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TRANSCRIPT
Brendan Torazzi
Welcome to Episode 57 of the Australian Health and Safety Business Podcast. I'm Brendan Torazzi, the host of a show and today I'm joined with Trent head, who's got a personal story about his dad that he's going to share. Trent, how are you? Hello, good. Thanks very much. Yeah, good. So have you been? Have you been in the health and safety industry for a while? Or tell me a little bit about your background?
There basically, I started off as a health and safety officer about five or six years ago. Yeah, for BT, how many? Yeah. Yeah. It was a bit of a fluke, my sister was working for the same company in a different part of the company. And basically, it was who you knew he knew that got me in the door. And that's how it started for me.
Brendan Torazzi
And did you have any, I guess, tertiary qualifications or anything like that?
No, no tertiary qualifications. I actually hired safety officers have been on the tools for 20 years. Didn't like safety. It was one of those decisions where I wasn't really keen on it. But I thought I'll give it a go. And I ended up here.
Brendan Torazzi
So you're saying you're on the tool. So you're a trainee? Were you? What were you? What was your? What was your background?
Your part of my training also moved on to laying pause for another contractor and became a leading hand. Yeah, I worked on the railways as a welder for 15 odd years. So a lot of tickets and a lot of trades.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. So you I mean, you're in the industry surrounded by, I guess, health and safety training and compliance. And it's everywhere, really, isn't it?
Yeah. On the other side of it, so yeah. Whole workers perspective. That's on.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. So what, what was the key difference, I guess, crossing the, you know, from being on the tools to essentially being in management or, you know, looking after other workers. But how was that? How was that transition for you? That transition was actually something which I believe now, which are coming over here. Now, this is why we've strengthened our relationship and promoted safety. A lot of a lot of safety professionals come from tertiary qualified institutions without any work experience on the doors. And I can't relate to workers. And that's sort of where the gap is, workers working to have been on the train for 20 years, don't don't want to be told I don't want to engage with a 25 year old in a suit that's coming on to tell them how to do the job safely. Yeah. So it's basically an eye opener into how we engage with safety messages and processes.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah, I mean, that just makes total common sense to me that you, you know that you've got to actually do the job or do the task to understand in some ways how to make it safe, safer, like, your background of being a tradie. Makes, means you got them, you got the people that you are trying to help. Would you agree with that? Yeah, definitely not the same every day still, you know, we've worked I worked for Reagan company. Now, you know, a little higher risk, actually, we do. We have a safety advisor coming on site and telling you guys you know, how to do something safely with Actually no, no practical knowledge or experience. And that sort of this is where I'm finding over big gaps. Like why we aren't taking shortcuts and why people aren't complying or what workers aren't complying with safety systems. Because of that.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. And so that so that you were saying that was five or six years ago, that you started, sort of as in management. Then what then what happened? We, it was a construction company, when you say to one of humanity, one construction company that you're working for, or as a mining company, but we're transitioning over to construction, trying to get their foot in the door for infrastructure works.
Brendan Torazzi
Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. So, yeah, tell us about you know, what the next step was, because we you initially reached out you know, you lost your Dad, do you want to tell us about what happened there and, and, you know, yes, I hadn't been in the role for too long. And I asked my dad, it was a Sunday morning at work. I was on the site, and I got a phone call from my sister. My dad had lost his life in a work accident. Yeah, it was, it was devastating, you know, here I am, taken on this role, you know, trying to injuries and fatalities, and I've actually lost my dad, you know, to a workplace accident. And luckily for me, I sort of had enough time I'm in the role to sort of understand various legislation and the obligations that employers have under the different legislation. So, basically, I went away and my dad had the accident. And in summary what happened he basically he was working for a rail company for Sydney trains and the rail company had breached every single fatigue management policy that they had. So every policy they had the minimum 10 hours rest, maximum 12 Maximum 100 hours in 12 days, maximum 12 Roasted days on stripe, that actually breaks them all had exceeded those and quite severely, he was rusted on for 35 Straight shifts. So while he was at work, he was instructed to to go click the power permit, which is a bit of rail lingo here. But before the workers can start under the high voltage power lines appear our permit permit holder is only responsible to have the piece of paper in their hand that shows that the power has been isolated southern workers electrocuted. So as he's driving to collect that permit, there was a some changes to the actual operational schedule that day and my father was instructed to meet a rail truck on the right dog, and he was meant to fly down Israel a truck to collect this permit, once again, are running late, so things changed again. And more enjoy this time, it's 5am on a Saturday morning don't have been awake for possibly 24 hours due to his rock rostering from the contract he was waiting for. And a few minutes later, he was given another dress to which he didn't know the actual location. He wasn't familiar with the area up in Newcastle. He drove to eat, he started driving to hit a car coming in another direction in the same direction on the freeway, and unfortunately lost his wife. When I turned up to the crash site A few hours later, once I was notified, given that the role I was in, I had enough experience and enough knowledge to sort of gather a few bits of evidence to do my own investigation. And after a few hours going through his fine and different records, sort of had findings that didn't look very good for the companies involved in E trains and monitorable and Ryo who was contracted through and like I've talked about before he basically breached every fatigue policy they had evaluated based every Sydney trains fatigue policy. So important is safer in New South Wales, what I found and the response from Safeway in New South Wales was basically your father's responsible for managing his own fatigue.
Brendan Torazzi
Okay, even though even though he even though he was on work time doing work duties, yeah, it was it was devastating was devastating. I came back but like I said, I was lucky I had enough experience in my role at that time that I was able to call out the the Safe Work inspector and advise him that night, my father wasn't responsible for managing his own fatigue, as the PCBU was responsible to manage and implement their own safe manage, and systems to which he retracted that statement and sort of gave us a bit of an explanation which, you know, tried to cover up for what he just said.
Brendan Torazzi
Was this was this all verbal or in writing? Trent?
This was a verbal, this is very this is a few weeks after it was actually a case conference. My sisters were there, my mother was there. And here this is they tried to just from day one, they were trying to, you know, just downplay the accident, like the reports is four or five different changes in different reports along the way, which were updated and amended. You know, the basically downplay the severity of the accident. Originally, they tried to tell us that dad was travelling to work, it was in work time, and then when we provide the evidence to suggest that it wasn't worked on. They turned around and there was this like, I've been in my dealings, we say flag industry, normally safe work to pick up on everything. And even if you have an explanation, and you're not complying, they'll still crack down on what you're explaining. But this is this is the only instance or circumstance where everything that I've suggested to them, they've tried to downplay it and minimise sort of the issue and make out that it wasn't an issue on something else that wasn't related to workplace or operational issues.
Brendan Torazzi
Because I mean, I'd agree with you like my experience with Safe Work is that they're very rigorous. And, you know, particularly if there's an accident on site, it's like, they're all over straightaway. So it seems a bit unusual that that this was a response you got. Yeah, definitely. So then I basically closed off the investigation, and my family was devastated because our liquid just lost stepfather, you know, without warning, we're very close family. Then, you know, just one morning we will wake up and our father is taken away from us. When he left for work to that night, the night before he had the accident, he was angry, he was tired because he hadn't had sleep because you're Australian, you finished his shift on Friday afternoon at four o'clock, and he had to drive to Newcastle that night at 10 o'clock. He went to his room for a few hours, but what we know now with fatigue and sleep patterns, the quality of the sleep that he went back to his room, whether he had any sleep or not, you know, he's unknown and angry basically had a little follow up with my mom and sister before he left to go for the night. So the last memories of my dad aren't pleasant ones it's it's quite devastating for for those for my family members.
How old was your dad?
My dad was 67 years old. Okay.
Brendan Torazzi
Okay. And I mean he did he have training as well around fatigue management just as a as a matter of interest, are you you're not sure, hey, ya know, the investigations that came back as 10 10,000 pages in this investigation, because so many that are important for our regular in that the regulator actually came back and they provide a report which is damning of Mali civil rather than in monitor or the contracting Sydney trains, it's actually very damning and this report, all of a sudden, I couldn't get the start seeing the trains chart every avenue they could not to provide to me under freedom of information, and ultimately our wit to oarsi and they provided it but in the month of my dad died, there was 60 Plus workers, you know, branching of fatigue and we some of those workers working up to 30 Nice shift straight, we just graded on the rail regulator actually gave MCR, modular rail nonconformances and no safe management system to in place to manage fatigue, and they also train their workers in the management for tea. You get the question you asked was my dad trained? There was a training like a training spreadsheet that they the MCR provided Cypher which basically showed eight, eight or nine training modules which weren't even opened by my father. So to cut a long story short, no, that wasn't trained you guys for MCR design standards. And as per the requirements under the contractual obligations from Sydney trains MCR none of the training had been provided by MCR to their workers, overall safe workers.
Brendan Torazzi
And it sounds like there was no checks and balances to make sure the contractor was doing the training that they needed to do.
Now this is something else that came out in the almoner and Rs Rs report. They basically asked Sydney trained to provide any evidence of any audits or information that a subcontract subcontractor had provided in relation to the fatigue. And they and singletracks couldn't provide anything to the rail regulator. So in other words, in summary, Sydney trains hadn't been managing any of their subcontractors from 2010 to 2007, eight in regards to management of j.
Brendan Torazzi
So you say 2017, does that mean that psych kind of positive has come out of this, like things have changed or in a way, yes, but the negative that come out and I lost my father, so I don't know.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah, I'm not I'm not I'm not downplaying that for any moment. Trent, I was just, I was just trying to work out. Like, it just seemed I can't I can't fathom this sort of systemic failure. And I'm just trying to work out if anything's changed since then.
Yeah, so that's in I'm sorry, I didn't get what you're saying in the question. So after my dad was in the 270, Marley single enrollment or outcome contractor, they updated their whole system and spent six to eight months making a compliance system with Sydney trains, contractual obligations. And also what I've noticed working on the rail systems now is the contractors are managing individual workers fatigue, if you don't clock off, they're following up on it. So I do believe even though I've been ignored by Sydney trains and safe work because I've still been raising these issues with those organisations for years to come up with something which I'll never give up the fight for. I think all workers you know, have the right to be entitled to at least work as their safety management system requires them and not be forced into taking shortcuts so the positives that I've come out I've noticed on a lot of role like as a senator last chance for jobs a pit workers at that time yet they follow up with them, so I do believe something good has come out of it.
Brendan Torazzi
What Why do you think that there was like, This denial like it seems like these, there was just other denial that this had happened and just seems like a writ. Like why would they do that? Do you think he's still fighting fighting for it? But I think what I think is there and I think it's one of these, it's one of those situations where this safe work is protected Sydney trains and the contractor MCR, it appears to me that MCR and from what I've heard in the industry, monitor morale is untouchable for some reason, MCR protected species in Sydney trains. Even the fact that director in 2017, or the MCR toilet bill, he was charged and convicted in the District Court for breaches under the New South Wales fishery act. And this is something which I've raised with the New South Wales Government as well, the relevant ministers and MCR still getting awarded contracts. So, to tell the truth, I don't know why MCR have been able to get away with this had not been held to account. But yeah, it's it's just they changed their system moved on even with a convicted criminal as a director. Yeah, they've sort of been able to move on and go forward.
Brendan Torazzi
Is it a case of, you know, these companies are too big to fail? Have you heard us sort of heard that sometimes, you know, when there's like some of the, you know, big business and they get a slap more or less, just get a slap on the wrist? And they make a few changes, and then it's just business as usual.
Yeah, I think I think that's a possibility. And also, I think that there's probably no organisation that can sort of pick up in take the place of MCR if they were to finish up tomorrow. So I think it's more of an operational, it's more of a convenience.
Brendan Torazzi
So they effectively supply workers as contractors into the rail system. Is that am I getting that relationship? Correct?
Yeah, a lot along the lines, protection officers as well as the various truck and rail safety workers.
Brendan Torazzi
Wow, how many? How many staff is there? They've got to they've got a lot of staff. They got two officers. I would say somewhere between four and 500. Working pay for him. They're calling their prime, probably four or 500 per day.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. Yeah. And so you were saying that you're still trying to get justice? What are the what are the steps that you can? It sounds like you've raised it with lots of different stakeholders, the company itself, government SafeWork. Ministers? Is, is there some kind of? I don't know, legal Avenue. I mean, that sounds expensive as what, like it's expensive on your time. But also, like, if you want to pursue them legally, how do you actually do that? Is there any mechanism or all of these days when I was just gonna say it sounds it sounds like you've got a lot of evidence as well to, you know, you've got the regulator report, you've got diary entries, all that sort of thing to prove, you know, your dad was working and not being trained yet.
Yeah, with a stat under the WHS act 2011. The two years is passed for prosecution. So unfortunately, and this is something which is so safe workout knew so well. So two years to prosecute MCR I see the trials. But what safe word did failed to do was was keeping me updated along the way. Towards about two weeks before the end of the two year period, we received a letter in the mail saying that they weren't going to prosecute, because there was no findings of operational fatigue that contribute to the accident, which I think is is laughable within itself. And what I did, I raised with the ombudsman, that the information hadn't been provided to me by SafeWork, as they recall, to under their own systems. So they investigated and came back and basically said that Safeway provided information to me on four dates over the two year period, and they didn't actually address my complaint that they closed. This is sort of what I'm dealing with every step of the way. It's just like an eye. One organisation is protecting the other organisation, and they're just playing with different words or trying to find, trying to find a leeway, you know, like a, like a guilty lawyer, like a defence lawyer does for a criminal, you know, trying to find out which they can explain themselves or justify what's happened instead of, you know, looking for an objective fact and finding the truth. And this is dealt with, but to cut a long story short, and it's been quite consuming of my time and, and emotionally, it's quite hard every time I talk about the death of my father, and the circumstances so and it is quite harder. He's taxing away. But what I've found now speaking to guys like yourself, and I post stuff, and I send emails out, I've posted out this regulator report, and there's been 10s and 1000s of years, I've got a lot of support, and a lot of people won't speak up and support me because I only work for Sydney trains. And as you know, in this day and age, if you speak against an organisation that you work for, it's career suicide. So there's a lot of support that's not prepared for the hand up. But yeah, like I said, on the Syndicate, putting this report out, I keep speaking, kept doing my job, which I do in the health and safety, capacity, keeping workers safe and doing more workers.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah, I mean, it's just like, the system is so big, and it's you've got to really raise your voice loud to be heard, it sounds like, like the bureaucracy of how the all these organisations work when they're so big. When there's a, you know, an incidence that sounds like they don't really have a mechanism, they might have a mechanism on paper on how to deal with it. But the reality is, it's, it's a hard thing for them to deal with.
Definitely. The other example, is what's happening in Sydney recently, trains in New South Wales Government is trying to make them sign off on a deal, which basically states, the train workers can identify safety, safety issues in the future. So this is something which the media isn't reporting as well. You're only hearing one side of the story. And this is a perfect symbol, whatever with my dad, and the New South Wales government just wants to railroad the Sydney trains workers and insulates them. When they raise a safety issue, if these train drivers are raising a safety issue, saying the trains are unsafe, it has to be fixed. No, this is like this is the concept of all our safety. Why guys like myself, and what their safety advisors, managers, directors do their job because you know, we want to try and eliminate all risks or minimise potential. And he's a perfect example. They raise these risks with these trains. And then he says government just wants to sign and get on with laws.
Brendan Torazzi
Do they have HSRs in Sydney trains, health and safety reps to you know, bring these issues forward?
I'm not sure to tell you the truth. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But I know, I have heard on the radio the last couple of days. Like a couple of senior trains, employees are going up on the radio and speaking. But with contractors, so what I was waiting for a contract of Sydney train site and have actually made a contract of Sydney trains as well over my time when I worked on the route, and contract is the same as second class citizens. This is the other the other thing that is happening on the side of Europe contracting is treated very poorly, and I'll try to lock him in a citizen.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. It's, it sounds very bureaucratic and uncomplicated, particularly, you know, like, for yourself as an individual with your family, and you're trying to try and get the issue raised and sounds like you've been roadblocked a lot.
You've been robots a lot. I'm not gonna say it's been it hasn't been hard. But as I said, You have said a few things working back on the New South Wales government site site, even though I've been pestering whoever will listen to in the government records, in your trains with this information, and with what I'm trying to present. They must be listening, because I know I've noticed through being on those sites, a few changes that have occurred that wouldn't have been there prior to 2017.
Brendan Torazzi
Yep. And so what what what's the what what are you looking to do? From here trend? The gonna keep keep up the fight or keep chipping away at it sounds like, yeah, definitely. I'm just gonna keep trying to expose him to another couple of things that I didn't mentioned at the start. When my dad died to MCI one of the directors turned up on my mom's doorstep, you know, and argue with her about whose father was that had the accident. Say, mom, just my mom's was found out, you know that he lost her husband and 40 odd years. The next thing the MCR director turns up on the doorstep and starts an argument about whose fault the accident was. It was a lot of things.
Not there, not much. Not much empathy there far out.
My mother's living room was filled up with flowers, but no, no flowers from Sydney trains or MCR. When we're trying to get information I'll send you trains just like ignore their emails. Or they came back you know, said they didn't have any information available. It's
Brendan Torazzi
It's an unbelievable Story I mean, believable story, Trent but God unbelievable situation that you and your family have had to go through.
Yeah, and working working as a safety professional, you know, I walk in when I walk into a job and you see all these safety management systems. And sometimes I've lost myself because you've seen the trains, they have hundreds of pages and safety management systems and policies and procedures. And here's a perfect example where not always compliant within it. Everyone has moved on with their life except for us because we didn't have a father. So this is it's, it's unbelievable that what has happened to our family. And as I said, I was gonna keep flooding toolboxes. I've spoken to probably hundreds of people doing a lot of toolbox talk on this issue. Just keep the awareness up and, and try and help workers individually as much as I can let them know what actually happens if you do have an accident where you actually stick.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So we've come to the end of the podcast, Trent, if people want to connect with you, would LinkedIn be the best spot? Or what would you suggest?
Yeah, sure. Send me a message on LinkedIn for sure. Yeah.
Brendan Torazzi
All right. So that's Trent head and your Sydney based obviously. Any advice? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, thanks very much, Trent. I really appreciate you sharing the story with us and listeners. And, and hopefully, I don't know, I find that these podcasts that can you know, if it makes one little change somewhere along the way, and you don't know where that may be, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a really positive thing.
So, if we hopefully I can touch a few more because then they can understand you know, how important it is to go over their families.
Brendan Torazzi
Yep. 100%. Okay, Trent. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your time. Say you've been listening to an ohs.com.au production.
Brendan Torazzi
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