Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I feel like I got lucky: I get to speak to two bills in a row that the Greens are supporting and that I'm really pleased to see in this House. The Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill indeed is a Labour Party manifesto commitment being delivered on. This has been a longstanding commitment from the Greens as well. I note my dear previous colleague Denise Roche's speech from the third reading on the Health and Safety at Work Bill noting that the main gap in that bill is that of course it applies to some people but not others to some businesses and not to others. People who work for small businesses with fewer than 20 workers do not have the right to elect a health and safety representative let alone a health and safety committee.I want to just respond to—or to give some context as well that in New Zealand our health and safety record as a country is very poor compared to countries we like to compare ourselves to. If we look at 2021 there were 65 people who were killed at work in this country. If we look at the most recent data just in June there were two people a week who were killed at work. We have a problem as a country and that was after the health and safety work legislation was introduced—we're still having two people a week just as recently as June who did not come home from work. There has been a reduction in fatalities since the introduction or creation of WorkSafe but we know that we have actually made even less progress around serious injuries in our workplaces.I hear from the previous National speaker that actually you know this bill just enables workers in small businesses to request a health and safety rep if they see a need for it. I really want to get into that a little bit because what we heard from the National Party was that actually this is overkill; there are industries with little risk which is telling us that at a national perspective we can work out whether there is risk in any business within an entire sector. The example that was used previously by Todd McClay of a retail business with five people—like why would they need a health and safety rep? I just want to bring up like one potential health and safety risk which may be actually of people coming in and—knife attacks potentially where there may be in their particular area their small business somebody who may be experiencing violence and they're not sure that their business owner is taking it seriously so they want to set up a system to be able to have the conversation to make sure that there's an appropriate response. I'm hearing people saying shame" to me. I'm like this is the reality and to suggest that you can blanketly decide what risk is across an entire industry and you know better than the workers in a workplace is just frankly ridiculous.I want to also acknowledge that the high-risk industries where that is able to happen at the moment in small businesses have some overlap with industries where there are high levels of death but it's not a complete overlap. The industries that have the highest levels of death are transport—that is not in the high-risk industry list at the moment that was decided. Health is the fifth most likely and is also not on that list. It is really important if we are to get on top of the harm that is happening in our workplaces and all forms of harm—all of the evidence tells us that the voice of the workers is critically important in being able to get solutions to keep people safe. This is about enabling that voice.I want to give another example of why this is important in getting rid of the arbitrary number threshold the number of employees. There was a really great piece of research done by E tū authored by Tom Carlyle around eliminating psychosocial harm in the cleaning and security industry probably industries that blanketly the National Party would assume were safe and low risk but actually what they've found is that employers—and I would say this is possibly a manipulation of the law but where security guards had concerns around their health and safety and they were wanting a rep but their employers were saying "Oh there aren't 20 people on this site; there are only five people on this site so sorry no—you're not allowed to have a health and safety rep." even though that company was employing a hundred security guards. But they were going by "Oh there are not more than five at this site so no you're not entitled to a voice. We do not need to listen to your concerns." That is really problematic. We know that in terms of psychosocial harm which can have a longer-term impact and take people away from being able to be in paid work for longer than even physical injuries that is most likely to occur in businesses that are not typically associated with a high risk profile and that is where that worker voice can make the most difference.So we are very pleased in the Greens to see this bill come in. It is really an important step. I still would say that the example we've had from Australia around small businesses that it's quite rare for them to actually have health and safety reps is—actually I'm not sure that's a good sign or something to be encouraging us around "Don't worry if you're reverting to thinking of costs in the first instance as opposed to benefits that they're not going to be so great." because Australia hasn't really realised that. I have a concern that sometimes it's because actually without a union in the workplace without the conversations about actually your rights as a person at work about that sense of collective value as well as looking after each other which is what comes with joining and being in the union a sense of actually responsibility to each other and having other people be watching out for you—without that actually the thought of being able to request a role of having a health and safety rep and a committee might actually not be something that people jump to because so many people feel as if they're just fighting this stuff by themselves and just have to put up with whatever is done to them or whatever their workplace throws at them and then they just look for another job if they've got enough of that mobility.So I do believe that default—and do not read that as compulsory even though I'm not going to be backing down from speaking to the value of unions because all of the evidence tells us that they are essential in terms of reducing inequality as well as improving safety in workplaces—union membership alongside this provision would actually help create the environment where more working people were able to have a sense of speaking up and requesting these health and safety reps to make their workplaces as productive and as safe as possible. People at the moment are being killed they are being physically injured and they are being harmed while they produce value for another person or business and that is just not right. You should be able to work and contribute and come home feeling more fulfilled at the end of the day."