Roche Denise: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 27 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11388. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green):I rise to speak on behalf of the Greens for this bill the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. The bill enacts some of the recommendations from the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy an inquiry that was pushed for by the Greens—and we are certainly glad that it was carried out. The commission’s report into the tragedy where 29 men lost their lives highlighted the areas where we could be doing a lot better to provide safe workplaces so that those men and other people like them can come home from work.There were 16 recommendations in the report. The bill deals with some of them but not all of them. The Greens will be supporting this bill. We recognise that health and safety regulation in this country is long overdue and it is time we focused on a framework that puts the safety of workers before the profits of business. It has been acknowledged that the loss of lives at Pike River was the result of a series of actions and inactions culture and a health and safety framework that lacked the appropriate checks and balances. So it is heartening to see some remedies in this bill.We support the creation of WorkSafe New Zealand. We believe that an independent agency that has as its main focus health and safety and that is charged with education monitoring and compliance will provide some safeguards. I note that around $34million has been allocated to the creation of this agency in the last Budget round. This has even had the Employers and Manufacturers Association quite concerned that that may not be enough to adequately resource and staff an agency so that it can fulfil its compliance and monitoring work. We support the introduction of stronger regulations and we recognise that this bill is a step towards encouraging worker participation and highlighting safety breaches and hazards. We welcome the provisions that create workplace health and safety representatives who have the power to suspend operations if there is serious concern for harm.But what we need is a shift in culture so that workers and contractors and staff in any mine are able to speak up if they are worried about safety. We know that we will see that shift in unionised workplaces. The research shows that where there is a strong union presence workers are safer because they can speak up. This is not the case in the forestry sector a deregulated industry where workers are isolated from each other and that has low union membership. This fear of speaking up is exactly what happened at a public meeting on forestry that I was at last week in Gisborne with my colleague Darien Fenton from Labour. None of the workers in the 50 or so people in the crowd said a word because there were bosses there—and they certainly spoke up.We recognise that this bill is quite a dramatic change from the original 1992 Health and Safety in Employment Act which introduced the deregulated framework for health and safety. This Act replaced other legislation in the mining industry that ensured that there was independent monitoring and compliance with health and safety standards in mines—my colleague Kevin Hague has talked about that. The 1992 Act ushered in a concept of the cost-benefit analysis being taken with workplace hazards. Employers were urged to take practicable steps to minimise and isolate hazards but only if they could afford to do so. I note that there was a draft code of practice in the mining sector that remained in draft form until 2006.So it is a huge step forward to have WorkSafe New Zealand and some provisions for the voice of workers but if we want safe workplaces across New Zealand not just in mines the Government must stop undermining unions and removing the ability for workers to bargain collectively. It needs to shift away from the truly awful amendments it is making to the Employment Relations Act and it needs to positively encourage workers to speak up and join their unions.We are looking forward to examining this bill more closely as it goes through the select committee process but in the meantime we commend this bill to the House.