Little Andrew: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6088. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): As members who have participated in the debate so far have noted this is a very important bill and in a bill such as this the enforcement provisions are some of the most important parts of the bill. If we are going to have effective health and safety provisions requirements and obligations then it follows that we need to have effective enforcement requirements as well.Part 4 of the bill has prohibition notices improvement notices non-disturbance notices—all the paraphernalia that you would ordinarily expect and require in a bill of this type dealing with this sort of material. What I do not seein the bill—and perhaps the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety can answer this questionwhen he takes a call—is what allows a small business of maybe six or a dozen employees to be distinguished from a large corporate employer or a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) as it is now to be known. What guidance is there for WorkSafe inspectors and WorkSafe staff on the way that they are to approach small and medium sized businesses as opposed to the large corporates? I would just say that had the Minister tried harder and worked harder with parties in Parliament to deal with this issue as it ties back into the setting of obligations and the workplace representation issues which have been well canvassed and well debated then it might well be that we would have had a more well-rounded approach to enforcement than what appears in the legislation at the moment.This highlights an issue that I think is important to a lot of people: there is no point in having gilt-edged enforcement procedures—various notices; being able to resort to the Court of Appeal; giving not only WorkSafe but also private citizens workmates and the union that may be involved in the workplace the right to prosecute—if they are not also based on a foundation of good effective workplace representation. The problem with some of the enforcement provisions in here is that good as they are on paper they will come to nothing if a WorkSafe inspector going into the workplace and dealing with an alleged transgression does not have a starting point which is the workplace rules themselves the workplace culture the representation structures and the people in the workplace involved in health and safety. To that extent it may well be that absent some guidance about how smaller businesses are to be dealt with what might otherwise be good enforcement measures are simply not as effective. This goes to the heart of the matter.The reason why the Labour Party is so concerned about this legislation is that we had this opportunity to get the whole package right—to get the obligations right to get the form of representation and the guidance about workplace culture right and to get the enforcement provisions right as well. The sad thing is that without any movement—without any dialogue or further discussion with the Minister and his party and indeed other parties—we may well end this part of the lawmaking process and come back to the third reading to see a bill that is less adequate and certainly less effective than it might otherwise have been if a moment had been taken to address the issues that clearly the Minister has been trying to address in the past few weeks.It is vitalthat we get this stuff right particularly in those industries that have the worst track records for health and safety in those industries that have the largest number of ACC claims and in those industries where we see the largest number of fatalities and the largest number of serious harm accidents. It is vital that we get the workplace structures rules and obligations right and that we get the enforcement right as well. There is no point in having the power to give improvement notices the power for workplace inspectors to come in and give prohibition notices the power to give non-disturbance notices or the power to go to the District Court for enforcement orders if the underlying foundation of those enforcement provisions is weak or if theworkplace structures arenon-existent as they will invariably be in some workplaces.I call upon the Minister once again while we have a few hours of the Committee stage of this bill left to think very carefully and to see that we can make these improvements if he has a willingness to do so. The last thing we need at the end of the third reading stage is a piece of legislation in which New Zealand no longer has any confidence. That is not acceptable and I invite the Minister to tell us how effective these enforcement measures are going to be if we do not get the other provisions in the bill right.