Hague Kevin: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — Referral to Commerce Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — Referral to Commerce Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 10 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9269. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): It is a pleasure to take my first call on this matter the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. I want to talk this evening about a different aspect of Part 1 of the bill and I intend to take a couple of calls at least. Yesterday I had the pleasure of being able to speak in favour of a Government bill. It was the Psychoactive Substances Bill. I began my contribution on that bill by remarking that we were all regulators now and that actually it was a bill that controlled a health and safety risk by means of regulation. In this generally awful bill we are debating now there is an aspect that I find myself able to support. On 19 November 2010 the Pike River coalmine exploded killing 29 people. The Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy was convened. It was the 12th commission of inquiry into a coalmining disaster in New Zealand—the 12thover the years. That royal commission reported in October of last year. For all of us who have been able to read that report it is an extremely sobering report and its recommendations were very widely supported indeed.In all of the dross that makes up the rest of this bill the one diamond is that this is the opportunity that the Government has taken to pass into law the legislation that is necessary to give effect to its commitment to enacting and implementing all of the royal commission’s findings and it is that aspect that I want to talk about. I was a submitter to the royal commission and indeed attended many of the hearings in my home town of Greymouth. It was an extremely sobering and scary experience because what wasrevealed was the most extraordinary list of failures. Some of them have been relayed in this House previously. I will give you some now. For example members may recall the disastrous second exit from the mine up the ventilation shaft which would have required a sheer vertical climb—actually overhanging for one part of it—up a 55-metre ladder which Mines Rescue characterised as extremely difficult to use in normal circumstances and impossible in a fire. Oh and the ladder could support only eight people at one time in contrast to the 60 people who could often be expected to be inside the mine. The inquiry heard about broken smoke lines which miners use to find their way out of the mine when there is limited visibility. Methane gas sensors were disabled in the mine. There were very infrequent disaster training exercises and wholly inadequate gas drainage plans. Drilling in the mine occurred immediately adjacent to cavities filled with pressurised flammable gas. There were reports of multiple ignitions inside the mine. Telephone and air supply was decommissioned to a fresh air base part-way along the drift which is the tunnel leading from the portal into the mine and the area inside the working mine that was called a fresh air base was not in fact a fresh air base because it could not be sealed from the atmosphere in the mine itself. That is just a small selection. It was an appalling and sobering list.The royal commission heard that the Pike River mining company which is now facing charges under the Health and Safety in Employment Act—I will not say more about those particular matters—was a company that was cash-strapped and that it was well behind on its production schedule. There was a good deal of evidence given to the royal commission about a number of short cuts taken in the health and safety area. The terms of reference that were set for the royal commission—and I give the Government credit for this as well as for implementing these recommendations today—were broad. They were broad enough for the royal commission to look beyond the immediate in-the-mine causes of the explosion. That was very important. The royal commission heard from an expert in human factors involved in disasters—in fact specialising in aircraft crashes—Dr Kathleen Callaghan. Dr Callaghan gave evidence about the importance of upstream factors what we might think of as the causes of the causes. What she said was that although of course it is possible to reflect on the immediate in-the-mine causes of the explosion a much more effective set of recommendations emerges by going further and further upstream to identify the causal factors and environments that enable those risk conditions to develop. That is what the commission of inquiry did. Dr Callaghan referred to James Reason’s Swiss cheese model. If I get another call I will talk a little bit more about that because it is very important in the context of this bill. She referred to the particular risk of process risk incidents. Process risks are ones that are very low frequency so they do not get picked up by regular incident monitoring but have high consequences. The type of explosion coal dust or gas explosion that can occur in a mine is precisely that kind of thing. That is why she said you need to get the regulatory framework right.The royal commission identified the failings in precisely those upstream factors in the regulations that applied to the coalmining industry and in the inspectorate that was holding Pike River Coal to account in meeting its obligations under those regulations. In particular the regulations included this test of practicability that is right in the heart of the Health and Safety in Employment Act. Practicability is all well and good. The example I used to give of a company that was very well resourced and able to implement all of the health and safety requirements was Solid Energy. Let us say that a notional coalmining company that is very well resourced would be able to implement all of the health and safety requirements but a company that is cash-strapped that says it cannot afford to build a proper second exit actually finds that to be not practicable andis able to get away with that under the regulations that applied in that mine on that day. So that was one of the fundamental issues.We heard too about the mines inspectors. There were at the time of the disaster two mines inspectors trying to inspect every mine and quarry in New Zealand and that was an unmanageable workload. The royal commission heard from those inspectors that they had inadequate training. They had no training for example in systems approaches. They frequently appealed to their bosses in the Department of Labour for more resources for more access to training for more access to systems that would enable them to do their job and they were turned down.What we heard about was a complete failure of the regulatory framework and of the inspection framework. So where does that come from? Well those failings found their origin in the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992. What that Act did was move from prescriptive standards for health and safety to an approach that placed the onus on employers. Why that was disastrous was that the Government of the day completely failed to see that actually employers had incentives to cut corners—financial incentives. If they could reduce their costs by not doing something and no one would pick it up that is what they would do. That is actually how economic theory works and market theory. That is exactly the outcome that we would expect.