Curran Clare: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 20 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:6061. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): This is my first contribution in this debate and we are in Part 3 of the bill. I want to address my remarks to clauses 65(3) 86A and 120. Before I do so given that it is my first contribution I do want to acknowledge the family members who spoke on Tuesday night at Parliament and who are in our thoughts as we speak today and all of the family members and friends and work colleagues of those who are listening and watching this debate at home with heavy hearts as they see what should be a very important piece of legislation a landmark piece of legislation being turned into a much reduced and watered-down piece of legislation.It is incumbent on each one of us as elected representatives to do our solemn duty on this bill the duty that we pledge when we take up office as elected members. That duty is to represent our constituents to truly represent our constituents and to strive for the best and fairest outcomes in law. Unfortunately this piece of legislation does not do that and sadly we cannot support it.When the Minister Michael Woodhouse gave his introductory remarks on Part 3 he described this as being I think the meat and drink of the legislation—a rather odd phrase but I think I know what he meant—but then he proceeded to talk about nuanced approaches and sensible and balance approaches which are really code for watering down.I turn now to clause 65(3) and as my colleague Megan Woods said before this is the essence of why we are opposing this bill—because of the cap that is being put on workplaces and because of the exclusion of high-risk industries such as agriculture. Before I address that I would just like to take issue with one of the things that the Minister did say in his introductory remarks. He said that he has been able to find no correlation between the presence of health and safety representatives in workplaces and the prevention of death and injury in workplaces which I find an extraordinary thing to say. I just want to give an example that is a bit close to home for the Minister and me.The example concerns Dunedin Hospital where a work and safety representative—an elected work and safety representative in the hospital theatres—managed to have the courage to speak out publicly about the very serious issues within those theatres that were creating risk every day for the workforce and for patients in that hospital. It was her courage in speaking out publicly that managed to really crack that issue open and get some real movement in that hospital in terms of getting some of the repair work done. Clearly there is a lot more to be done and there are a lot more issues. She was—and is—an elected health and safety representative. She is a nurse. She represents an industry that spends its whole time caring for people and she had the courage to speak out because she knew that her position was an elected position that had some weight in law and in that workplace. The Minister’s fatuous statement around no correlation existing is I think one of the great travesties in the debate on this issue.Turning to clause 65(3) the creative accounting as I would like to call it from the former accountant in the Minister in terms of the exclusion of agriculture as a high-risk industry is one of the most extraordinary things in this bill. To give that some context I asked for the figures in my own region. I managed to get the figures and the descriptions for only the last 3 years for workplace fatalities in Otago and Southland so they are since 2013. Of those 20 fatalities 13 were from agriculture.