KiwiRail has been fined $290,000 in the Auckland District Court after two of its maintenance workers were left with severe burns by a live 25,000 volt overhead line at Parnell railway station in September 2024, in a sentencing that Judge Nevin Dawson described as an abuse of authority.
The state owned rail company was sentenced on Thursday after pleading guilty to WorkSafe charges over the early hours incident on 4 September 2024. An electrician and an assistant linesman had been raised in a steel cage to work on the overhead lines that power Auckland’s electric trains, on the understanding that the section above them had been isolated. It had not. Both men received electric shocks from a line still carrying 25,000 volts.
The primary victim suffered burns to the left side of his face, neck, upper body, the back of his left shoulder and his left arm down to his wrist. He has since needed three surgeries and multiple skin grafts and, eighteen months on, continues to live with pain and significant debt from his injuries. The second worker suffered burns to his face, neck, chest and wrists that were described in court as less severe but still serious.
A supporter read the primary victim’s statement to the court, in which he said he was reminded of the incident every day because of the scars he carries. The court was told his family had immigrated to New Zealand in 2022 and had little local support to draw on while he was in hospital, which compounded the hardship of his recovery.
WorkSafe prosecutor Angus Everett told the court that KiwiRail had failed to put in place fundamental controls that would have prevented the incident. The supervisor on the night did not hold the appropriate New Zealand licensure for the work, despite having overseas experience, and the company had not adequately marked the boundary between the isolated section of overhead line and the section that remained energised. The two workers inadvertently moved past that boundary while in the elevated cage.
“There are fundamental controls that could have been taken to prevent the incident,” Mr Everett told the court.
Judge Dawson set a starting point of $425,000 for the fine, citing the seriousness of the breach and KiwiRail’s prior record. He applied a 25 per cent reduction for the guilty plea, a 5 per cent reduction for reparation already paid to the workers and a 5 per cent reduction for remorse and co-operation, arriving at the final $290,000 fine.
The judge also noted that KiwiRail had prior workplace safety convictions in 2025, 2023, 2020 and twice in 2015, a pattern that he said reflected an abuse of authority by a major employer in a high risk industry. On top of the fine, KiwiRail was ordered to pay $36,000 in emotional harm reparations to the more severely injured worker and $6,200 to his colleague. The company had already paid lost wages directly to both men.
KiwiRail’s Chief Metro Officer David Gordon issued an apology in the wake of the sentencing. He said the company sincerely apologised for the incident, that it should not have happened, and that the guilty plea reflected its acceptance that it had fallen short.
In the weeks after the September 2024 incident, KiwiRail stopped maintenance work on the network, ordered a rapid risk review and introduced changes designed to make sure the same set of failures could not recur. Blue lights now mark the limit of any isolated section of overhead line so that workers in elevated platforms can see where they are. Personal voltage detectors are now mandatory for all maintenance workers operating near energised infrastructure, giving each worker an independent check that the line in front of them is dead. Verification steps for de energised lines have been tightened.
The Parnell station overhead network forms part of the 25,000 volt electrification that powers Auckland’s metro train services between Britomart, Swanson, Papakura and Manukau. Maintenance crews work on the lines at night when services have stopped, often in elevated cages reaching above the overhead conductors, and the work depends on a tightly choreographed sequence of isolation, lock out and physical demarcation. It is a workforce that does most of its work invisibly, while the rest of Auckland sleeps, and Thursday’s sentencing was a rare moment of public daylight on how the system can go wrong when those controls slip.
Auckland’s rail network is in the middle of a major upgrade ahead of the opening of the City Rail Link, with KiwiRail responsible for the track and the overhead lines and Auckland One Rail running the trains on behalf of Auckland Transport. WorkSafe took the prosecution under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
What do you think about the state of safety culture on New Zealand’s railways and the penalties that follow when workers are hurt on the job? Let us know in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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