Wood MichaelMARITIME TRANSPORT AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 10 August.MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch while I do not have the same long association with you can I just echo the comments of the previous speaker Mr Muller. I think this is probably going to be the last speech that I am able to give in this House and as the newest member of the House can I just note that I have appreciated the guidance and encouragement that you have given me as you give to many members of this House in your role as Assistant Speaker and sometimes as the Chairperson. I really do wish you the very very best in the next challenges that you will no doubt embark upon. Thank you.We come now to the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill. This is a bill that the Labour Party has considered based on the evidence that was presented to us at the select committee stage. In the first reading of this bill the Labour Party was prepared to support the passage of the bill through to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee so that we could really hear what the maritime transport community had to say about the provisions within it. There are a number of quite distinct provisions and we thought there was enough in there that we needed to get those submissions so that we could come to a fully informed view on the matter. Having worked through that process it is the view of the Labour Party that we cannot support the further passage of this bill.The bill has a number of key provisions—three key provisions effectively. The first is around managing the risk of alcohol and drug impairment in the commercial maritime sector. We think that is a good goal—I am going to talk about this in a bit more detail later on—but fundamentally we think that the provisions in the bill especially in respect of mandatory drug and alcohol testing are not justified and will not necessarily deliver to us the benefits that we would all want to be delivered. The second significant part of the bill relates to international compensation arrangements for maritime incidents. That part of the bill is one that we think the Government has pretty much got right. There is no doubt that we need to strengthen the requirements in that area because of the significant commercial and environmental risks that are posed in the event of a maritime incident. The third major area in the bill relates to effectively the deregulation of shipping services to the Chatham Islands. Again based on the submissions that we have heard at the select committee we have real concerns that there might in fact be some perverse outcomes arising out of what is proposed in the bill in that area. So basically there are two crosses out of three for us in terms of the main provisions of the bill and on that basis we are not prepared to see it proceed.What I might say before I go into more detail on each of those aspects is that the Labour Party really really strongly supports a more integrated national transport system and far greater onus being placed on the maritime transport sector and particularly coastal shipping. This is a sector that has actually been really really neglected for quite a long time. In 2008 the Labour Party when we were last in Government launched the Sea Change strategy which was about really energising and investing in the coastal shipping sector. Why is that? Because the potential of moving freight efficiently and in significant volumes around our country on the blue highway of the open seas is there for a small island nation like ours and the more freight that we can move around by coastal shipping the more that we get off our congested and very busy regional roads. So we really support the sector—I think probably everyone in this House does—and we want to see some good rules to support that sector but as I say we do have real concerns about two of the aspects of this bill.Let me start by talking about aspect No. 1 which is the shift towards a mandatory system of random drug and alcohol testing within the maritime transport sector. We have got a real concern about this because every single submission virtually that we heard on this aspect was opposed—from the workforce as represented by the various unions in the sector but also from the employers in fact. There was not really any significant support from submitters for what was being proposed at the select committee. It was actually really difficult for us to understand what the driver for this particular change is. Was there any systemic evidence of a massive problem that will be solved by the particular policy that is being proposed here—mandatory random testing? There was no real rationale that was set out.Actually one of the in principle concerns I have got is that it is my view that we should have as far as possible a level of consistency of law across important areas. In this area only 2 or 3 years ago the House passed a major piece of legislation to reform health and safety law in our country the Health and Safety at Work Act which of course came in the wake of the Pike River tragedy. It had wide support across this House. It set out a modernised and revised legislative framework for how we manage health and safety risks in the whole range of workplaces across New Zealand. It is a risk-based framework where in every single workplace you have to assess the risks you have to work out how you are going to deal with those risks—whether you are going to eliminate them or whether you can minimise them—and you have to set out plans for doing so. It puts responsibility on the employer in particular for ensuring that those plans are put in place and there are real penalties that come in behind that.I suppose in respect of this area my question is: why would we not simply be using that framework to govern the real risks that we all recognise of people being impaired by drugs and alcohol in this particular workplace? There is actually no piece of evidence before us that that is not an appropriate framework. Instead we are picking out this particular sector and saying we are going to have mandatory drug and alcohol testing on the employees in that sector. I for the life of me cannot understand why that is and actually on this side of the House we think there is a level of injustice in picking out one particular group of workers for what is effectively quite an invasive and virtually compulsory testing regime. One of the concerns I have got is that I think we are a little bit mealy-mouthed in terms of the compulsion that is involved here in the bill. The bill sort of suggests that employees can choose not to proceed with the random drug and alcohol testing but in reality we know what happens if the employees do not consent to that. Effectively it is a compulsory regime and I think when you are putting in place a compulsory and invasive regime like that where someone's employment is effectively on the line there should be some very very strong policy reasons and an evidential basis sitting behind that. Once again we simply did not hear that at the select committee stage and so we strongly reject that part of the bill.I just really want to hammer home this point. This was not just the self-interested position from employees in the sector. It was the employers as well who were very strong in this area. What they said to the select committee was that they were already working on this in a very proactive way. They said that they had already got plans in place that they had got significant education being rolled out across their workforce and that it was in everyone's interests—the employer and the employees—to work collaboratively on this. As soon as you start setting up compulsory testing regimes like this you create a divide in the workplace between the employer and employee. We have real concerns that that might in fact be quite counter-productive.The second real area of concern that we have is the opening up of the Chatham Islands shipping route to foreign-flag vessels. Again this is one where the people themselves who are most affected spoke to us at the select committee stage. Every single submission that the select committee heard coming from people and organisations on the Chatham Islands said that they did not support this. To me it really feels like there is just a bit of ideology at work here because what we heard from submitters is that people on the Chatham Islands currently have a very good service and of course it is an important service. The Chatham Islands is extremely isolated and it relies on a maritime service to get goods to and from the island. It is extremely important for lifestyle reasons for health and safety reasons for just being able to live on that island. But of course there are only 600 people who live on the Chatham Islands. If Annette King were in the seat here she would be able to tell us a whole lot more information about the Chatham Islands for which she is the very proud member. But only 600 people live there. I think there might be something like 400 people working in this entire complex. So the population of the Chatham Islands is not that much bigger than all the people who work in the parliamentary complex.So you have got to ask yourself: could that small population possibly sustain multiple operators? It does not take very long to come to the conclusion that it probably cannot. So the real fear that the people of the Chatham Islands have is that if we open it up to foreign-flag competition that will have operators coming in who potentially run knock-down prices to begin with to get market share getting rid of the existing operator that people have relied on for a long time. They are very happy with the service they currently have and it just does not seem like there is any particular rhyme or reason or evidence that this is going to benefit anyone whatsoever. So we stand with the people of the Chatham Islands who have said: Just leave us alone. We have got a good service. We know how this works. Keep out of it Mainlanders and leave us with the service we have at the moment. We don't need foreign-flag vessels here."I am coming to the end of my time but I think I have covered off the two major concerns that the Labour Party has about this bill and the reasons why we will be voting against it at further stages. I am not sure what progress we are going to make in terms of getting towards the end of the bill before the end of this parliamentary sessions but I beseech other members of the House to consider those concerns that have come through at the select committee and vote against this bill. Thank you."