told to put proper guarding in place<\/a> in the years before his death.<\/p>\nAttempting to step over a belt, he tripped and fell on it. His workmates witnessed him dragged under a metal frame.<\/p>\n
The company was convicted and fined earlier this year on one health and safety charge. \u201cBallance is committed to recognising\u202fthe\u202ffailures and learning from this tragedy wherever we can,\u201d it said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Anthony cannot comprehend what went on.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me this is like something that you would have done 100 years ago, you know, a work practice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Seven months on from the sentencing, Anthony, his wife Lee-ann, and the family are speaking out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t speak up, you don\u2019t say anything, people will keep quiet,\u201d said Anthony. \u201cThis will just continue.\u201d<\/p>\n
They do not feel they have had much of a say, or been heard, even through the drawn-out workplace safety investigation and coronial process, or from the victim impact statements they read in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just not OK,\u201d said Wes\u2019 younger sister, who has name suppression.<\/p>\n
Speaking out, recounting memories<\/p>\n
The wh\u0101nau\u2019s calls combine with their memories.<\/p>\n
His younger sister\u2019s most special albeit painful memory is how her brother loved her two daughters and treated them like they were his own. The youngest was eight weeks old when he died.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019d come over every week and there would just be chaos in the house. But good chaos, lots of teasing and laughter,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe spoiled them terribly. And he would make up these ridiculous nicknames for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anthony coached his son in under-10s football at the Mount Action Centre.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it was quite a sort of like a very happy time for us doing that kind of stuff together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In recent times, Wes would get up at 3am, and be in the gym soon after.<\/p>\n
Their voices catch a bit as they talk to RNZ but they plough on.<\/p>\n
It had been a \u201ccruel\u201d and unfair process, they said, that had left them with many questions, as basic as who made the decision not to fix the conveyor belts, though two independent safety assessments in 2015 and 2022 had raised the alarm, and as large as, how could the system be changed?<\/p>\n
\u201cI know there are others out there who have had to go through similar things,\u201d said the sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s why I really want to make a change … I don\u2019t know what that looks like yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Get out of there\u2019<\/p>\n
Anthony Tomich recently had to return to work, three days a week.<\/p>\n
A fitter-welder by trade, he has had almost two years off, a big chunk of that recovering from a major heart attack that the courts accepted was directly linked to his son\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a struggle, you gotta go back there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing is, too, I\u2019m not working very far from where Ballance is at the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time you hear a bloody siren go past, then you know, it just brings back memories.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Wes]()
Wes and Anthony.<\/p>\n
Each morning began with a \u201ctoolbox\u201d safety briefing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to talk about safety and that I find extremely hard, sad.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey talk about a death or an accident, it just, it hits home.\u201d<\/p>\n
He remembers the phone calls he had with Wes about the service centre job he had been in just seven months when he died; he had been in casual work before that, and was pleased to have gone permanent, at least initially.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo in the weeks just prior to this happening, he was phoning me and telling me that there were time constraints they were having at work,\u201d Anthony told RNZ.<\/p>\n
His son was also worried about having to watch out for inexperienced temporary workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe became a little bit despondent with what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he did not know all of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no idea what he was doing … I had no idea he was working around live belts.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wishes he had known.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would have said to him, \u2018Don\u2019t be crazy. Get out of there. Don\u2019t do it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Know what your child\u2019s doing\u2019<\/p>\n
A judge fined Ballance $420,000 on a health and safety charge. It paid some reparations to the family, and made what the judge said were \u201csignificant\u201d safety changes.<\/p>\n
Ballance was invited by RNZ to have an interview but issued the statement instead, the same one it put out after the sentencing in March.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll who knew Wesley\u202fhave been immensely impacted by his death,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
It had fully co-operated with investigators and put new measures and training in place, it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cToo late. Way too late,\u201d said Anthony.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith regards to other people, you know I would say, make sure you know what your child\u2019s doing. These companies, they\u2019re taking risks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wes was the 39th workplace fatality at that time in 2023.<\/p>\n
His dog, Em, got very depressed afterwards, then got cancer, said his sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to put her through chemotherapy and get her lump removed.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s okay now, though, which is amazing. But yeah, it was pretty tough, you know, we didn\u2019t want anything to happen to her.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the lead-up, Wes had been looking at moving to work in the mines in Australia. \u201cHe asked me to sort out a CV,\u201d said Anthony, who has 28 years working on projects across Australasia to draw on.<\/p>\n
So many of those companies, \u201ctheir safety has been of such a high standard\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just … it\u2019s hard for me to understand what went on here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2022 safety assessment mentioned non-compliant guards on machines 80 times.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese aren\u2019t accidents,\u201d said his sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not an accident when you were warned about it years prior.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Danger in plain sight\u2019<\/p>\n
WorkSafe in its report back after its five-month investigation in late 2023 said the \u201cconveyor belt death-trap was a danger in plain sight\u201d.<\/p>\n
The family asked for an inquest but a coroner turned them down, in a final report stating the official investigation had covered things off.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is such a cruel process and it\u2019s unfair and it\u2019s so devastating, you know,\u201d said the sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cWes was here one day and gone the next, but it\u2019s like he just disappeared and we\u2019re left with no closure at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never got to see him before he was buried.\u201d<\/p>\n
She wants the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety to come and talk to her, and other families.<\/p>\n
Brooke van Velden said her thoughts are with the family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI consider meeting requests from anyone at any time. I would encourage the family to send an email through to my office,\u201d she said in a statement on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
During her recent consultations over workplace safety reforms, she had heard from a range of people who had lost someone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI recognise that any death has a large and wide impact on community and a larger impact again on immediate family.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year, 31 people had been killed at work up until the end of August.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, you see something unsafe, you\u2019re meant to speak up at work,\u201d Anthony said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In most photos he has one or other cap on \u2013 with his dog Em, short for Emma,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1443,52123,78694,2209,78,3375,111,43,139,69,1118,31341,21037,15141,312,22639,2044,12767,37458],"class_list":{"0":"post-109602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-about","9":"tag-belt","10":"tag-conveyor","11":"tag-father","12":"tag-in","13":"tag-killed","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-of","19":"tag-pennington","20":"tag-phil","21":"tag-pressures","22":"tag-says","23":"tag-son","24":"tag-time","25":"tag-worker","26":"tag-worried"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}