights that typically involve much longer waits than is necessary for all cars to get through from the other direction and that cause long delays even when there are no other vehicles around. (At least humans doing it can operate the stop-go process efficiently.)
We had an example in the Bay of Plenty of the consequences of laws and regulations claimed to protect us. A campground with a wonderful natural mineral hot pool could not afford to meet increasingly stringent health and safety regulations (even though there had been no significant health or safety problems in the long history of the pool), resulting in the place being subdivided into lifestyle blocks and sold. Now the hot spring and pools are not available to the community. Laws claimed to be good for us resulted in the loss of an asset, a taonga, that contributed hugely to the wellbeing of the large surrounding population centres. Well done bureaucrats.
I always assumed minimisation of ACC expenditure prompted the legislation. I suspect the total cost to the community is much increased. It is folly to consider 110 and 120 kph on regular roads when so much time is frittered at roadwork stops. Personally I have often found the greatest danger at many local roadworks is the sight obstruction by the huge placard trucks, often when parked and not an immediate part of the intended exercise.
An excellent piece by Mr Dunne. Unfortunately our legislature seems to becoming more and more inept at the task we elected them to do...legislate, create the laws under which we are governed, which are precise (says what they mean), understandable, (not full of "nice" ideas which are left undefined) and which will operate to produce more benefits than costs.
Some years ago, after a NAC plane crash, an inquiry produced the "Smith Report". As a basic point Mr Smith concluded that a human life can be valued in dollar terms, and that if safety measures intended to save lives cost more than the value of those lives then those measures were not worth doing. Yes, a far cry from those who croak that it is worth spending any sum if a life can be saved. Nice sentiments but not related to the real world where bridges, buildings, aircraft, etc., are designed on a probability basis and not on the basis that they will never fail.
We are all sad when someone dies, say as a result of a heart attack on a busy street. But we will never expect or afford an ambulance on every corner...just in case.
With regard to public safety standards we need our legislators to be brutally honest, not sentimental as Mr Dunne was when he "hoped" the new safety legislation would result in, err, more safety!
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