Mitchell Clayton: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 20 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:6048. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I would like to just thank the member Jonathan Young for that contribution. It is good to have a debate in the Chamber and to have some speakers from the Government actually stand up and speak—so thank you Mr Bayly and thank you Mr Young for that. I do have to say though Mr Bayly that I enjoy the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee contributions that you make and I have to say that I thought you had let yourself down a little bit in the Chamber today. I thought your comments actually undermined what you were trying to say because you made the comment that “97 percent of New Zealand is made up of small and medium sized businesses” and yet making up such a large amount of our businesses should make the Government responsible for actually going and making sure that it has got health and safety reps within those small and medium sized businesses. So I think you have actually shot yourself in the foot. It just goes to show that there is sense on that side but you are just not coming up with solutions real solutions that are going to affect health and safety in those workplaces.Our Supplementary Order Paper 110 which we are putting through regarding clause 65AA is to reduce those numbers of workers who have a right to engage a health and safety representativefrom 20 down to 10. We understand that it is a cost to those businesses and we want to make it as cost-effective and efficient as we can for businesses. However if we get the support and we get the Government to pay for those health and safety representative courses then we would of course support Labour with its Supplementary Order Paper 99 which is to remove that “under 20 workers” exemption entirely.I just want to take note of our flag which is New Zealand’s first way of recognising those people who have actually lost their lives—and I hope that that gives no offence to anybody in the Chamber—because of course this is the flag that represents all people around our wonderful country. I would also like to just take a moment to read out from the officials’ report on the Health and Safety Reform Bill. It says: “encouraging greater work involvement in health and safety matters—a proven factor in achieving better health and safety performance. All PCBUs must engage and have effective participation practices for their workers relating to health and safety matters. The Bill provides for flexibility in the types of practices that may be adopted—allowing for innovation and recognising that different practices will suit different businesses.”I think that is fantastic. I am actually going to throw another bone to the National Party over there and say of clause 107 in Part 3 “Health and safety representative may direct unsafe work to cease” that this is about participation which I think could actually have some real change in helping to change the culture within our industries around the country. So if I just turn to clause 107 it says: “Health and safety representative may direct unsafe work to cease”. What I like about it—and I have highlighted it in such a manner—is that there is a bit of tit for tat a bit of quid pro quo going on in this piece of legislation. It starts by saying in subclause (1): “A health and safety representative may direct a worker who is in a work group represented by the representative to cease work if the representative reasonably believes that carrying out the work would expose the worker or any other person to a serious risk to the worker’s or other person’s …”.That is where we got some push-back from some of those submitters who were concerned that there was going to be some hidden agenda by health and safety representatives to shut them down and stop production from going on. What I like about this clause 107 is that it has subclause (2) which says: “The health and safety representative must not give a direction under subsection (1) unless the matter is not resolved within a reasonable time after consultation about the matter with the PCBU for whom the workers are carrying out work.” So it is a bit of a balance. Then subclause (3) goes on: “Despite subsection (2) the health and safety representative may direct the worker to cease work without carrying out that consultation if the risk is so serious and immediate or imminent that it is not reasonable to consult before giving the direction.” So there is the balance coming back the other way. It is a swinging pendulum.To balance that out it says here in subclause (4): “The health and safety representative must carry out the consultation as soon as practicable after giving a direction under subsection (3).” My point is that there are some very good parts in this bill and New Zealand First would like to be able to support this bill. But there are some serious flaws some under-sight with actually making this bill work.We have another area of concern and we have got Supplementary Order Paper 110 on the Table to help balance that out. It is to do with clause 66 which is to do with work group determination. We have some issues which I will talk about after I read out the clause. After clause 66(5) we would like to insert new subclause (6): “If a dispute occurs when determining 1 or more work groups then WorkSafe as an independent arbitrator will determine the work groups within a workplace.” In most places you are going to have an engagement process which Part 3 is about where you have got participation from the worker and the PCBU—the boss and the worker however you want to dress it up; I like the terms “boss” and “worker” which make sense to most New Zealanders—sitting down to discuss what is going to constitute a work group. However in a situation where you have got a large organisation—you have got subcontractors working on the floor; you have got people who are full-time equivalents in the business—if they cannot come up with a sound solution to what is going to constitute that work group and how many people are going to constitute that work space then we need to have the ability to go to an independent arbitrator to actually determine what is going to constitute that work group.New Zealand First has thought about that and we have put this subclause in there which we again hope gets support on the floor to ensure that there is no ambiguity around what course of action you can take if you come up against the problem where a discussion has got no end to it—it is going round and round. We do not believe that the PCBU—the boss of the organisation—should be forced to do something that they would otherwise not think is fair and reasonable or reasonable and practicable. Conversely if the shoe is on the other foot and the workers are feeling the same way we need to have that engagement from WorkSafe as an independent arbitrator to allow that to happen.Again I want to go back to our new clause 65AA in Part 3 which we see as fundamental to help the ever-increasing cost of compliance in workplaces around this country particularly in small and medium sized businesses to ensure that if you want a real bottom-up engagement the change of culture is going to come from those health and safety representatives. Let us not make the barrier to that become a cost issue. This is where this Government needs to step up and say: “We’ll do it. Leave it to us. We’ll cover the cost.” There should be absolutely no person in this country without the ability to get health and safety training. Again if you are a work group or a law firm and there are only three of you in that firm what would be wrong in sitting around the table and saying: “Would you like to go and do the health and safety course? It would be great to have a representative.”? And then to do that and to know that you are going to be better off for it. Again you can pass that information on to even family members who might not be on the law side of things but who might be in some aspect of work. Real training from the bottom up is absolutely the key to getting this new legislation to work.The engagement process that we talked about earlier on in Part 1 which New Zealand First brings to the Table is a three-pronged spear where you have got to have participation from the workers you have got to have engagement and an understanding from the PCBU from the employer as well as making sure that the legislation is funded adequately to ensure that labour enforcement has got the right tools in the tool box to ensure that these practices are actually taking place in all of those workplaces.I would just like to finish off by saying how good it was yesterday to have the Hon Michael Woodhouse having this good engagement with us and to hear his comments. I would like to ask about what is going to constitute hazardous implements. We need to get some sort of clarity about high-risk plants—that is what I am trying to think of. That is going to come up later on because we are concerned about high-risk plants. If they are going to involve commercial kitchens it will have some serious implications later on. I will talk to that when it comes up in Part 4. Thank you.