Sio William: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 19 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:6003. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Thank you for the opportunity. This will be my first call of many on this particular piece of legislation—absolutely. And like my colleagues said this is such a thick piece of legislation that I would like to just go slowly in terms of going through Part 2. Before I go into the detail I just want to preface that when you think about the principles that underlie this particular piece of legislation it all seems fine in terms of the principles and purposes and you get a sense that this is about the protection of all workers. But I want to remind the Committee that last night we had a family member whose relative died as a result of a work-related accident who said: “If this is about balanced legislation what does that really mean?”.It suggested to her that we were willing to allow a certain number of accidents to occur by the use of that terminology of “balanced legislation”.I want to now go to Part 2. I recognise that this is about key principles relating to duties. In clause 29C it says: “A person may have more than 1 duty imposed on the person by or under this Act if the person belongs to more than 1 class of duty holder.” I want to ask: does this mean that the person who has been elected or appointed as the health and safety inspector will have other duties on top of that? That is what this suggests. I want to say that that can cause problems. I remember an uncle of mine who in the 1970s took it upon himself to rectify a situation that had occurred in the manufacturing line where there was this big roller machine that was rolling batts. What he did was instead of stopping the machinery—because the health and safety inspector was not present—he took it upon himself to try to push the batts through this roller. Well the cuff of his shirt got caught up. The machine did stop—after it rolled over his right arm. That arm has been amputated. What I am saying is that it suggests that if people are going to have these duties then there needs to be education in the workforce in terms of how those duties should be performed.When you have a multicultural workforce—and I am not just talking about Pacific Islanders from the various five nations in the Pacific who all speak five different languages. I am also speaking about a workforce that I came across in Nelson who are predominantly from Asia—from the Philippines and other parts of Asia. None of this part makes reference to how we pass information on to a particular workforce who may not necessarily be aware of our signs who may not necessarily be aware of the kinds of information that we generally take for granted and assume that by presenting it in English a person will know what those duties are.I also want to recognise—the Committee may not be aware of this but this country of ours takes in on a regular basis a certain number of Pacific workers from Samoa as a result of the Samoan quota and from other islands in the Pacific as a result of the Pacific access category.Many of those workers come from village settings and they are arriving for the first time into our country and may not necessarily be accustomed to the rigours of a manufacturing industry to the rigours of a farm industry and to the rigours of a forestry industry. They are very vulnerable to the kinds of dangers that all New Zealanders agree we are trying to stop and which the purpose of this bill is about.When I go through clause 29B “Duties not transferable” that is fine but if that person is not around what then happens? What I am saying is that it does not seem to be sufficient. If there is going to be one representative and since we are saying that the pool of workers must be 20-plus well it seems to me that it is going to be insufficient that you have only one health and safety worker there. Clause 29D “More than one person may have the same duty” is fine. In clause 29E a person—