Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Madam Speaker. I love talking about workplace accidents because I think people on the other side there are actually showing a few workplace accidents lately. I just wish someone in their caucus might have put up their hand and said We've got some things going wrong here." But do we have anyone in the Labour caucus stand up and say that? No I don't think so. Oh no.But anyway coming back to this bill. This is a classic tick the box to the 2020 election manifesto. "When's the next election? Oh it's getting a bit close isn't it? Oh we'd better ram this through." And guess who's ramming it through! Well the latest casualty of workplace accidents: the Hon Michael Wood. I was just thinking of extending that but I thought no I'll just localise that to him.But the issue is this is a poor piece of legislation. And no wonder Michael Wood is pushing it through because of course he is known to have very strong ties to certain organisations that will want to bring about these sorts of changes and personally I don't think for the better. Just for the record Pike River employed 174 people. So even under the so-called National proposals of 20 or more there would have been multiple chances multiple opportunities and an absolute requirement for a health and safety committee to be set up under the proposed and current Act. So the proposition—and I think the Minister was actually showing poor form talking about Pike River in the context that this would have helped this situation. I am not sure that is the situation because if you have 20 or more employees then there is an automatic right to establish a representative or a committee.So just talking about this bill. The Minister when we were questioning him at the committee of the whole House—and I've got to say I wasn't on the select committee but I was on the original committee that passed the original Act. I put to him the situation that this bill will lead to. You have an owner of the business mum and dad been working and grafting for 20 years got a printing firm or something—I don't know—and they happen to have one employee. And the one employee suddenly one day wakes up and goes "Hey Mr and Mrs I think we should have a health and safety representative." So that one person could form a health and safety representative. And of course they'd go away and do all the training. There is no need for that situation. The underlying premise that Labour keep assuming is that there's this confrontational issue between owners of businesses and their staff.As the member quite rightly pointed out before owners of businesses know that the important part of their business is always their staff. This assumption that they're so contentious it's such an ugly relationship that people can't start talking about health and safety and feel unsafe for bringing it up with either the manager or the owners—that proposition is wrong. You could have the absurd—and this is what the Minister said wasn't absurd—situation where a company with one employee ends up having a health and safety representative comprising that one employee. That is ridiculous.The issue I kept asking the Minister in the committee of the whole House is why do you not believe that a majority should rule? After all we act in this House here on majority rules. The Labour Party control Parliament and they will ram through this piece of legislation. It doesn't matter what I say or what Mr Goldsmith says and that is the normal course of events. So the way we dealt with it is that in the Act we said 20 or more could require it and the issue is that you end up with a piece of legislation which is absurd and it is wrong. Of course we want to see safer health practices in workplaces. There shouldn't be an issue with that. People should be able to request to go away on a course and it costs what? It costs $1300 to $1800. I don't think any businesses would have a problem with that. But the one thing that the Act has which is done away with now in this bill is that it did highlight those industries of particular risk and it is wrong to remove that. Those businesses acting in higher-risk categories like our farming and our building and construction sectors should be subject to much higher rigorous enforcement around health and safety. But this has been done away with in this bill and that is wrong and the concept that you could have one—what about if you have four employees or five employees? Why shouldn't the majority decide? Why should only one person even though 99 percent of other people in that same business disagree with that one person? Why should that one person who may be a zealot or may have other ulterior motives be the one that is the sole determinant of what goes on in that business? It should be by agreement of the employees. And if their employers agree with it fine. But under this rule one person—and it could be a recalcitrant person and I'm not saying it may not be for the right reasons but it could be for other ulterior motives—can shape the future and the arrangements of that business. That is wrong. And the other thing I'd like to highlight which came out during the committee of the whole House is that there was meant to be a formal review of the health and safety Act in 2018 and the Minister admitted that that had not taken place even though that was a legislative requirement. I put it to you and I put it to the Labour members of this House that they have not complied with the Act. And luckily for the Government I do not understand why it has not met the requirements of the Act. They want to push through a new piece of legislation but they haven't even met the requirements of the existing legislation. That is fundamentally wrong—fundamentally wrong. And if it was a private enterprise and health and safety came in here and said to Labour "Why didn't you review this?" can you imagine saying if you're a company "I haven't reviewed my policies since 2018 because I chose not to."—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Could the member be very careful not to bring the Speaker into the debate.ANDREW BAYLY: Yup. So if health and safety came in and said to a private enterprise that they hadn't reviewed their health and safety frameworks their hazard risks all those sorts of things because they've chosen not to that would be a case for being sued by the health and safety committee. So this is wrong this is a huge point in this legislation and this bill in my view is not going to add significantly to improving health and safety. People should be able to have those conversations. There are already well-intentioned well-provisioned provisions in the Act and there is no case that has been demonstrated and no case in the RIS—the regulatory impact statement—that says that this is going to lead to better outcomes. All it's going to end up with is funny little arrangements that will not necessarily improve the health and safety of New Zealanders. We should be focused on those high-risk industries and making sure they particularly get it right. And of course this does away with that in this bill."