Wood MichaelHEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK (HEALTH AND SAFETY REPRESENTATIVES AND COMMITTEES) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I present a legislative statement on the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I move That the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. Mr Speaker and colleagues I am very pleased to be able to return to the House for the second reading of the bill after the Education and Workforce Committee has completed its consideration and returned its report to the House. I wish to start by thanking the select committee for their hard work on this bill; thanking the I think it was 21 submitters who took the time to give their views and assist us in improving this piece of legislation; and also to thank the officials who supported the select committee with their consideration of the legislation. That is certainly valued. I'm pleased also to be able to return for the next stage of this bill because it is another Labour Party manifesto commitment that we are fulfilling with the passage of this piece of legislation. It's very important for me as Minister in the workplace relations and safety portfolio as it is in other portfolios that we follow through on those things that we said we would do when elected. This was one of those specific things that we identified in our manifesto and received a clear vote of support at the election and an endorsement to move through with this policy. So it's good to be able to move forward and follow through on that commitment. And it is an important one.I don't think any member of this House would feel satisfied with the level of harm that continues to occur in New Zealand workplaces from the North to the South the East and the West. Overall levels of harm in New Zealand workplaces be it acute injuries and fatalities lesser levels of injury that none the less have significant impacts on individuals and significant impacts on productivity or in fact the biggest area of them all—workplace-based health and poor health outcomes that flow from people's working conditions—we would all want our country to do better and cannot feel good about the fact that generally we cause higher rates of harm in our workplaces than nearly any other developed country that we compare ourselves to. Rates of harm across fatalities and serious injuries are around about twice the rate of Australia and around about four times the rate of the United Kingdom.Now we have made some good progress. The Pike River tragedy was a wake-up call for our system. There was a widespread view that things needed to change. It led to the Health and Safety at Work Act greater clarity about obligations within the system a new regulator and a new and strong focus supported by a strong strategy that WorkSafe oversees. And we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we have made progress. We met the key targets around reducing fatalities and serious injuries but they're still too high and we need to keep doing more work and keep moving forward if we want to shift them down. This bill speaks to the fact that we know—we know without a shadow of a doubt based on the experience of workers and businesses and based on the clear international academic research—that having an empowered workforce with workers directly able to represent through their concerns and issues to engage in problem-solving around health and safety and sometimes to say No that is not safe" to receive appropriate training and support in that role that having worker representatives in those roles makes a very significant difference to health and safety outcomes within our workplaces.In New Zealand we do have a system under the existing Health and Safety at Work Act that allows many workers to be able to have a representative in their workplace who has those rights duties and abilities under the Act who is able to access education and who has that formal role within the system. But at the time that the legislation made its way through the House in 2015 the then National Government which had originally proposed that as a universal right for workers—to have a representative—made a change during the legislative process to effectively carve out smaller workplaces of less than 20. It is true that within the existing legislation workers in smaller workplaces which are deemed to be high risk can continue to have the right to have a health and safety representative. What are the problems with that that we're trying to solve with this piece of legislation? Well the primary one is that the size of the workplace does not mean that there is necessarily less risk to the workers who are there. It can equally be the case in a workplace of 80 people as it is in a workplace of 25 people that there are risks that might apply to those workers. And on an evidential basis we know that having a representative in place who is suitably educated and supported can help to reduce those risks and the possibility that those risks might play out in harm to their fellow workers.There is also quite an important moral component in my view here as well. The people who bear the burden of harm in our workplaces are workers. They are the ones who get hurt who become sick who are injured and who are killed. They are the ones who bear the burden of the harm and so it is only important—in my view just and reasonable—that they have a seat at the table in a formal sense to be able to represent concerns to resolve issues and to make our workplaces safer. So effectively this piece of legislation removes that carve-out that came midstream in the previous legislative process and ensures that workers in these smaller workplaces do have that ability to be able to request a health and safety representative or a health and safety committee in the same way as workers in larger businesses do as well. That is the case for why we think it is important for this legislation to move through.At the same time I don't overstate the impact of this piece of legislation. It is a modest but useful contribution to the health and safety landscape. It won't fix everything on its own by any stretch but that fundamental right of workers to be able to have a rep we think is an important one. But in noting that it is not a huge change I do want to turn to some of the opposition and some of the arguments that we have heard against this which I think frankly have just sort of overblown the potential impact of this change on workplaces up and down the country. The first thing to be clear about is that it doesn't actually make it compulsory that every workplace have a health and safety representative or a health and safety committee; it simply means that workers in those workplaces of fewer than 20 employees have the legal right to request a health and safety representative and committee and that the employer then has a legal duty to respond to that and facilitate it.So what is my expectation here? It is that some of our smaller workplaces—workers there—will see the value in having a health and safety representative or a health and safety committee and they will make that request and the employers will need to respond to it and support it. But actually it's my expectation that quite probably in many of our smaller workplaces workers may not see that need. They may be satisfied to work within existing less formal ways of raising issues and that's just fine if that works for them. But in those workplaces where those workers are the ones on the front line who face the risk who are most exposed to and therefore most aware of the risks and what can be done where in their judgment they would be safer and feel safer for having a health and safety representative or committee I think it is quite appropriate that they have the ability to request that and for that to happen.In the Australian experience where there is no such exemption below 20—remembering that we based our Health and Safety at Work Act on the Australian model law and regulations—it has been a mix. Some smaller businesses have ended up with reps and committees and some haven't. So I think that is where we will land as well. I just put that on record just so that we have a proportionate debate in this House. As I say I think this is a useful change but I think that some of the criticisms that this will be a significant burden across the economy simply aren't borne out by the evidence and simply aren't borne out by a reasonable set of assumptions about how this legislation will move forward.I note that the select committee has made one change to the legislation that it received and that was a change to some of the language changing the language around workers having the ability to "may notify" an employer of their desire to have a rep or a committee—changing that to "may request" which is then linked to the legal duty of the employer to respond to that request. The reason the select committee made that change is that it made the language more consistent with language in the rest of the Health and Safety at Work Act and therefore meant that there is a greater simplicity for people being able to engage with the legislation. And the advice that the committee received was that if there was a different form of language it might imply that Parliament meant something different by way of how that process should operate which is not the intention. So I think the select committee has done a good job there of scrutinising the legislation and making sure that it's as easy and efficacious to utilise for all concerned.In concluding health and safety is enormously important. Every Kiwi deserves to go home safe. Having a WorkSafe rep makes Kiwis safer and this legislation will make sure that more workers have access to that. I commend the bill to the House."