Industry must lead way

Meredith Chapman manages Narrabri health and safety company, Safety In Focus, and has been involved with horses since she was five-years-old, bred horses for 35 years, and has known since she completed her level one coach training there needed to be more control over equine training.

This year, Ms Chapman was asked to join the Australian Skills Quality Authority’s (ASQA) strategic review into equine training.

While there are voluntary guides in place to help manage risk for inexperienced riders, the review will look at all areas of the equine industry to see how these guides can be improved.

And Ms Chapman is urging the equine industry as a whole to unite to ensure the best possible outcome.

“If we don’t collaboratively get our industry stakeholders together we’ll have regulators saying ‘now we are going to write a code of practice’ and we won’t be able to apply it on the ground,” Ms Chapman said.

Most in the industry already followed good processes.

“What they are not doing is documenting or formalising it.

Recent changes to legislation mean individuals can be legally held responsible for operational health and safety breaches, not just corporations, and sentences can include five years in prison and fines worth millions of dollars.

In 2005 Mrs Chapman made a horse and rider tool to help businesses or educators assess risk, which was given a tick from a leading lawyer and from Meat and Livestock Australia after she piloted the program with the Australian Agricultural Company.

On a daily basis she receives phone calls from big organisations, like the Australian Feedlotters Association, or individual farmers, seeking guidance on how they can best manage their horse activities.

“They can see they’re vulnerable and they also don’t know how to bring it together.”

She’s worked with professional horse trainer and international coach Gerald O’Brien, Millers Forest.

He reckons one of the big selling points for more regulation would be the impact a code of practice could have on insurance premiums.

“There’s no negotiation to be held with insurance companies because there are no standards,” he said.

“It’s a high risk activity, they say, but they can’t justify it being high risk; there’s nothing in place to tick and flick the rules that it might be low risk.”

Mr O’Brien said because the current guide was developed from British standards, a great deal of it was impractical in Australia.

“We’ve got to have the practicality checks in it; the right people having the right say. “I’m not against the change if we get in there in the right time we can develop the change.”

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THE Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) commissioned its review of equine training after Sarah Waugh’s death in 2009.

Chief Commissioner Chris Robinson said Sarah’s coronial report raised issues with the adequacy of equine training packages, policies and procedures for assessing horses to be used in training, and the adequacy of trainer and assessor competencies and currency of industry experience.

“Some work has already been completed to address these issues,” he said.

“However ASQA is undertaking a further review of the training being offered to see what further improvements can be made to ensure students wanting to work in the equine industry get the skills and experience they need.”

Mr Robinson said work had begun with a management committee selected that included representatives from ASQA, Rural Skills Australia, Horse SA, Service Skills, Safe Work, the vocational education sector, racing industry and Safety In Focus.

“While it is premature to speculate about the review’s findings and recommendations that ASQA may make, previous reviews have identified the need for training standards to be strengthened, increased regulatory scrutiny and enhanced information and guidance for training providers,” Mr Robinson said.

“The review will be completed by the end of the year.”