Roche Denise: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionRoche Denise: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 22 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14100. Text is subject to correction.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take the call for the Greens on the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. It is timely that this bill is in the House today given that yesterday we saw the first stage of the recovery process to attempt to recover the bodies of the 29 men who were left in the Pike River mine after the dreadful explosion in 2010. The Greens took up the call for a commission of inquiry into the factors that led up to that dreadful explosion and that tragedy and this is where this legislation picks up. We note that this legislation as it was introduced to the House and further as it comes back from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee today does not pick up all the recommendations that came from the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. Although we support this bill we think that thisbill could be strengthened and that those recommendations could certainly be picked up so that we have better health and safety in mines across Aotearoa New Zealand.There are three particular areas that we are concerned about. One is the scope of the legislation. The bill as it has been reported back actually reduces the scope of the legislation restricting how the legislation can be applied to various parts of the industry so that it applies only to underground mines. The justification for that I believe is that it is underground mines that carry a greater risk of explosions. But our view is that Part 2 of the bill should cover a wider sector of the industry. We do support of course the creation of the stand-alone agencyWorkSafe New Zealand. We fully endorse that. However we do have some concerns about the way its functions have been watered down. The legislation does not pick up on all the recommendations from the commission of inquiry about the functions. In fact the functions of the agency as set out in the legislation as it has been reported back look scarily a lot like what those of the Department of Labour looked like with the mine inspectorate there before the Pike River tragedy. The legislation says for example that mine inspectors will work alongside mine operators and encourage good health and safety practices but we know from what happened at Pike River that that was not enough to stop the mine operator cutting corners. Encouraging mine operators is all very well but you need very strong regulation and enforcement of regulation in order to improve health and safety in the workforce when there are strong financial imperatives to cut corners.This takes me to the third point which is the make-up of the board ofWorkSafe New Zealand. In Australia and other countries with good health and safety records a tripartite situation or a tripartite conversation is what is needed in order to provide best practice and a trusting relationship for health and safety regulations. That was the recommendation from the royal commission of inquiry as well. It suggested that the Government employers and workers—in this case union representatives—appoint their own representatives to work together to develop good health and safety practices. The legislation as it comes back to the House says only that the Minister will make the appointments and that they will have regard to those areas. That does not necessarily build a trusting environment in which to create really good health and safety practices. So it is the Green Party’s view that we should follow the task force’s recommendation that we need our workers to have a voice around this because they are the ones with their eyes on the job. They are the ones who need to be able to speak up.This legislation although it is very well intentioned needs to be I believe beefed up. We should certainly not be introducing the amendments in the Employment Relations Act which are going to mean that workers have less of a voice in the workplace. We will be supporting the bill.