Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm happy to take a call on the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. I'll just pick up on a couple of the comments made by the last speaker Angela Roberts. Firstly her point that we keep hearing about costs the point I would make to that speaker is yes and you continually don't listen. I want to give the House a case of a small-business owner who I had a conversation with about this bill who was echoing many of the sentiments of the submitters who came to speak on the bill because she was saying to me Erica my business is barely viable because of all of the increased costs." And some of the costs are those that the previous speaker from the National Party side spoke of about the increase in extra leave—sick leave public holidays—wage increases general cost increases. She said "My business is squeezed." I said to her "Well here's something that's coming down the pipeline in this bill." When I explained it to her she just threw her hands up and said "When will the assault on small businesses in this country stop?" She said "My business is barely viable as it is with all of the additional costs over the last few years and this is just another thing on top of another thing that we don't need." So when the previous speaker says "We keep hearing about the costs." well this is a business owner who is in the eye of the storm of these costs and she just wants this Government to listen and say "Actually stop putting all of these burdens on us because we are sinking rather than swimming and that's what we want for our businesses." The other thing that the last speaker mentioned was "Look I've got this on my CV employ me." and that's one of the points that I was going to make in my contribution around the fact that regardless of the need the requirement for a health and safety representative committee and formal process for these small businesses regardless of whether or not there have been health and safety breaches or it's an unsafe workplace regardless of the fact that it might be the safest workplace with no breaches and everything's been working fine if an employee decides that they want to go down this track and make a request of the employer then the employer has no choice: they must oblige. And so in the case of a business where there have been no breaches where there is a perfect safety record they still have to—regardless of all of that—say yes to the worker so that in response to the last speaker yes that employee can have it on their CV and have it as a great thing to say to the next employer: "Look what I've got on my CV." at the cost of the last employer who had no choice regardless of the fact that his business was actually perfectly safe and he only had two employees.We spent hours—it's almost to the point of being amusing—in select committee talking about two words. I want to just turn now to the fact that there was one small change made to the bill and there were hours of deliberation over this around the fact that replacement section 62 inserted by clause 4 said a worker "may notify" and section 62(2) said if a person conducting the business or undertaking (PCBU) "receives notification". The majority of the committee decided that that was in contrast with replacement section 66 inserted by clause 5 which says workers "may request" the PCBU to establish a health and safety committee and then the PCBU must establish a committee after receiving a request. So using the terms apparently "notify" and "notification" and then "request" may well have been confusing. The committee decided by majority about the different actions that are required because of these two different words and decided that "notify" might mean a more formal process. So we had to make it very clear in our select committee report that that was not the intent—that it's not around a super formal process that has to be in writing for example. So we went down the track of changing everything so it all lined up to say "request" but we have said in our deliberations that that does not imply that the PCBU can decline because when you think about the word "request" it indicates that there could be a declining of that request; we have made it very clear in our select committee report that action must be taken. So many hours spent poring over the words "notify" and "request" and then ending up with "request" but making the note that request cannot be declined. So that was the only change that was made to the bill. We won't be supporting this bill as my colleague Paul Goldsmith has already given many reasons for. But I think in the end it comes down to a balance. You know the National Government that put in place these rules realised the cost—the enormous cost on small businesses—and set that level of 20 employees. We don't believe that the balance needs to be shifted in this case. And actually this bill we think goes too far in that it forces employers once a request is made to put in place a health and safety representative and committee regardless of their track record and regardless of the health and safety potential problems in that business. So for that reason and for the all of the additional costs that have been piling up on our small businesses we will be voting against this bill. And I say to the woman that I was in the car with the other day who was talking about all of these additional costs and the fact that she's barely holding her head above water and that this would just be another thing that would potentially mean that her business wasn't viable—I say to her that the National Party will continue to stand up for the 105000 small businesses around the country that will be impacted by this law and vote against this and other similar legislation which just puts more and more costs on our small businesses who actually in these times we need to fire up. Thank you."