Nanny state / red tape closes another business. Jobs lost !

[chameleon54]

Worksafe has just done a blitz and gone through many of the local businesses in our regional city. They have been made to paint little yellow lines everywhere and throw out all of the power boards and extension chords.

My local garden landscape and supply business has been owned by the same guy for 25 years. He has built a very succesful business currently employing 8 people. He was considering retiring and selling the business. Worksafe came through placing condemned stickers on ladders ( domestic grade, not commercial ), tools etc. and demanded he paint little yellow lines everywhere. He has a 2.5 acre site with plenty of space, but had to have a designated loading area with little lines. Customers who had walked through the yard for decades could no longer go to the piles of stone and get a bucket of river pebbles for the pot plants. Anyone driving in with a trailer would need to be supplied with a yellow safety vest and hard hat.

The guy had a perfect safety record, not having a single workers compensation or other safety claim in 25 years. Result ...... he,s having a half price sale and shutting the business down. The eight employees are out of work as of next week and the site will be sold off for commercial land value. The business had always been busy and I asked the owner how it was going. He showed me a huge pile of files of landscape jobs he had booked up for the next six months. All gone to waste.

South Australia is in a jobs crisis and desperately needs all of the ecenomic activity it can get, but political correctness, do gooders, cotton wool and red tape specialists are slowly choking the country. It has simply become too difficult and expensive to do business in South Australia.

At least the last person to leave the state wont need to turn the lights out.

[lyndal1838]

Just another example of bureaucracy gone mad.

Our workcover policy is now being administered by the NSW government and there has been nothing but problems since the beginning of the year.  Previously we had 25 years with Allianz without a hiccup.

[go-tazz]

After I mangled my hand in an industrial accident Worksafe came in and made them put safety cages on

the machine and it became unworkable as the machine had to be shut down to adjust it.

3 months down the track all the cages where removed and the machine had no safety cages again,(all

approved by Worksafe).

It wasn't the machine that was at fault but the companies work practises and safety audits,(25% of the work

force was on workcover due to it).

No matter what safety item concerns where bought up none where ever acted upon,(happily they shut up shop

two years later).

It's one place that should've been shut down a lot earlier.

Worksafe tend to go overboard and put all the supposedly safe practises in order without thinking about the

consequences,(most inspectors seem to be persons that have sat behind a desk all day reading all the

safety precautions that a work place should have and then try and implement those).

[chameleon54]

I had a shearing team from outside the district come to the property and shear some sheep last week. The shearing plants ( machines ) are reasonably old, but reliable and do the job fine. One of the shearers was a bit of stirer and declared the plants did not meet current standards as they where required to have an inbuilt earth leakage circuit breaker. I explained that the plants where all connected via the power points to an earth leakage circuit breaker in the main fuse box.  Not good enough for this guy. He declared the plants would all need to be replaced with new ones before he would return to the shed................. No I wont be replacing them and no he wont be returning to the shed.

Friday night I had a police car follow me for 20 km. He eventually pulled me over and informed me that one of my trailer lights was very dim. ( earthing problem ) . Rather than let me off with a warning he went right through the trailer nit picking everything he could find and defected it. It turns out it was built soon after a change in legislation which requires a VIN number to be stamped on the drawbar. The manufacturer didnt do it. So now I have to take a day off work and travel to the city to return the trailer to the manufacturer to have the number stamped. Well thats productive use of everyones time isnt it. And what difference is it going to make ? The trailer has worked just fine for the last 15 years without a stamped VIN number. It didnt cause it to run off the road and no one was injure by the missing VIN number.   JUST MORE RED TAPE.........

[davidc4430]

if we had todays laws in the later 19th early 20th centurys we most likely would still be riding horses and have no powered anything because everything would be too dangerous to do.

we sure as heck wouldnt be flying in what anyone who sees a modern plane would say, that cant stay in the air! no way!

ok, sometimes they are right.

but we take the risk that sometimes planes fall out of the sky.

isnt life a risk?

we can all choose to fly or not, take the risk or not.

[go-tazz]

Just like with how the trailer shackles now have to be rated and stamped,(you can have a shackle for a

tandem trailer and use it on a 6 x 4 but if it's not stamped you "can" get fined).

If you have a 6 x 4 trailer in Victoria that doesn't have to be registered there and you take it interstate you

"can" be fined.

They changed the speed limit from 60 km to 50 km on the main road through Mulwala and in the first week

they caught dozens of people going over the speed limit,(there was one sign at each end and no notification

that the speed limit had been changed).

The road runs for over 3 kms and most of it is has clear space on each side of the road and it's NOT a built

up area,(semis now avoid it as they also have to detour which means they can waste over 5 minutes more

due to these stupid changes).

The residents themselves hate it as it seems to take forever to get somewhere,(the cops seem to be the only

ones that have benefited from the changes and it's simple revenue raising).

During the holiday periods up here it will become a nightmare to traverse,