Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to stand in this second reading debate on the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill in the name of my friend and colleague Harete Hipango. Now I listened carefully to the speech from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety and I was somewhat surprised that he found time amongst his busy schedule and pile of papers that he needs to read as apparently a busy Minister to come down to the House on a members' night to speak effectively about just kicking the can down the road until 2020 on an important piece of legislation. That he's found time to do that I think is interesting in itself particularly when we know that between first reading and this reading the New Zealand First Party has changed their view on this based on him kicking the can down the road until 2020. That surprises me. So here we have yet again another situation where a Government that was so full of promise and hope and sloganeering has actually just kicked the can in a way that means that nothing—nothing—will be done.As they come towards the end of their term in Government 2020 will be far too late—far too late. I would have thought that a Minister on an evening like this would have had maybe some more important things to be doing than coming down here to bolster the Government's pretty feeble approach to this bill.The Education and Workforce Committee chaired very capably by my colleague Dr Parmjeet Parmar received 34 submissions on this bill—eight were in favour four neutral and 22 opposed. Although I don't sit as a permanent member on the committee I do from time to time get subbed in in terms of matters that relate to workplace relations legislation. I have to say wearing that hat as the National Party spokesperson for workplace relations but also as the MP for the Coromandel that I actually thought that this bill had some merit. It really does trouble me that as a Parliament we seem not to have the wit or the imagination to confront and address obvious issues such as those that are raised by this bill.The reason I say that as the member of Parliament for the beautiful Coromandel is that throughout my very large geographical electorate many of my local communities depend utterly upon the work and the voluntary support that comes from generous volunteers' giving of their time of their energy of their enthusiasm and of their commitment. For many of those organisations they are small organisations. They are not organisations that are well resourced that have enormous financial resources available to them. They inevitably are small in number and small in financial resource. So this bill seeks to carve out a practical solution to a problem and that is where as soon as an organisation hires somebody then that organisation becomes constrained and restricted by the provisions of this bill.Now increasingly those small organisations have to contract out by way of employment specialist expertise that can't be obtained through their normal volunteer recruitment processes. I'm thinking here for instance about the many conservation groups that exist around the Coromandel Peninsula. Most of those people do trapping and pest control and some very good tree planting and all that sort of thing but they do have some income from money and they have some other administrative duties so often they have to go out and hire a financial accountant or the services of some kind of secretarial support—all those sorts of things that are not core to their day-to-day voluntary operations but are none the less pivotal to their organisation's success and their ultimate achievement of their goals.Now as soon as they go out and hire a person—maybe it's a financial consultant or an accountant or a secretary or something of that sort—the Act gets triggered and that's really the matter that this legislation seeks to resolve. I'm very disappointed on behalf of voluntary organisations up and down the country that New Zealand First who often try and pitch themselves as being some kind of saint in terms of supporting regions outside urban New Zealand in this case have sadly let rural and provincial New Zealand down and particularly the volunteer organisations that operate within those organisations. So in this short contribution I wish to support the bill support the work and the initiative taken by my colleague Harete Hipango and wish her well in this bill.