Faafoi Kris: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6131. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is a pleasure to speak to Part 6 of the Health and Safety Reform Bill. Like a number of my colleagues I am going to ask a few questions around clause 244 and that is the insertion of sections 174A to 174F. A number of my colleagues have spoken to sections 174A 174B 174C and 174E. But I would like to ask the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety a couple of questions around sections 174D and 174F and that is that I think in principle the setting up of an incentive programme could be a good thing. A number of my colleagues have asked questions about who it will financially benefit the most. They are set up to try to make workplaces safer places and I do note that under section 174D(3) there is the ability for an audit of the incentive schemes and whether or not they have been successful.I do also note that in section 174F there is an onus on ACC within its annual report to report on the effectiveness of any incentive schemes. I pose a hypothetical question to the Minister and that is: if an incentive programme has been set up and an employer or a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) is essentially getting a discount on its levy because it has an incentive programme if after 2 or 3 years of auditing and of any results published in annual reports the safety or the record on workplaces is not any better or is in fact worse what kind of redress would there be to effectively say well OK you have not performed as well as you should have under this incentive programme and therefore can we have the money back?If there is a financial incentive there for a company and in the initial stages it does put something in place but it is not effective the taxpayers are essentially giving that company a discount on its ACC levies payable. Its duty should be to pay the appropriate ACC levy. But nothing has changed; in fact things get worse. What possibility do we have of getting back that money that the company should have and could have paid if it was not part of an incentive programme? Just looking at as a first cast sections 174D(3) and 174F they certainly set out the ability to audit and for an annual report but I do not see anywhere here—maybe the Minister could clarify it for me—any redress on behalf of ACC via the taxpayer to get that money back.As I said at the beginning of my contribution an incentive programme should be and could be a good thing and it obviously is going to be of financial benefit if the company does put something in place and it does improve its workplace record. But what if it does not? The onus of this bill is to make workplaces safer so that is what that does. If we do not achieve that and this company has got a discount off its ACC levies well can we go back to that company or that PCBU and say “Well give the money back.”? It could be a substantial amount of money that has been discounted over the period of time which was meant to be under the incentive programme to make the workplace better. If they do not do that then I guess the question has to be asked: what kind of redress is there for the taxpayer for the State to say “You haven’t held your part of the deal. This workplace isn’t any safer under the incentive programme that you signed up to. We gave you a discount.”? But under new sections 174A to 174F in clause 244 I do not see anything that shows any type of redress for the taxpayer for the Accident Compensation Corporation to get that money back.So we are all for encouraging in this bill but I think we should have a framework within this bill that shows that if you sign up to this thing and you cannot pull your weight and your workplace is not any safer—in fact in some cases your workplace may be even more dangerous through more incidents—then I think the question needs to be asked because there does not seem to be anything within this legislation that suggests that there is any redress under these incentive programmes. So although there is a carrot I do not see any stick in this piece of legislation. If you are going to give someone a carrot then there needs to be a stick. I would put that to the Minister—whether or not there is a stick within Part 6 of this piece of legislation.I would like to put it in the context of someone local—Mark Samoa whom I have mentioned many times and used as a frame for a lot of my speeches in this debate. Mr Samoa was a worker at the ports here in Wellington. He was killed on the waterfront—he was crushed between some bales of pulp. When the High Court brought down its decision it ruled that there were no processes in place no safeguards in place that were there to keep Mr Samoa safe in his workplace. I do not want to go into too much more detail of his particular case but if his workplace was part of an incentive programme—and I add that it changed things post his death and post the High Court ruling on his death—and if it had not made changes and maybe it will and if it did not make it effectively any safer for the colleagues of Mr Samoa since he has passed away and if it was looking for an incentive i.e. a discount on its ACC levies then why should we let it get away with it if it is not meeting its obligations?I guess that goes to what this whole piece of legislation is about: obligations of health and safety under this new piece of legislation. I do not know but I am assuming that Mr Samoa’s workplace did have more than 20 people but if it did not—and here is the stinger for this side of the Committee. A lot of these things we are debating in Part 6—some of which are worthy of us supporting. But because of something in Part 3 I think it is of the bill we cannot support this legislation.So we do question the Government’s motives around this—a lot of good in this piece of legislation we cannot support—and why it changed its mind at the last minute. We know it did. We know that in terms of the agricultural industry which does have a long track record of being very unsafe it will not be captured under there but there are a multitude of other industries that will. I think that it is from my perspective anyway far too serious an issue to make light of here because there are people like Mark Samoa’s family who wanted this piece of legislation to be much better than it actually is.So from my perspective in terms of Part 6 I ask the Minister: where is the stick? There is plenty of carrot. We want to see whether there is going to be an audit and a reporting duty on ACC because the Government is giving some of these PCBUs a discount. There should be an onus on them if they do not meet their obligations to keep their workers safe to make sure that we can get that money back. Because if they are going to get a discount and they are not pulling their weight we do not think that they should keep that discount. The taxpayer should get that money back.