Mitchell Clayton: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 27 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6285. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Today I have removed my yellow ribbon which I have been wearing for a week and put on a blue ribbon—partially because it is a bit of a sad day I think for New Zealand with this legislation arising from the Health and Safety Reform Bill about to be passed in the House given the numbers that the Government has in support to put this through. Also it is partly to acknowledge the importance of being aware of prostate cancer. We are wearing the ribbons a little bit early to think ahead and to avoid a Freudian slip I think it is important to go for those annual check-ups and make sure you keep yourself safe. It is a very sad day.The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—I have really enjoyed the last 11 months working with a number of colleagues. It was great that Judith Collins removed herself and went to another select committee. I thought that we got more work done and it was far more productive. But I think many times we left that chamber and those discussions a little bit bewildered and confused—and certainly I was—about the lack of common sense that the Government was showing a little bit of ignorance perhaps around what constitutes health and safety.I have heard from only a few members in the Committee of the whole House with regard to what makes up New Zealand’s workforce. Mr Bailey I think you summed it up beautifully when you said that 97 percent of New Zealand business is actually made up of small and medium sized businesses. That works out to be around about one-third of the entire workforce of people employed in New Zealand who are employed in those small and medium sized businesses—30 percent. The reality is that 30 percent of people under this new legislation will not have any new safety conditions imposed on them and there will be no ground-up culture change within those businesses to actually help those businesses look after their workers.In actual fact if we look at the existing bill as it sits at the moment had we gone back and had the foresight to adjust and change that legislation we would actually see that it needed some serious tidying and titivating and the reality is that we would get better engagement from workers and we obviously need some better funding to ensure that we have those health and safety inspectors. I think that this Government has sold itself short. It is a yeah yeah nah kind of new piece of legislation. It is same-same but different in the reality of things.Mr Ian Lees-Galloway I have to say it was a very very powerful speech and I absolutely support where the Labour Party has been although I would have to give you a bit of a smack and say that the reality is that you are talking about harm minimisation in the workplace—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Suggesting that you might give me a smack is probably not a good idea. It has got a bit of history.CLAYTON MITCHELL: I do apologise Mr Assistant Speaker. I was of course talking metaphoricallyand I certainly was not referring to you Mr Assistant Speaker. The reality is though that there was an opportunity for the Labour Party members to stand up and support one of our amendments—a very powerful amendment—which was to reduce the numbers of workers required in a workplace in order to get engagement for a health and safety representative. There was an opportunity to reduce that from 20 workers down to 10 workers which would have had a massive impact on those small and medium sized businesses and would have actually got it down to only 10 percent of the working population who would not have been eligible for a health and safety representative. Yet there was no noise—there was no noise from this side of the House or from the Greens to support that balanced situation.Then again I would like to commend Labour for its support of our amendment in relation to getting the Government to front-foot the cost of health and safety representatives. We in New Zealand First understand that the right way to get proper engagement and a culture shift from the bottom up is to have those health and safety representatives. But there is an ever-increasing cost of running these small businesses that I think we could have avoided by simply getting the Government to fund the cost of the courses for health and safety representatives and by covering the travel and the fair and reasonable costs associated with their training. In fact that is a minor cost but front-footing it would make a huge difference.The intention of this legislation is to reduce the amount of fatalities—work-related fatalities—and harm in workplaces by 25 percent over the next 5 years. But why not by 40 percent; why not by 60 percent; why not by 100 percent? Why can we sell ourselves so short and be so short-sighted as to actually not think about what would make a real difference to all workplaces in this country and set the bar so low that we think only 25 percent could be actually achieved? At the same time we could achieve those much lower fatalities in our workplace. It does not have to be at the expense and the cost of small and medium sized businesses which will be feeling the extra cost of compliance and the squeeze on them.Let me run you through another one of our amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 110. This would amend clause 28 to remedy the issue around personal protective equipment. Under current legislation and under this new legislation no levy can be imposed on a worker for their personal protective equipment. Again we absolutely commend that. They should not have to cover the cost of their personal protective equipment. But again we say: what about personal responsibility? What about putting an amendment in to ensure that those workers look after that equipment? That is not too onerous—to expect a worker to look after their safety goggles hats work boots and high-vis jackets and if they do not a small levy or charge to be imposed to cover the cost of that personal protective equipment. But no the National Government did not support our amendment. It was gone into the ether and that I think will come back in spades against this Government with this new legislation.Again when I look down at the number of amendments that we have suggested—I would like to just go through those. The amendment to remove clause 29AA—currently this will have a massive effect. Clause 29AA absolutely removes the right of an employer—or a PCBU if you want to use your acronyms—to actually protect themself on a financial basis. The reality is that if you are going to be seconded on to a board where you might have 200 or 300 500 or 600 staff—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!CLAYTON MITCHELL: Mr Assistant Speaker I apologise.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Yes. The member has been here for some time now and I think he has just got to get out of that habit of bringing the Speaker into the debate.CLAYTON MITCHELL: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I shall refrain from that term. The reality is if you can—you nearly got me again I tell you. I can see you. Right. To remove clause 29AA would make a huge difference by making it possible to indemnify a board member who sits on a board. To have that clause there now makes it very difficult for and very onerous on people taking on those responsibilities of large organisations like council-controlled organisations. That I think should not be in this legislation and it is one of the things that makes it very difficult for us.In fact we were so close to supporting this. We thought that if we could get to the point where some of these amendments were agreed to by the Government we would actually be 100 percent behind this bill but we might as well be a million miles away. We are so far away because we have missed out on so many of the positives that we could change.The next clause that I come to is clause 43. This is going to largely affect all of those spouses—husbands and wives—and partners in a farming situation. In the situation where a husband is out on the farm and has an accidental death and loses his life—it might be because of a quad bike or it might be because of a tractor; we do not want to go into the details—under this new legislation the wife as a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) and as a worker will be legally culpable and could be up for some very hefty fines. Ultimately this legislation could leave the spouse without a farm as well as be left without a husband. This is one of the very important unintended consequences of this bill that we tried to remove by amending clause 43.Then we go down the page on Supplementary Order Paper 110 to the insertion of clause 65AA which we have spoken about. Clause 65AA was to cover the training costs. We said that if there were going to be no costs incurred on the employer then we would support there being no limit on when there can be engagement with a representative and had it got through we would have supported Labour in terms of 100 percent engagement.Clauses 65 and 66 are about the work groups. This is a minor amendment. In a situation where you have a disagreement between a worker and the boss and they cannot decide what is going to constitute a work group we have simply said it would make sense to get an independent arbitrator in to actually determine what that work group is going to be and that arbitrator would be WorkSafe.Just to finish off I would like to say that we are also very concerned about the unintended consequences of well-intentioned voluntary acts. Say you have got a farmer. He has just finished off for the day. He has clocked out and he is heading home and on the way home he sees some animals on the side of the road and he wants to get them back into a pen. In the event of an accident occurring with the stock running on to the road and causing an accident or vice versa we want to protect those small businesses and those farms. Unfortunately we cannot support this legislation in the way it sits in the House today.