Roche DeniseDENISE ROCHE (Green): I am taking this opportunity because on Friday it was Workers' Memorial Day which is the time when we should all reflect on the number of people who go to work and actually never come back. In fact in the previous 3 weeks seven people have died on the job.In my contribution to this debate I want to talk about the annual review that we did with WorkSafe New Zealand which I have to say is working incredibly hard to try to turn around what was quite a huge number of people who were dying at work—to turn that around.In the review period that we were looking at—2015-16—there had been 59 deaths at work. But since 2012 in the targets that WorkSafe has been setting that has actually been trending downwards and it should be congratulated. Unfortunately there were something like 230000 ACC claims at the same time for work-related injuries and that has been trending upwards. On top of those injuries and deaths at work there was also between 600 and 900 deaths from work-related illnesses most of which were airborne.When we look at that and we look at the fact that our economy runs on our workforce we need to be looking at what sort of an investment we are putting into ensuring that that workforce is safe. I have to say that this Government has taken a very cavalier approach to industrial relations which is how workers have traditionally maintained safety on the job. I guess we just have to look at the 29 deaths in the tragedy at the Pike River mine to look at how cavalier things can become when unions are not on site and are not as active and when there is limited monitoring and compliance.That I guess is the crux of the matter. The health and safety inspectors that we have are pressed to the max. If you think about the number of small workplaces that we have in this country and we are looking at tens of thousands—I think I saw something like 78000 in one area alone—if you look at those worksites and you look at the ability for health and safety inspectors to actually monitor the conditions there it is just totally impossible. We have seen through the labour inspectorate which has been visiting smaller worksites particularly in the agricultural sector which has the highest fatality rates that there has been a real breach of minimum employment standards right across the board in terms of minimum pay hours of work holidays sick leave record-keeping—just basic standards not being met.If you think about those small worksites in the agricultural sector maybe in farming what you have there as well is a high prevalence of workers who are originally not from this country—people who have come here who obviously are contributing to our economy but are frequently in an isolated situation where they are vulnerable to exploitation. We see this time and time again and this is something that we definitely need to be keeping an eye on particularly when we are looking at our immigration policies.That is the difference between this country and lots of other countries. Here in New Zealand you are four times more likely to die at work than if you are a worker in the UK. Australia beats us as well; you are twice as likely to die here in New Zealand than if you are a worker in Australia. And it is just not acceptable because we could be investing more in our people more in our businesses to ensure that people are safe at work and that they are getting the minimum rates of pay and conditions. What we need to be doing is we need to be ensuring that our unions are able to take their part in ensuring that our workers can participate in health and safety—and that was the thing that was gutted in the health and safety Act that was enacted in that 2015 year. So this is a missed opportunity. We could be doing much better and I hope we will.