Fenton Darien: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionFenton Darien: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 22 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14099. Text is subject to correction.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise and speak in the second reading debate on the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill and in my 5 minutes I want to address the three issues that the Labour Party continues to have concerns about. In doing so I want to acknowledge the work of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and in particular the families of Pike River and I observe of course what is happening at Pike River at the moment.We continue to be disappointed about the make-up ofWorkSafe New Zealand’s board. Remember that this agencyWorkSafe is not just for Pike River mines or mining generally.WorkSafe will become the agency that is responsible for all health and safety throughout New Zealand. So there is more legislation to come in the future—apparently it is going to be introduced by the end of the year and will cover health and safety for all workers. SoWorkSafe is a completely new agency that will haveresponsibility for every worker’s health and safety not just the health and safety of those who work in underground mines.The issue about the board members was canvassed at length in the select committee and what I found very interesting was that the National Party members could not seem to get their head around what “tripartite” means. In fact it is the recommendation ofWorkSafe New Zealand that the board be tripartite. “Tripartite” means that it is made up of representatives of employers representatives of unions and representatives of the Government—that is what it means.National members could not get their heads around that. They were enormously suspicious. Although I acknowledge that there have been some changes to the wording in the make-up of theWorkSafe board—in clause 7(2)(d) it has gone from “perspectives of workplace participants” which no one knew the meaning of to “perspectives of workers”—it simply does not cut the mustard in terms of recommendations of the Pike River mine commission of inquiry. In fact the health and safety task force has also recommended thatWorkSafe be a tripartite board.So we do not understand why the Government is ignoring the task force’s recommendation—it is not a good place to start. As I have saidWorkSafe is an agency that will set health and safety in place not only for underground mines and highly dangerous industries but for all workers. It is a completely new agency. It is the beginning of a new start for health and safety in New Zealand which is entirely necessary given our awful record of health and safety. So it is a bad start actually. It is a real shame and I understand that my colleague Andrew Little will put forward an amendment during the Committee stage. Let us see whether we can get it right for goodness’ sake. We all know that this has to be done. Let us do it right and let us not be ideological about opposing the idea that we could actually have representatives of unions employers and the Government on a board.The second issue is about the powers and functions ofWorkSafe New Zealand. Again although they are similar to the recommendations of the royal commission of inquiry and the task force they are not the same. There are real issues about that. We do not understand why we went to the trouble of having a royal commission of inquiry and a health and safety task force if we are going to ignore the recommendations and all the work that went into that.Finally our other concern is the scope of this legislation—the fact that it started out having a wide application including quarrying and some types of tunnelling. We believe that was appropriate but along the way the scope has been narrowed so now it applies only to underground mines. That is significant. I think that has significantly undermined this legislation. Again we will be putting forward some amendments during the Committee stage. As I said before about all of these things let us get it right. Let us do this properly. We are all committed to it. We all believe that this has to be done. Let us get this right. Let us fix this up. Let us follow the task force’s recommendations.