Baillie ChrisCHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. This bill is yet another example of a solution looking for a problem and ACT certainly won't be supporting it. We see it actually as another cynical use of urgency to try and push this through the first reading. It makes you wonder—Michael Wood must have a lot of spare time on his hands constantly thinking How can I shaft businesses more and how can I look good in front of my union mates a bit more?" because it just seems that every single thing that this Government puts through is anti-business. Yet again there's no consideration of the imposition on businesses. The lack of facts that this is actually needed just aren't there and his inability to acknowledge that productivity should be the major consideration in any legislation. Probably the most important—and expected—is the complete lack of understanding of what really goes on in most businesses in New Zealand and I think the speech that he wrote for Minister Allan today indicated that.Health and safety just like training—welfare for staff is at the forefront of all business owners' minds. Contrary to the belief of the Greens to my left and Labour—employers are good people they care about their employees. It's their conditions it's their pay their welfare and their future. The way the left think only makes you think how awful they'd be if they ever took the plunge and became an employer.This bill makes a couple of pretty insignificant changes that really won't have any effect on how business is run except to cause more headaches and embolden union-minded employees. Jan Logie referred before that there should be "collegiality with all the unions from the workers"—they don't actually need it. They've got collegiality with the business; the business who is paying them: that's who their loyalty should be towards.But most employers in fact most of the employees that I speak to think that section 45 of the Health and Safety at Work Act is the most important and I'll just read it. It's entitled—and close your ears if you don't like it—"Duties of workers": "While at work a worker must (a) take reasonable care for his or her own health and safety … (b) take reasonable care that his or her acts or omissions do not adversely affect the health and safety of other persons and (c) comply with any reasonable instruction to comply with this Act … and (d) co-operate with any reasonable policy or procedure relating to health and safety at the workplace …" It relates to personal responsibility; quite a novel expectation—it's sometimes called the "common sense clause". I understand that you guys don't really get that unfortunately. I just heard an example before of an employee in a supermarket in the butchery section who was working a slicer slicing ham. On his own volition he took the safety guard off; he decided that he was invincible. He didn't have gloves on and sliced the top of his finger off. He got a $40000 payout—suppose that's OK.We're systematically trying to dumb down our workforce to ensure that it becomes completely dependent on the unions—and that's why we need unions obviously. Everything the Government does—pay rates holidays sick leave—they'll tell you the only way and we heard it just before the only way to improve it is through unions. They don't think that workers are competent enough to negotiate their own contracts pay hours or conditions. It's just so patronising; people don't need babysitting. This bill is a perfect example of bureaucracy and virtue signalling and we've heard that all week. We've heard from the grocery commission; we've got a grocery commission—and the supermarkets is an interesting one. During the debate on the Fair Pay Agreements Bill that other silly bill I heard my colleague from Nelson Rachel Boyack talk about how fantastic Countdown were because they were paying their staff well above the minimum wage—and that's because they made a profit; they make a profit. But now we have the Labour Government come in and say "It's too much of a profit. So we'll just cut that down a bit." And this is from the Government that let the supermarkets open throughout COVID. Oh and we've got the petrol police as well and it's just nuts and we got the Plain Language Bill. This bill is just like the Plain Language Bill; it's not enforceable it won't be enforced—there are no penalties it's just a silly bill and ACT definitely opposes it."