Mitchell Clayton: Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4727. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I rise to take a short call for New Zealand First on this very important matter the Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill introduced by the honourable member Damien O’Connor. I unlike Jonathan Young will not hold out until the end of my speech to let you know where we stand as a party. In fact it was at the very last minute in extra time that he told us where National was going to go with it and it was no surprise to us that of course National members do not support it. New Zealand First wants to come out strongly in the strongest of terms to say that we support this initiative by the honourable member Damien O’Connor.I stand with pride because if my grandfather was alive today he would be very much appreciative that we have got the likes of the Labour Party and the Greens and New Zealand First supporting this bill because it is looking after the welfare of our workers. My grandfather was the head of the miners’ union for some 20 years and was actually present in 1967 when they had the Strongman Mine disaster where 19 men lost their lives. Now we are coming up to 5 years this year since the death toll of 29 workers who lost their lives at Pike River. This is the largest issue that we have got around the country. This is a bigger issue than how much we are paying as a minimum wage for our workers. Every single worker in this country has the right to absolutely be guaranteed that they are going to go home after work. We as a country have got an appalling record in terms of health and safety when we compare ourselves to the likes of Australia the United Kingdom Germany and the USA.I asked to be on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which many of my friends across the House are a part of as well. We are right in the middle of deliberations on the Health and Safety Reform Bill and yet again time has been extended even further. What we are trying to say here is that we have got a bill in place that could be implemented rather quickly and under some sort of urgency to look after the lives of those mine workers. It was only 10 days ago that another quarry worker was killed. I know it was not an underground mining situation but it just goes to show the lackadaisical legislation we have got around health and safety in this country. Yes after Pike River the Government came out and said it wanted to do something about it. It said it would act quickly and put some regulations in place and make sure that the death toll comes down in this sector. What it did not do was actually fund health and safety adequately to ensure that those regulations were actually managed and policed adequately to ensure that those deaths stopped happening and of course we are still finding the same old story. We are going over and over it again.I urge this Government to change its position of not supporting this bill. I would like to say also that Damien O’Connor has been in Parliament for some 22 years and for all but 3 of those years he has held the seat of West Coast - Tasman. He has held that seat and he stands up and speaks for those people because he actually gets to see them and speak to them on a regular basis. When he has to go and talk to his constituents from his area and explain to them that he is doing everything he can it is frustrating for him to actually not be able to go back with something solid that is supported—not for any political reasons but for good reasons—in this House.I would just like to finish by saying that the coal mining industry makes up about 2.5 percent of our country’s GDP and about 6.2 percent of our total exports. But it actually does more than that. For our regions particularly in the West Coast - Tasman area it makes up about 40 percent of our GDP. It has high-quality workers who are well and truly getting paid over and above the New Zealand average wage and of course down there the average wage is about $105000 a year. The industry provides about 8000 jobs. If we do not do something to keep our workers safe if we do not do something to look after this industry for our regional and rural parts of the country we are going to be in a very dire situation in the future.We are waiting with bated breath for the current legislation the Health and Safety Reform Bill to go through and we urge the members of the Government on the benches opposite to support the Underground Coal Mining and Safety Bill in the name of the Hon Damien O’Connor. We commend this bill to the select committee. We hope it gets support. It makes good sense for it to get support and we wish it all the best in its endeavours. We will never forget the tragedy of Pike River. We will never forget the tragedies of the Strongman Mine Ralph’s Mine and other disasters around the country. Those memories will be etched in the minds of all those family members and New Zealanders who were there and know people who lost their lives on those very sad days. Thank you.