Lees-Galloway Iain: Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4723. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I want to acknowledge my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor for introducing the Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill as a response to the tragedy that occurred within his own electorate which so deeply affected his electorate and which to this day still so deeply affects his electorate. I want to just comment on the final comment made by Jonathan Young there. He said that timing is everything and that there once was a time when this bill might have had a place but that that time has gone and has been overtaken by events and been overtaken by all the actions that the Government has taken. Oh if only that were the case. If only the Government actually maintained the focus on health and safety that it had in the days and weeks after the Pike River disaster.It was a wake-up call for all of us. Years and years of reliance on the ideological view that deregulation was the answer to everything led us ultimately to that tragedy occurring. In the days and weeks after it the Prime Minister said and did all the right things. The Government members said and did all the right things. They knew that they had no choice. It was politically untenable for the Government not to address health and safety not only in the mining sector but in all other industries in New Zealand. Our health and safety record in this country is woeful. We have twice the rate of death and injury that they have in the United Kingdom and in Australia their rate of injury at work is around just two-thirds what ours is here in New Zealand. We have to act. We have known that for a long time but it took this tragedy to get the Government to actually take action. And yes it did some things but as time has gone on as Pike River has become more and more of a distant memory and as we get close to the 5-year anniversary of that tragic day it has become something that has slipped slowly off the National Party’s political radar.It is out of frustration for the fact that that has happened that my colleague Damien O’Connor has introduced this legislation and left it on the Order Paper even though it has been sitting on the Order Paper for some time because of the National Party’s filibustering of a range of members’ bills on members’ day. It has remained on the Order Paper because it is still relevant. In fact it is more relevant now with the National Party divided over health and safety than it was a month ago. The National Party now is not sure if it wants to water down the health and safety reforms that it is introducing or beef them up with corporate manslaughter. It has no idea what it is doing on this. It is getting pulled in all directions by all its different corporate interests—by Talley’s which want there to be no health and safety legislation at all in New Zealand.Hon Annette King: And they’ve got the money.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: And they have got the money too. That is why: out of frustration that the Government has failed to actually finish the job and make sure that not only our underground coal mines are safe but our quarries are safe our forests are safe our farms are safe and our fishing vessels are safe—all those industries that are killing and maiming New Zealanders. We should still be focused like a laser on addressing those issues. But it is no longer a focus for this Government.We are still waiting to see what it is that the Government wants to do since it has delayed the health and safety legislation. We have no idea what it is that the Government actually plans to do with that legislation. I think it has no idea what it plans to do with that legislation. All it knows is it is not in its DNA to make workplaces safer. So I say to the Government members: demonstrate to the people of New Zealand that it is in your DNA that it is something that you are committed to and that it is something you are focused on by supporting this legislation in the name of the Hon Damien O’Connor. Do not forget Pike River—do not forget Pike River. Finish the job and make not only our mines safer but every workplace in New Zealand safer.