Rob Rattenbury: Whanganui Kowhai Park attraction latest victim of safety concerns
31 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM
5 minutes to read
The flying fox at Whanganui s Kowhai Park has been missing since October, and the council can t say when it will be back. Photo / Ethan Griffiths
OPINION:
It seems as time goes on there seems to be attempts by well-meaning people to remove risk from every single part of our lives. For many years there has been a perfectly good and exciting flying fox in our local and nationally famous child s playground.
Recently something broke on it so it was closed pending repairs, no problem. As the weeks went by parents and children are wondering when the flying fox will be operational again.
“This is an absurd
overreach and the rules should be scrapped.
“ECEs
are a PCBU – a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking
– under the 2015 Health and Safety at Work
Act.
“The Act places a positive duty on
organisations to keep people safe from harm by proactively
identifying and managing health and safety
risks.
“That means ECEs already have a legal
obligation not to choke the children in their
care.
“If they want to issue guidelines to each
other to minimise that risk they’re very welcome to, but
they don’t need compulsory rules requiring costly
enforcement.
“No matter how worthy the intention of