Twyford Phil: Health and Safety Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Health and Safety Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 30 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5540. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to make two points. The first is that elected health and safety representatives are not some kind of optional “nice-to-have”; they are a vital part of an effective health and safety system. To see why we need them look no further than the Pike River mine disaster. The Pike River Coal story is a story of a company that through incompetence and the venal pursuit of profit and its own survival put its employees at catastrophic risk because a hopeless woeful health and safety system allowed it to do that.Pike River Coal was a bunch of cowboys more interested in glossing up their prospectus for investors than running a safe and efficient coalmine. As Rebecca Macfie wrote the company posed as an exemplar of modern health and safety management when in reality it was skating at the edge of catastrophe. The failings of the company are now well documented. There were numerous warnings about high methane coal and the difficult geology of the site which the company routinely ignored over two decades.Hon David Parker: Represented in their prospectus.PHIL TWYFORD: They did indeed. The mine had no way for the miners to get out other than the way they had gone in. The only emergency exit was a ventilation shaft with a ladder almost unusable even for strong men and worse than useless in disaster conditions. The main ventilation fan was underground where it could not be reached when things went wrong. Fixed methane sensors in the mine were not maintained and left not working. There were inadequate methane draining systems. Numerous reports are documented of reports of excess methane being routinely ignored.The company had an anti-union culture and any dissenting voices were bullied into silence and in some cases driven out of the company. If ever there were an illustration of why strong independent worker representation on health and safety is needed to provide a check on the worst most unscrupulous employers the Pike River mine is it. But the behaviour and the qualities shown by the management of Pike River Coal are not unique. They are not confined solely to mining. They exist wherever bad employers are found.The second point I want to make is that workers in small businesses deserve just as much protection at work as anybody else. Carving out those who work for businesses with fewer than 20 workers will deny more than 300000 New Zealanders the protection at work that they deserve. Charanpreet Singh Dhaliwal was 22 years old when he died. It was his first night on the job. He was a security guard on a construction site in Henderson in my electorate in November 2013. He was bashed to death with a lump of wood after he disturbed four thugs who had entered the construction site.The small fly-by-night security firm that sent Charanpreet to his death had given him no training and no equipment. He got a 20-minute induction from another young worker who himself had had only one night’s experience on the job. Charanpreet was sent alone to a construction site in the middle of the night. He was left unchecked until 4 in the morning. CNE Security his employer was charged with health and safety breaches but it was found not guilty and the company was dissolved shortly afterwards. Charanpreet’s killers got off scot-free; our criminal justice system does that sometimes. But the fact that the company that employed him and sent him to his death was found not guilty of breaching health and safety laws is the worst indictment of the current system.Companies like CNE Security will very likely be exempt from the requirement to allow the election of health and safety representatives under this bill. It is a travesty. As my colleagues have pointed out the National Party in the face of fearmongering and lobbying by a small minority of ratbag employers has given in to the worst instincts that we see at work in workplaces around New Zealand and has watered down what should be a decent and effective piece of legislation. As the families of the Pike River victims have said the watering down of this bill will cost lives. New Zealand deserves better.