“You can go out and be a hoon, you can abuse the vehicle and kill yourself. In the end, if you refuse to use common sense in your life, that is your choice and decision.”

I’ll have to disagree with that. It shouldn’t be your free choice to make decisions like that. The major problem is that your actions very often affect others…and hoonery on public roads is likely to end in tragedy for innocent people. If it only involved the idiot perpetrators then fine, I’d say; go right ahead and kill yourselves or incur permanent injuries or whatever.

So we should most definitely have a regulatory regime that strongly discourages public hoon behaviour. Directly because this aspect of the human brain especially in young males is so prevalent, we absolutely need to have strong laws to mitigate it.

Yabby, wouldn’t you endeavour to make sure that anyone who comes onto your farm to work has experience with a 4WD, in the conditions that it will be used on the property and understands the safety aspects… and of course never behaves like a hoon? Wouldn’t you want to know how capable someone is with a chain saw before you plonk it in their hands and tell them to go cut down that old dead tree down by the dam?

Ok so there are no legal requirements to have formal qualifications or a certain grade of competency in order to operate a wide range of machinery. But be careful, I bet there would be some legal come-back on you if a person was to seriously injure themself while carrying out work as directed by their boss, when they had no or insufficient experience or guidance on how to do the job or on what hazards to look out for.

Your example of a perceived double standard needs to be resolved by way greatly improving the regulatory regime regarding public hoonery rather than having no or minimal safety or experience requirements for workers in the private sector to apparently match the appallingly bad regulation of hoons and road safety issues in general.

* If it only involved the idiot perpetrators then fine, I’d say; go right ahead and kill yourselves or incur permanent injuries or whatever.*

Well in this case, that is what I was referring to. Farms are
perfect places for teens to let their testerone flow and they do
sometimes, no matter how much training they have had. Its just
young guys cutting loose and being stupid. You can't blame
employers for that and it has nothing to do with being accredited.

*Yabby, wouldn’t you endeavour to make sure that anyone who comes onto your farm to work has experience with a 4WD, in the conditions that it will be used on the property and understands the safety aspects*

Ludwig, if you came to visit my farm and I was moving machinery for
seeding, harvest etc, if you could drive a 2wd I would let you
grab a 4wd, for that is all there are here, 3 of them. No, I would
not expect you to be accredited in driving 4wds. If I then went to
town or something and you went out and cut loose, whilst I was
away, I could not be blamed for that.

*But be careful, I bet there would be some legal come-back on you if a person was to seriously injure themself *

Well this seems to be the core of the problem. Sadly we have copied
the US, in becoming a litigous society, where there is huge money
to be made in being a lawyer, rather then an engineer. That will
cost our economy just like it has cost the US. That is why healthcare
is so expensive in America, its not the doctors, its the lawyers
ready to pounce.

In the country these days, you are battling to find a doctor who
will deliver babies. The insurance is so expensive, its simply
not worth the bother. That is a real shame for our nation.

Ludwig “I wouldn’t have picked you as an ACCC supporter.”

Oh it is one of the best examples of the “Why do we have to have government” question.

Its purpose is to address and level the playing field and the rules of play, rather than equalize the individuals and their dissimilar attributes.

Its objective addresses the imbalance and curtails, contains, prosecutes abuses which will, inevitably exist between a few powerful manufacturers or retailers (due to economies of scale) and a lot of disorganized and un-powerful consumers.

“I don’t think our positions are too far apart at all out of the four of us”

Agree : - ), we simply address the issues from our own diverse perspectives and hence the prominence of different features is larger or smaller, depending upon that perspective.

My personal perspective remains

If a regulation is not working, better to acknowledge the fact, either change it or abandon it, rather than doing a half job.

If the merit of regulation is of dubious real benefit, like government handing money to business corporations under the recent car building regulations, it is better to not pursue it and leave the funds in the pocket of the tax payer to spend as they see fit.

Another maxim I support is

Small government avoids the dangers of large government by minimising the risk that the power and authority, known to corrupt, are not concentrated among just a few or in one place.

“Farms are perfect places for teens to let their testerone flow”

Recreationally, yes. But not white they’re working Yabby, surely.

If they do it in work time with the knowledge and condonement of their boss, then yes you can blame their employer to some extent if an ‘accident’ happens.

A very significant part of good management is to make sure that employees behave is a safe and sensible manner.

The balance has swung too far towards protectionism in the overlitigious US. But the other end of the spectrum is just as inappropriate. There’s got to be a responsibility to uphold a reasonable level of safety. And where this is shown to be significantly lacking, the law needs to step in.

Every employer has surely got to be responsible to some extent for the safety of their staff, inasmuch as providing the right sort of instructions and cautions on hazards. Of course there is a massive grey area where the blame for mishaps is not clear or is shared or is a matter of circumstance rather than any significant neglect. But all the same, the duty of care does exist – and it is directly because of many people failing in this regard that we have laws in many instances.

It is all far from perfect. No doubt some of these regulations overstep the mark a bit, and there are instances that are unregulated that should be. But all in all, I’d be inclined to think that the current situation is a fair bit short of the optimal balance between regulation and freedom to do as one likes. That is, not enough regulation overall. Or perhaps it is a case of enough regulation on the books, but nowhere near enough enforcement.

*If they do it in work time with the knowledge and condonement of their boss, then yes you can blame their employer to some extent if an ‘accident’ happens.*

Sure, if the boss knows and condones it, he can be blamed, but that
is not usually what happens.

The case I heard of, which actually landed up in court and the
employer was fined a huge amount, was that two workers were sent
out to check on the cattle. They rolled the vehicle, one got
injured and the employer was blamed, as they were not wearing their
seatbelts and had not done an accredited 4wd course.

Now think about the ramifications of that. On farms we use all
sorts of welders, power tools, machinery etc, fix windmills,
the list is endless. Yes, people are shown how to use things
sensibly, but you can't go sending people to a course on every
single bit of gear they use, or they would be doing courses all
their lives.

If you are going to lumber employers with all those sorts of
responsibilities, even when employees decide to behave like hoons,
when you are not there, the easy option is to stop employing people.

Let them all work for the Govt, they can all police each other.
Much better to have things made offshore

Col, so you fully support the ACCC in principle. But what about in its overall effectiveness?

You gave examples of other cartel activity; Qantas and BA, and Coles and Woolies. Could it be a case of the ACCC grabbing hold of one or a small number of issues and going full bore at them while just ignoring some others that are just as deserving of action and many others that might be a big less deserving but still need some regulation?

Could the ACCC be delivering a highly unbalanced and selective service?

My answer would be yes. I think ACCC Chairman Graham Samuel would have to agree if he was pushed on the issue. He’d no doubt say that they are doing what they can with the resources at their disposal.

So, if the ACCC can’t tackle the whole gamut of competition and consumer issues under its charter, should it be disbanded “rather than doing a half job”, should it be given much greater resources or do we need to just simply live with a far from perfect regulatory regime in this case?