O'Connor Damien: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6147. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I am speaking on the commencement clause of the Health and Safety Reform Bill. Many many people have lost their lives in order for this piece of legislation to be produced—29 of them at Pike River and hundreds and hundreds of others—because by any First World standard we have had inadequate health and safety provisions.If I go back to 1992—and I have referred to that—I quote here what the member said: “The proposed requirements for safety and health committees and representatives would have been totally confused. The accountability structures would most certainly have been confused if some of those amendments had been accepted by the Committee.” The member goes on: “The National Government took out these parts because it happens to believe that workplaces and the workplace environment is best managed by the employers having No. 1 responsibility to put what the legislation clearly establishes.” That failed. That failed the mining industry and it failed workers in New Zealand. The National Government has once again failed to produce proper health and safety legislation.How can we support the commencement of this bill? It is called a reform bill. One of the previous speakers said: “I went to Google to quote it. ‘Reform—to make changes in order to improve it.’ ” How can we claim that we are making improvements when alpaca farming bird breeding pet breeding rabbit farming and worm farming are considered high risk and sheep and cattle farming dairy farming tree pruning thinning in a forest and explosives laying are considered low risk? It is bizarre and ridiculous.We are speaking on the commencement of a bill that will not necessarily take us forward in terms of health and safety across this country. I cannot say it is a joke because that would be dishonouring the hundreds of people who have lost their lives due to failed health and safety to bring us to this point here in the House when we hoped—and the Labour Party supported the legislation’s referral to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—we were making real progress. It really was a reform bill. That is what we hoped. Now we believe it has failed.I am not sure whether the commencement date of 2018 is right or wrong other than to say it is a long long way down the track from 1992 when the National Government brought in health and safety legislation and all its principles and a long way down the track from 1997 and the other amendments that have taken place.I feel very compelled to do everything I can to get it right. It was not long before the Pike River disaster that I tried to raise the issues myself with the Minister. Assurances of proper process and proper oversight were given but to no avail. We have in Opposition the absolute responsibility to point out every fault in this piece of legislation to remind the Government that it failed in 1992—the same ridiculous pathetic excuses about workplace representation. What an arrogant arrogant approach to say that employees do not know what is safe and what is unsafe and have no wisdom in the workplace.Mr Chairman I say to you and to this Committee that I have learnt as an employer to listen to the people at the coalface to listen to the people who are doing the dangerous work and to ask them and get guidance from them as to how to improve—but no. The vast majority of workers working in small to medium sized enterprises up and down this country will not be covered by the majority of provisions in this legislation because they are in workplaces with fewer than 20 employees—in spite of the percentages I hear from the Minister and the Government.I do not know what the true figures are; I do not believe many of the figures coming from the Government. Can I say of the commencement which is the clause that I am referring to here that I have concerns that if we support this in the way that the legislation is going to be put in place we are not—