Mitchell Clayton: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6087. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Goodness me those 2 minutes are going to fly by so I might need to go and seek another call on this.Part 4 of the Health and Safety Reform Bill is a very very important part with only two Supplementary Order Papers on the Table: one from the Māori Party from Marama Fox; and one of course from Labour from Iain Lees-Galloway. New Zealand First will stand and support the Supplementary Order Paper initially by Iain Lees-Galloway because in our opinion it does give some protection to those people who are potentially going to be disenfranchised if the regulators decide not to prosecute for practices. Essentially what clause 167B does—and I am going to read it out to you here—is give an extension of 6 months after the date on which the regulator announces a decision not to prosecute in order to go for an extension if they want to go for a private prosecution. I think that is absolutely fundamental to ensuring that true justice is actually upheld and it is fundamentally part of what I think this bill actually stands for.Today is a bit like Groundhog Day in so far as last week we spoke about some of the other concerns that we have with the bill and they are relating to enforcement matters. We have noted that in Budget 2015 $8 million has been put aside for enforcement officers and we would like to have some assurance from the Minister that these labour enforcement officers are not going to be there as revenue collectors to try somehow to ingratiate a positive surplus at the expense of small and medium sized businesses throughout the country. There are some concerns out there in business that this is in fact what they are going to do. Eight million dollars per annum over the next 4 years—that is $32 million—is a fair whack and the concern of those people is to make sure that enforcement officers are not just out there slapping infringement fine after infringement fine and ticket after ticket and so forth. [Bell rung] Look at that. Nobody jumped up Mr Chair.I would like to continue by talking about some of the other parts of the bill that we do actually look to support. There are some parts in this bill—I will just flick to the right page—that are to do with Part 4. Take clause 122: “Meaning of notice”. We have got “improvement notice” in clause 122(a)(i) and “prohibition notice” “non-disturbance notice” and “suspension notices” in subclause (a). They come with some fairly reasonable sized fines. I do have to say that if there are ongoing examples of workers persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) or bosses not acknowledging safety concerns they could actually be levied with those fines. It is $50000 per person or up to $250000 for “any other person” which I am assuming would be the boards or in large organisations the group directorships.This bill is about showing openness compliance and the ability to see what is going on. Knowing what is happening within workplaces and actually having enforcement officers in there enabling them to manage those problems in a business is absolutely fundamental so we do actually support parts of Part 4. I hope that there are some people ready to take a call and I will certainly be taking some more calls as we go on later on today. I will actually restate that we do have some concerns. When you look at the fact that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment has more public relations people than health and safety representatives—that needs to change as well not only in the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment but also around the country particularly in our mines and quarries etc. throughout the country. Mr Chair I look forward to taking another call very shortly. Thank you.