Lees-Galloway Iain: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6100. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Part 4 does deal with enforcement in particular and other matters. As colleagues have said enforcement is just one component of this legislation. Enforcement is what happens when the other aspects have failed really. It is what happens when the proactive efforts to work alongside employers to build good health and safety practices when the efforts of workers and their representatives—when they are allowed to have them—to build good health and safety systems and to build a good relationship with the employer fall down. That is when enforcement has to happen.Actually I do want to walk through some of the enforcement options that are available to the health and safety inspectors because what we often hear—particularly from the farming community which seems to be most vocal about this—is that the only time employers see WorkSafe New Zealand is when they show up to issue them with one of the enforcement notices that are available to them under this legislation: an improvement notice a prohibition notice a non-disturbance notice or a suspension notice.Of course that is not how we want WorkSafe to operate. We want WorkSafe to be in there alongside the employers—particularly in those high-risk and isolated industries like farming like forestry like fishing—actually out there working alongside them to get good practice in place before they have to show up with the big sticks that are available to them here in Part 4. But that comes down to a variety of things. One of them is actually ensuring that WorkSafe has the people on the ground and has the resources available to it to be proactive. If WorkSafe is under-resourced then of course the only time it is going to show up is after something has gone wrong to issue one of these notices.Nevertheless there is a sliding scale in this legislation. I think it is important for people to understand that there is actually a sliding scale and that even when you get into these matters of enforcement you are not immediately being slapped with fines. You are not immediately being slapped with notices requiring you to stop what you are doing—depending on the nature of the breach.But the first thing is improvement notices. Improvement notices can be given by an inspector who believes that a person is contravening a provision of this legislation or regulations or is likely to contravene this legislation or its associated regulations. It requires the person to remedy the contravention and to remedy the things or activities causing the contravention or likely to cause a contravention. In other words it says to the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU): “Look this is going wrong. This is a breach or is likely to cause a breach of the Act. We want you to sort it out and we’re going to give you time to sort it out.” In fact it is a requirement of this legislation. It is a requirement of clause 124 in fact that the improvement notice gives the PCBU a period of time to sort out whatever is going wrong. It is only if after that period of time they have not sorted things out that they then become liable for the fines associated with non-compliance which are laid out in clause 125.So the first option for a health and safety inspector who sees something going wrong is not to go directly to fines is not to go directly to prosecution; it is to actually say to the PCBU that they need to fix this here is the opportunity to fix it here in fact are some recommendations for how you can fix it and here is how long you have and we will be back after that period of time to come and see how you are doing. If WorkSafe is doing its job properly of course it will also work alongside the employer to support them to sort the issue out.The next option that is available is a prohibition notice. This actually says that the employer has to stop an aspect of the work so this is an advance on the position of the improvement notice. This says that actually you are doing something so serious that you need to stop that right now—stop now and only once you have sorted it out can that particular aspect of the workplace start working again. [Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I will call Iain Lees-Galloway.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Thank you Mr Chairman—I would hate to have been cut off at that point.The next option is to issue a prohibition notice. That actually says you have got to stop what you are doing. But then again if you stop that work sort the issue out and the inspector comes back and can see that the issue has been sorted out then work can start again. So it is not about going immediately to the big stick but this Part 4 is about enforcement. What we would say on this side of the Chamber is that actually preventative measures should have started well before we get anywhere near any of these notices whether it be a prohibition notice whether it be a non-disturbance notice or even a suspension notice. That is where the health and safety representatives can be really important. We do have only 300 health and safety inspectors. That might sound like a large number; it still does not meet the International Labour Organization guidelines for how many health and safety inspectors we should have.And let us face it the New Zealand economy—we have heard a number of times from the Minister in fact how agriculture is the largest employer of people in New Zealand. What we have with agriculture is a large number of workplaces with usually small numbers of workers in quite isolated situations. It is the same with forestry the same with fishing—some of our highest risk industries the ones that kill and maim more people than any other industries are often the hardest to reach. And this is the challenge for the inspectors. If they are to carry out their duties under Part 4 of this legislation they have to be in many places at the same time. And that is the value of having people within the workforce who are trained and mandated to actually be the eyes and ears for WorkSafe so that some of that preventative work can be done before we need to get to this point of issuing improvement notices prohibition notices or non-disturbance notices.So although this particular part is about enforcement we just see it as—I think Phil Goff said it is one leg on the three-legged stool. This leg is reasonably robust. Putting to one side the Supplementary Order Paper that I have put up around the issue of private prohibitions otherwise we are reasonably comfortable with this part but it is undermined by the failings in other parts of the legislation. But even with the enforcement in this there is still an opportunity for PCBUs who have perhaps fallen foul of this part of the bill who have not met their obligations under this bill to rectify that well before they get anywhere near fines well before they get anywhere near court proceedings.I think that is an important point to make. There has been a lot of myth-making about what this legislation does. There is a lot of concern. There is a lot of fear out there amongst some of those industries particularly those high-risk industries that the first time they see a WorkSafe vehicle driving up their driveway they are about to be slapped with a fine. That should not be the case. The case should be that WorkSafe arrives on the farm at the forest or at the fishing vessel—or at any other workplace for that matter—well before they get to this point. But even if WorkSafe does come on the farm and sees a breach of the legislation there is ample opportunity for the employer to rectify the things that are going wrong well before they risk being fined or being prosecuted.I do not think that is well enough understood. I think that is a failing of the Government in its communication around this legislation that it has allowed that fearmongering to occur. It has allowed that concern to grow and grow and grow particularly amongst small employers that they are at risk of being slapped with very large fines and will not have the opportunity to put things right. That is simply wrong and I would like the Government to say that a lot more loudly than it has been.