 The cattle industry has a significant economic impact throughout the Northern Territory. The industry was one of the first established industries in the Territory, and is made up of a mix of long-established family stations, through to large corporate organizations that operate on several pastoral leases at a time. Unlike any other industry, the cattle industry has a footprint, covering around 45% of the Territory's total land area. It is an industry providing significant employment opportunities for regional and remote areas of the NT. Nationally, agriculture as a broad industry group has been identified as a priority industry due to the high numbers and rates of injury and the hazardous nature of the work. NT WorkSafe has commenced a campaign to assist station owners to reduce the frequency of injuries in the industry. From the stations visited so far, the industry has demonstrated awareness and commitment to work health and safety. This snapshot provides an overview of two station managers on the hazards facing the industry in the Territory, and their interaction with NT WorkSafe. I'm Bayton Crittle, I'm a station manager at Tipperary, I've been with AA company and been with them for six months and been with AA for five years. When I started out as anyone, as a station hand on a legal property, I've been through a few different areas of the industry, as I said, I've been into the part tanning hides and that sort of thing in that sort of area, building machinery and that for the agriculture industry and moving through on to the head stockman role, overseer and the station manager. The opportunity was given to me as a station manager in central Queensland on a smaller property to move to the bigger property and really go forward in my career and take on a bigger role. AA has at least 12 properties in the Northern Territory, from Brunette on the Barclay right up to the Darwin region here and obviously the Abattoir just out of Darwin. We are vitically integrated from cattle supply into the beef industry. We obviously have a lot of station managers, so collectively between us there would be hundreds of years of experience between all the station managers, the general managers that have been in the business and right up to the CEO. Turn off here, it's a live exporter was probably one of the main ones last year. This year we're just turning off Wieners to Brunette, so this year we'll probably turn off about 8, 10,000 Wieners down to Brunette with our background on the lakes at Brunette. So it is very vital that our staff are trained and manage them cattle in a safe manner. I think going into the company side of things, you focus on safety. We want to create a safety culture and that's from the ground up, so our staff telling us what they think, what is there, what is the risk, what is it has, and they have the opportunity to voice that to their manager or their next in line manager and that comes through to the station manager and onto the GMs and onto the board. The board obviously takes it very seriously and they are implementing things for us as station managers and we communicate down, but we also from a site perspective we want the communication to come up from the guys on the ground, the station hands to tell us. Right at the beginning, it doesn't matter what AAK property you're on, you do an onboarding program the moment they sign up, so that will start a week before they actually arrive at the station. We spend three or four days with them, we'll go right through all the safe working procedures and everything that we have, we'll actually take them to the yards and we'll work a small mob of cattle, we'll spend a day on the horses, we'll shoe horses and we'll do the quad bike assessments and the motor bike assessments and we'll have all that ticked off and we'll have them assessed in the first week and then we work through the training and what we need to go forward with. We go through that first initial assessment, we will set a review date on that and that's done by myself or the operations manager. I've made a very apparent point of we will talk about safety and we'll have toolbox talks weekly so that's the headstockment to his staff and that's on an issue that I've risen or something that I've seen as the manager that I want dealt with to something that one of the station staff have actually brought to me and said I need this communicated up. Toolbox talks go up to a safety meeting that we will generally have once a month and then we have a bigger broader, you know, we have 27 staff, we have a full safety meeting every three months. I think outside the box, I'm only young and I look for things. Since my management here I've identified a few areas that I need to work on. This year I'm offering a safety incentive to the staff so if they come to me with near misses, any incidents and anything that they want to bring forward, there is an initiative there for them. We understand the policies and procedures coming from NT WorkSafe and we're identifying the issues and seeking ways to limit them. Mainly, and this is what we've identified with AACO is the, you know, the cuddle, the horses and the motorbikes and the mustering as our main areas, but we certainly don't forget about the mechanics, the cook, the gardener. They're all involved, the maintenance manager. They're all involved in what we do here for safety. We have the low stress stock handling that all the station staff here have been through and that is something that everyone is aware of and does very well. When you're talking about the weaners, we handle the weaners with low stress and we keep them heifers. They come back next year as joiner heifers, so they've been handled properly, they come back the next year as a wet care. They've been through the yards properly, low stress handling. The staff know how to handle them probably because we put them through the low stress handling schools, but does it actually, you know, does it actually stop instances when you're working with a live animal? And it'd be very hard to say, well, you know, just that alone and a set of standards alone would work in every case. We have a cattle handling procedure. We go through it with them, how to shut the gates properly, how to yard up properly and all that. That is something we do and we tick off and all our staff aware of what our risks and hazards are involved around the cattle and around the cattle yards. We did need to get the training and the horsemanship skills to a better level here at Tiberary. We felt we had the expertise to do it. Instead of getting someone external and paying for that, we felt we had the expertise and we'd share that with our staff. So we went from first round to, you know, young green riders. From that, there's been all the staff have gone from a level to the next level. I've initiated this year that we've brought a new quad bike at its speed limit at 35 kilometres an hour. They do have rollover protection systems on them. I've made a constant decision that myself, the operations manager and the head stockman are the only ones allowed to master on quad bikes. Other staff are allowed to fence on them. AACO policies that all riders of quad bikes and two-wheelers have to have a helmet on. They are commonly assessed and they're reassessed every six months. To get their attitude right on a quad bike is what I'm after. But part of it is slowing the bikes down and the training. And we haven't had a quad bike incident this year. Mastering out in a lot of, like, fixed scrub country and in the remote area of implemented GPS units that actually they use as two ways in GPS if they get lost. If something happens, they fall off a horse, they press a button on the GPS and we know their exact location. Definitely retention is one of our biggest things that we're identifying and we're working with at AACO. You know, obviously we keep someone who understands the property and he understands our policies and the motorbikes, the horses. All that's at a level that we want them to be at. To keep them here, we are looking at offering incentives and getting that retention rate. Because the cattle industry and in general the ag industry is an industry that can only keep people for one year, two years. I have a budget and I have to report to our general managers on what my budget is and what I put my money into. But looking at the safety side of things, there's things that you don't compromise. You measure what is it going to save me in lost time, staff incidents, all that sort of stuff. But when you look outside this box of a few things, well, you weigh up your options and most of the time it'll tell you that you're better off doing it no matter what the cost is. NT WorkSafe came out a month ago. I found it very interactive, very positive. So it wasn't about what we were doing wrong, it was about just identifying things, looking at areas that we can work on. The positive for me was it was just an open discussion. Some of the issues that were raised, just minor ones that we just, off the cuff conversation, I've gone and addressed them and I think, you know, it's that outsider's perspective, the second set of eyes that just show you, look, this is something that you could work with. The regulations and that, do I fully understand all of them? We have people that do that for me. As a manager for AACO, I have someone that does that for me. But on the ground, the helping and the communication from NT WorkSafe is what we need. While we may not always be able to get out there to assist the guys on the ground and have a look in that at their location, we are still contactable by phone. And obviously, we've got email, website as well, a lot of information on the website that can assist stations in that. But by all means, they can give NT WorkSafe a call and be asked to speak to an inspector and we will provide whatever we can to assist business in better understanding health and work health and safety. My name's Cameron Crookow. I am the manager at Manblew Station. I've been with CPC for about 13 years. Growing my roles through the ranks, starting as a first-year Jackaroo through to Head Stockman and becoming an overseer now, station manager here at Manblew. Previously, that five years before I ran the stock camp, I was a Head Stockman for two and a half years. I come across here when I was 17 and running away from home and wanting to get into the industry. That's all I know, all I want to ever do. Consolidate Pastral Company has 17 places across Australia, through the Territory, the Kimberley Region and WA and through Central Queensland and the North Queensland. Its operations at Cattlegoat Export, to Indonesia from Wyndham and Darwin, and then domestic markets through Queensland. Manblew's part in CPC. Historically, with CPC, it's just been a breeding facility, but in the last couple of years, we're starting to transition. So, it's a value-adding place. Cattle coming here to grow value, had kilograms, and then to move them out over the wet season when there's a shortage of cattle to go to market. On Manblew, we have 11 to 13 staff throughout the year, starting with myself as a manager. Below me, we have a Head Stockman and a leading hand, a couple of second years and a couple of first years to keep fresh blood coming through all the time. Other staff we have is a Boarman, a cook. He provides meals, keeps everyone fed, it's everyone towing a line in the kitchen, keep them on side. My wife issues the administration, person, and as well, she also takes a wider role on in the company as a training coordinator. Our youngest people, our new recruits each year, they seem to be the ones getting hurt the most, and it's wider across the whole industry. I think it's a little bit to do with the ego of straight out school, getting away from your parents and getting full of confidence, showing off in front of your mates, so basically that's why we got to train our people. We got to get them going and get them thinking right, get a culture developed, so they're thinking about what they're doing and they're not just racing into things and getting themselves hurt. At the end of the day, that's where safety really comes into its own. It can be very tough to handle, I was young like that once myself, I know exactly what I was like. But basically, I think you just got to work through it. Your first couple of weeks are your hardest. You just got to work through it and really get them thinking. All the training we do and constant reminders, toolbox talks each month, and having meetings, just making them aware. We might have been lucky and not got to have any incidents, but just making them aware of the incidents that are happening. When our employees first start with a company, we run them through an induction process. It takes place out at the Charles Darwin University Kauffman campus and some of it on me and Blew itself here. At the Royal College, they do their first aid certificate, chemical certificates, some maintenance training. They have qualified mechanics, so they're experts in their field, so they provide us with that service. Then horsemanship side of it. This year, we had four groups ranging from beginners to more experienced riders throughout them. They came out here to man Blew, and we basically just stepped them through some basic horse riding. We asked them to do a self-assessment of their riding. Then we had a couple of horses around that are fairly reliable horses. You know, they're quiet and nothing's going to go wrong with them. We've got them catching them and riding them and safely handling them, basically getting them and taking their hips away so they're not horses not kicking and just working with the animal. And then they do about three days of that, mind you. They're not totally right to go for the job, but they've got a start and they know how to keep themselves safe, so they can improve from there. And with the low stress stock handling, they go right down to basic stuff, opening, shutting gates, moving cattle, making sure cattle have water and moving cattle around the yard safely so everything can be as safe as possible. We're trying to basically develop a culture here of just having an understanding and an awareness for safety, but because we basically all live here together, you know, it's our home as well as our workplace, I think we're just trying to develop an awareness and understanding and start to take responsibility of where we are when it comes to safety. Yeah, that's a joint effort for all of us, not just me barking down the shots to my staff. Our risks have been cattle, horses and motorbikes. After the induction training program with horses, myself and my headstockman, we assess our own staff here, a man below again, and just watch them ride and allocate horses to their level and then just step through the training like that. Oh, that's ongoing, the horsemanship training all year. It's a constant improvement, and like I still got improvement, we all do, so. With motorbikes, we carry out, we do some training with Charles Darwin, with their motorbike experts, and then basically they come out here and I only tried to allocate one or two people to ride the motorbike, and we step them through, make sure they're all right, they know how to ride safely. Motorbikes are big risk because you can be out in the paddock, riding around on a mob of cattle, and there's a long laying in long grass, and that's all it takes, you might only be idling along and you can fall off and injure yourself, so just trying to get awareness into them and just understand that there could be an issue and we're trying to avoid it. I believe low stress stock handling definitely takes away a lot of the risk, it'll never totally take it away because we're dealing with animals at the end of the day, they can be unpredictable. I think it's a huge advantage, our stock only come into the yard some twice a year, some only once a year and only a small percentage generally every couple of years, so we're using low stress techniques, as long as we stick to it all the time each year, the temperament of the cattle just improve, they're used to being handled in a good way, they become easier to put through the yard, become a pleasure to put through the yard. Like I remember when I first started in the Northern Territory chasing cattle, and they used to see you'd be in the stock yard and gates would fly back open, cattle running back over the top of you. I've heard of incidents in the last five, six years, but I haven't actually seen a cow run back and smash a gate in the last five years. We've been using quad bikes for as long as I can remember, there's been quads around, but at current stage, because they're being identified as such a danger, I think they'll become phased out. The side by side ATV we got, it'll probably, that'll take over and replace the quad bikes, be an alternative use and seem to be a bit safer, seat belt and have a roof on it for rollbar protection, that's I think, I definitely feel that's the way things will go. All our staff are run through chemical training at CDU, they do their chem cert or the other equivalents, because chemicals are a part of it, but yeah, we've got a process where everyone goes through that training and when they come onto the station and they have to undertake some chemical handling, we've got records there we have to keep, you know, they're recording what they're doing, where they're doing it and what they're doing it for. In our chemical shed, we have the MSDS sheets on hand for all our chemicals that we use, they're provided there for the staff. If an incident happens, they know how to treat it, how to use it, what PPE they need to use for it. We also have it on hand in the office, so there's a second copy available. WorkSafe and Tea were out earlier this year, they basically just had a visit and just had a look at things and what we're doing to try and mitigate our risk. It was fairly daunting expecting them to come, because from what you know in the industry, and we've heard of other places and in the past, they come in to kick your bum really, that's what the general feel was of it, but when they turned up it was really good, we just stepped through the paces of it, first we just did a bit of a basic induction with them and then talked about our policies and procedures and just walked around and they just had a look at things and it was fairly smooth, I think it was good. Mainly peace of mind and knowing maybe they're not so bad, they're probably just trying to help too and do their job rather than bully us into things. Definitely having WorkSafe coming on board this year and the role of being there as an advisor and being there to help us rather than hammer us, it's definitely like we've got all the policies and procedures in place and them coming on board and supporting what we're doing, it gives you a lot of confidence in knowing that what you're doing is right and your people, you know, people are the key at the end of the day. We do make money out of cattle, but you can't do none of that without your people, so at the end of the day, they're able to come home safe and our policies and that helping that happen, you know, I definitely think it's better rather than worse, you know, definitely moving forward. I don't believe it's got to be an expensive task. I believe that some of the systems that can be implemented on site are rather simple and can be maintained with minimum of fuss. It's...and I think by doing so, you're going to reduce the number of incident rates on your farm or your station and in an industry-wide level, if those incident rates begin to fall over a period of time, that can only be good for the industry, both in a productivity sense as well as their bottom line. I've been involved in insurance in underwriting and broken for the last 40-odd years and of those spent many years offering services to the Cattleman's Association of the Northern Territory. When you do Oc Health and Safety, there's not immediate returns. It's a long-term plan program. You need to implement it and then reap the rewards as you go forward. It's not instantaneously because whilst you might have had five years of bad claims and implement the Oc Health and Safety Service program, you...to get a better work-safe situation, the problem is that you've still got five years of really bad record. So you've got to get rid of that so you've got to have one year good, one year maybe, a bit better or not as bad, and then the insurance company can then work with you to see that, yes, you're on the right track. Then the benefits of the savings will come. If anybody's looking for a quick fix, it's not going to happen that way. It's going to be a long-term situation. Obviously, given that the Northern Territory does have a vast land mass in that and some of these stations are quite remote, it's not just restricted to us coming out there and visiting them. While we intend to try and do that as part of the campaign, if they require any advice or anything in relation to work health and safety, then obviously we have the ability to, through our website and telephone and everything else, the hotline, to give us a call and say hi and let us know what their concerns are or whether they require any further information and we can provide them with whatever we can. Just because they make contact with us doesn't mean that they've caught our attention or anything like that. We encourage people, if they want to find out more about work health and safety, then by all means contact us. It doesn't mean that you're going to have an inspector on your door the next day or anything like that, but we'll do whatever we can to try and help them with their concern or provide them with what information they require. I think there needs to be more of that. I'd welcome them back and I'd walk them through anything. You can say, look, where can you help me here? Instead of saying, what am I doing wrong? Where can you help me? And then you know.