SpeechWorkplace Relations and SafetyMARJA LUBECK (Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee): Thank you Madam Chair and it's a great honour to kick off this debate in the annual reviews on the workplace relations and safety portfolio. I acknowledge the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety the Hon Michael Wood who just swapped his hat and my select committee colleagues across the Chamber who are taking part in this debate. This year alongside the other select committees we considered the sector as a whole for our report combining the annual reviews for WorkSafe as well as for ACC.I'll start off with an outline of the process that we followed and then I'll talk about the findings of the committee. With the help of the almighty Zoom facility we met several times in March between the 2nd and the 30th to consider this annual review and on 9 March we met and heard evidence from the Minister. We also heard from WorkSafe New Zealand and received advice from the Office of the Auditor-General. I want to thank all of our officials and our team of parliamentary clerks who helped us with this process.The impact of COVID-19 on the labour sector was one of the predominant themes of this review—quite unexpectedly! Border closures have resulted in worker shortages in sectors that rely on migrant labour and specialist skills such as healthcare as well as in sectors that have lost third-party revenue such as tourism. The Minister shared with us his view that the COVID-19 response is a really good story about how key stakeholders from regulators to policy agencies employers and unions alike can come together and work really well in what are very unprecedented and challenging circumstances. The Minister noted the development of measures to support people to stay in work and weather the short-term impacts of COVID-19 on workforces—of course with the help of the COVID-19 leave support scheme and the COVID-19 short-term absence payment.COVID-19 also increased WorkSafe's workload as we heard with one aspect of this being the increased work on ensuring that there is compliance from businesses with COVID-19 obligations—including things like vaccine pass scanning and contact tracing technology. The Minister told us that WorkSafe's education-first approach is good modern regulatory practice. Seven thousand conversations took place with employers to help them meet their obligations and in the majority of cases that actually resolved the issue. Related to this education-first approach the Minister also told us that WorkSafe is increasing its investment in prevention programmes. He told us that intervention and prevention is more cost-effective and increasingly WorkSafe have adopted the at the top of the cliff" approach. They provide the employers the employees and others with the tools they need to actually prevent harm from occurring in the workplace which is obviously always the preferred way of doing things.The Minister told the committee that in dealing with the COVID challenges in his portfolio there is still a firm focus on the long-term challenges. We heard about the significant reform programme that's been under way such as the implementation of the 10 days minimum sick leave work on the Matariki public holiday Holiday Act reform and good progress being made through the modern-slavery legislation advisory group to deal with that issue of modern slavery. The Minister also told the committee that introducing a new fair pay agreement system was a top priority in order to deliver a fairer and more productive labour market which encourages collaborative relationships between key stakeholders such as the employers the unions and peak bodies. The Minister noted in that relay that the New Zealand labour market had been largely deregulated for around 30 years during which New Zealand has seen some of the worst productivity performances in the world. The Minister also noted that sector-wide pay agreements are common in countries with more productive economies.Just to finish in the review of the Standing Orders 2020 select committees were encouraged to conduct these overall sector-wide reviews to assist us picking up more themes across an entire sector. The Standing Orders Committee also encouraged us to invite Ministers to a hearing and that particular increase in ministerial accountability and participation in this new style of annual review debate means that Ministers in this current Government are subjecting themselves to far greater scrutiny than has previously been the case. Thank you Madam Chair."