Hague Kevin: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14603. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): It is a pleasure to take my first call on Part 2 of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. I want to I guess echo some of the comments of praise that others have already made in this debate around some of the provisions of Part 2. There is no question that the provisions that are set out in Part 2 represent a very substantial step forward. Perhaps in an echo of the comments I made in respect of Part 1 about the triangle of safety here in Part 2 we actually see an aspect of that triangle of safety implemented through the reintroduction of check inspectors. This means that workers employers and the Government are all playing their parts in ensuring workplace health and safety. There is no question in my mind that those provisions will result in safer underground mines.So the question then arises about the change that the Government has made to the bill to remove tunnelling and quarrying from the full coverage of the Part 2 provisions. If those full provisions result in safer underground mines there is no reason to suppose that they would not also result in safer tunnels and quarries. The question then is what the trigger factor ought to be that would result in those enhanced provisions for workplace health and safety. Our starting point is that we should be doing what we can to make every workplace as safe as it can be. The rationale that has so far been advanced by the Government for excluding tunnels and quarries from those full provisions is that those particular kinds of operations do not pose the same hazard of methane explosions that an underground coalmine does. I submit to the Chair and to the Committee that that is not an appropriate trigger provision.The Greens believe that perhaps a smarter threshold condition if we are not going to apply these provisions to all workplaces would be to include those workplaces that actually contain multiple hazards of serious harm. That threshold would capture quarries it would capture tunnels and it would capture other dangerous workplaces—like the forestry industry for example. That would seem to me to be a more sensible application of this Committee’s time and decision-making power. Rather than narrowing down those workplaces where we would apply the conditions that make for the greatest safety we should actually be looking to elaborate and figure out what other workplaces are like this in the sense that they actually contain those multiple hazards of serious harm and applying these provisions to them also.That is important because of the report of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and the evidence that the royal commission heard about the kinds of factors that lead to the kinds of incident that occurred at Pike River. The royal commission made it absolutely plain that the methane explosion was just one point in a whole range of things that went wrong in the Pike River mine. The evidence that the royal commission heard from Dr Kathleen Callaghan which I have referred to previously in this Chamber sets out some of the work of Professor James Reason around human factors behind disasters—behind things going wrong. He actually talks about the multiple layers of protection and the Swiss cheese model. This model says that if there are holes in each of these layers—and there will be—then unless they line up things turn out OK. But in that Swiss cheese model if those holes do line up—and what Kathleen Callaghan said was that at Pike River there were multiple layers and multiple holes. So for example the law itself the regulations around health and safety Pike River Coal’s provisions and policies around health and safety the health and safety training for workers in that mine the actual actions of the workers and the decisions made by the board of the Pike River Coal company each represented a layer that could have provided safety for the workers and that could have eliminated risk but each ofthose layers had holes in it. What Kathleen Callaghan said is that in that sort of environment where there are complex risks and multiple hazards it is the alignment of the holes which cannot be predicted that represents a serious hazard. We should be doing all we can to avoid that.Doing all that we can means actually applying that higher level of health and safety protection in all of the workplaces where such hazards exist. So yes sure a quarry does not have the same risk of a methane explosion but it does have as we on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee heard the risk of very serious injuries and death and it does have those multiple workplace hazards that could be reduced or eliminated—the holes in the Swiss cheese closed—by the kinds of provisions that are in Part 2 of this bill. So why on earth should we not apply those same provisions to those other complex and dangerous workplaces in quarries and in tunnels?The fact that the Government has chosen to not do that suggests to me that the Government has failed to understand that really basic conclusion out of the royal commission report on Pike River. What it was saying was that it is not about just one thing going wrong; it is about a whole chain of failures at every level. If there is one thing out of that royal commission report that we should be doing it is to actually learn from that learn from those multiple failures and do all we can to reduce or eliminate those multiple hazards. Quarrying and tunnelling are indeed industries that have those hazards and as I have said there are many other industries also. For that reason the Green Party will be supporting Andrew Little’s Supplementary Order Paper 388. We believe that the coverage in Part 2 for quarrying and tunnelling should be returned to the bill because no good reason has been advanced for it not to be.There is a similar exclusion that now applies—or will apply—in Part 3 as a result of the Minister of Labour’s Supplementary Order Paper 374. I certainly would make the same argument in relation to Part 3—that we should be extending all of the protections that are available in this bill to all of these workplaces and that means reintroduction of tunnelling and quarrying alongside underground mining.Part 2 certainly advances the case of health and safety in parts of the sector but disappointingly it fails to grasp the opportunity that was provided in this bill and fails to honour the promise of honouring the recommendations of the Pike River royal commission report. Thank you.