Woodhouse Michael: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoodhouse Michael: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 19 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5995. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I think there are three or four questions that have been raised by members in their interventions so far and I want to try to address them. I do want to acknowledge Kelvin Davis for his quirky use of three or four-letter acronyms and just respectfully suggest that if he does want to know what a PCBU is rather than ask me and take up the time of the Committee he could either read the bill or talk to one of his colleagues on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.Ms Roche has raised three points. In respect of persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) operating together and the requirements of good faith I do not think it is a question of the Minister not supporting that. My position and the Government’s position is actually that those requirements are already in the bill written in different ways but there is definitely an expectation and a requirement for PCBUs to work together to ensure the health and safety of everybody in that workplace: workers managers shoppers patients if it is a hospital and so on.As to the question of the farmhouse I think the member has conflated a couple of issues. So I will go through the first scenario which is addressed by Supplementary Order Paper 108 with an amendment to clause 32(1B) making it absolutely clear that the farmhouse is not a place of work. In other situations that may be the case. The plumber who works from home and has the garage full of supplies and things like that—that is appropriate. Even in respect of the farmhouse there may be a home office or the farmer might bake muffins for the workers at lunchtime and the kitchen could be considered a farmhouse.But for all practical purposes I do not think the case for health and safety is enhanced by creating a very confused definition of a workplace—because farms are different. I think we accept that farms are a place of work but they are a permanent place of residence for the families who live on them as well. For the sake of clarity the select committee and the Government has thought it best to make it much much cleaner and tidier to say in respect of the farm that those sheds where the work is carried out—the shearing-sheds the milking sheds the implement sheds and so on—are always a workplace regardless of what is going on. Other parts of the farm are a workplace when work is being done on them but not when there is not work being done and that has certainly eased a lot of concern about recreational use and access to farms and tracks for mountain bikers and so on because that was certainly one of concerns that we had. The last thing we wanted was for landowners and farmers to deny access to one of the great Kiwi pastimes—that is living and playing in the outdoors. So I think that that is a very tidy and sensible amendment.But the member then went on to talk about accommodation and asked: “What about if the person who is running the farm doesn’t own the farm?”. Well that goes to clause 30(4) and (5). What that basically says is that if the worker is required to live in that accommodation then that is a place of work and the health and safety law will apply. But if the worker has a choice between living in that accommodation or in other accommodation and makes that choice then this bill will not apply.The scenario is if you are down on the Auckland Islands working for the Department of Conservation and there is accommodation provided—and frankly one has no choice but to live there—then the health and safety requirements should apply. But if you are an orchard worker in Cromwell and you have got a choice to live in the A-frame accommodation on the side of the orchard or to go to the local camping ground or the backpackers or have some other arrangement and you make the choice to live at the place of work then this bill will not apply. I think that is a sensible balancing of what has been going on in the workplace. I just wanted to clarify that that farmhouse scenario was actually covered by clause 30 not by clause 32.