Goff Phil: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6098. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): It is my pleasure to speak to Part 4 of this bill on the enforcement provisions. These are worthy and necessary provisions which are set out in Subpart 1“Enforcement measures”; Subpart 2 “Remedial action”; Subpart 3 “Civil proceedings for non-compliance with notices”; and Subpart 4 “Enforceable undertakings”. And then it goes on to talk about reviews and appeals. All of this is the mechanical side of the enforcement of health and safety in the workplace and because of the changes in this bill it relies predominantly on the role of the inspectors. I think that I heard Sue Moroney say before that we have 50 inspectors.Sue Moroney: Oh I think the Minister said 350.Iain Lees-Galloway: 300.Hon PHIL GOFF: We have 300 or 350 inspectors. That is covering the workforce across the entire countryside. So for Part 4 of this bill to work you have to have the inspectors who are out there being able for example to note a contravention so that they can remedy it or to note a dangerous situation so that they can issue a prohibition notice. But that will not work unless the people who work in the workplace itself are there making sure from hour to hour day to day and week to week that the conditions in the workplace are safe. That is why this chance-of-a-lifetime piece of legislation has been undermined and destroyed by the Government because it has taken away the fundamental role of the people who would otherwise enforce health and safety on the ground. We know that having health and safety representatives works. We have had them in the legislation before. This bill was going to bring those health and safety representatives to cover a much wider cross-section of the industry and for reasons of bowing to pressure from narrow self-interested groups that are guilty of contraventions of health and safety in the workplace this legislation is not going to work.Part 4 is very worthy but it will not work and it has not worked overseas. What the international experience has been in Australia in the United Kingdom and in other places is that health and safety legislation works when you have got good enforcement when you have got responsible employers and when you have got employees participating in the day-to-day safety of the workplace. It is a case of three legs to a stool. This is one leg of the stool but without that third leg and without the people who are working on health and safety in the workplace who are now excluded from the most dangerous parts of the workplace which is the dairy farms the cattle farms and the sheep farms—but not the worm farms; the worm farms will have the ability to have health and safety people working on the ground—without the people on the ground without them working in cooperation with the employees and without the ability of a union to come in and say “This is not safe and somebody will lose their life.” somebody will be maimed for life. We have got one of the worst records in the world. It does not work if you are relying on just the mechanical provisions in this part of the bill.You have to have the active engagement of your workforce. So I want to ask the Minister in the chair Craig Foss if he is following the proceedings why it is that we are not backing up these provisions with the active participation of people on the ground. If it is good enough for Australia to do across the Tasman if it is good enough for the British to do and if it is good enough in most other advanced Western countries to have a system that will actually work why has the New Zealand Government gutted this piece of legislation? I have been listening to this debate either in the Chamber or in my room for the hours that it has been going on and I have heard no explanation from any Minister in the chair as to why the Government has decided to gut the legislation.We supported this legislation as it was introduced. This legislation as it was introduced was a response to the royal commission following the Pike River disaster. That was good legislation. It was legislation that followed the rulings of the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. I want to know from the Minister who is sitting in the chair without comment why it is that you set up a task force that you pay for a royal commission that when there is a disaster like the Pike River disasteryou pretend to be absolutely concerned and say that you will do everything possible so that it never happens again and then 2 years on it is all forgotten? Two years on the meaningful changes that would have occurred in this legislation have been ripped out of the legislation and we are left with just the mechanics of it.I do not believe that the inspectorate can do the job by itself. I do not believe that there are enough inspectors. I do not believe that they are being given the support and I do not believe that this legislation is going to make any meaningful change which is necessary when we see a disaster of the proportions of Pike River. There are 29 people still entombed in the grave of that coal mine. The country came together. I was down there on the West Coast. The Prime Minister was down there. Other MPs were down there. Damien O’Connor was working down there. We came together and we said: “This is appalling. This is a totally unnecessary loss of life and we must do something to prevent it from happening again.” This bill was born out of the task force and out of the royal commission but the Government wobbled at the knees when it came back in and a handful of small business people and farmers said: “We can’t have this. It’s going to be awkward.”We must have this if human life is to have the sanctity that the House should be according it. It does not matter how much we have got in this part of the bill in terms of prohibition orders non-disturbance orders and inspectors if we do not have the three parts of what is required to keep our people safe in the workforce and to make sure that when the men and the women in the workforce work there during the day they are going to come home safe at night. I do not think it was too much to ask. In fact I think that you would have got a consensus of opinion across the floor of this Chamber if this bill were doing the right thing.So yes we will speak in favour of the particular provisions in Part 4 but no we do not believe that they are sufficient or adequate to actually make a difference. What everybody who has done research in this area has advised the House what the task force has advised the House and what the royal commission has advised the House this Government has decided to withdraw from the bill. I would like the Minister in the chair to not sit there silently. I would like him to take the next call and to get up and say how these provisions will make a difference without the most important change which his own Government introduced when it brought the bill to this House and said should happen. I would also like to know since we have gutted this bill because of private discussions between the National Government and some of its supporters why those discussions were not taken back to the select committee and why there has not been justification for the changes that have been made. This is serious legislation. There is no topic for this House to consider that is more serious than maintaining the health safety and well-being of New Zealand men and women in the workforce. Yet we are reduced now to looking at a partial bill.I do want to speak however in favour of Supplementary Order Paper 101 in the name of Iain Lees-Galloway. We have found that WorkSafe New Zealand has often not taken prosecutions but that when taken privately by the Council of Trade Unions those prosecutions have succeeded. Private prosecutions are critically important and there needs to be at least 6 months between a decision by WorkSafe New Zealand to not prosecute and for individuals such as the Council of Trade Unions to put together a case to take to court—again to protect men and women in the workforce. Six months is a reasonable period of time. I know that Marama Fox has got Supplementary Order Paper 107 through which the Government is looking to find a compromise of 3 months. It is not enough.