They were audited by some faceless Wellington bureaucrat who decided they weren’t safe so the tractors had to be removed.
My simple question is to ask how many kids were actually injured by playing on the machinery?
Then we had that super-bureaucracy, the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) reviewing speed limits on roads. Going to the agency’s website, you’d wonder if it wasn’t a bigger bureaucratic exercise than the Paris Accord.
There’s to be consultation for Africa before a decision will be made, costing both the taxpayer and ratepayer millions for absolutely no benefit.
The road between the farm and Masterton is your typical winding rural road of 50 kilometres. You can drive at the 100kmph speed limit rarely and as rural folk do, we drive to the conditions. I’m aware of a few accidents on the road over the past 20 years.
I’m also aware speed wasn’t a factor in the crashes, so changing the speed limit is pointless.
Further it is manifestly stupid. I’ve never seen a traffic cop east of Masterton, so having variable speed limits is a complete waste of time.
Behaviour won’t change and the civil servants at the NZTA will have the warm fuzzies having spent a fortune for no benefit.
Farmers are also about to have problems with stock cartage with a new initiative from NZTA.
Some of the livestock transport operators are going to have to have GPS and electronic logbooks where the NZTA can monitor them at will.
Now the rules say you can’t drive for longer than 13 hours and you must have two half-hour rest breaks every five-and-a-half hours. After you’ve driven your 13 hours, the driver must have at least a 10-hour break.
That’s fine in theory but not in practice.
The problem is simple with stock sales. Stock needs to be at the sale yards early so prospective buyers can have a good look at them. This can mean the stock could be picked up in, for example, South Wairarapa at 4am to get to Fielding on time.
The driver then waits until they have to transport stock that has been purchased. They may not be loaded until four o’clock, meaning the driver can only legally drive for an hour before hitting their 13-hour limit.
As happens with hide-bound government departments, there is no flexibility – especially when the monitoring is electronic.
The impracticality of that system is excessive.
There is a shortage of adequately qualified truck drivers. Operators are not able to bring a driver home and send another out.
There are animal welfare issues. If a driver parks up animals will suffer. That will also happen if a relief driver is sent out, if one is available.
If the driver is being paid they’re technically working even if they are sitting down at a sale. Many have beds in their trucks and can sleep on the job. The rules don’t take that into account, such is the bureaucratic intransigence of the NZTA.
Realistically a driver can drive four hours to a stock sale, have a rest or sleep for six hours and then be unable to drive back with a loaded truck. The driver will have only worked eight hours with a long rest in between. I do not believe any broken rule is a road safety issue, more an issue of a hide-bound government agency. If a relief driver can be found, that will increase the cost of transport to a farmer. It is an unnecessary complication and expense.
Large stock sales happen just once a week. They are not an everyday occurrence. I would have thought that flexibility on one day in a week would be sensible and realistic. It would stop unnecessary expense for a farmer and provide better animal welfare outcomes.
I remain unconvinced that working one long day a week, with a considerable rest in the middle, is a road safety issue. The rules should be changed.
My view of the NZTA is that it defies gravity with its incompetence and concentration on the irrelevant, such as variable speed limits on rural roads. A simple and recent example was that Rimutaka Hill was changed to Remutaka by someone in Wellington. NZTA immediately altered the signs to be politically correct, yet they can’t get Transmission Gully finished on time and to budget.
They hark on about the road toll but have shown over the decades they don’t have a clue. The last Easter road toll is witness to that.
New minister Michael Wood faces the massive challenge of making NZTA realistic and accountable – I wish him every success.
