Wood MichaelHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you Madam Chair. Look I thought I would just take a call and address a few of the points that have been made in debate over the last half hour or so. A number of these are points that were made and addressed in the debate last night. I'm conscious that a number of members may not have been here for that but for the benefit of the committee I'm very happy to come back to those particular points. The first one that I do want to speak to is the point that was raised by Barbara Kuriger in terms of the provisions around market access. This was a point that Minister Hipkins addressed last night. He explained that earlier documentation had made reference to the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries but it was determined not to carry that forward into the legislation itself. The relevant point here that I will just draw attention to—and I hope it is actually of some comfort to Barbara Kurger and also other members who are particularly connected—Hon Members: Kuriger.Hon MICHAEL WOOD: —my apologies—to the primary sector—is that in new section 11AA in clause 7 we actually have clarification here that the definition of public interest" can include issues around maintaining access to overseas markets. This is actually about providing some direct support some direct ability to take that into consideration. If for example an export partner put requirements on products coming into their markets that is a factor that can be considered in the public interest and that's something that's been developed specifically in response to engagement and representations from the primary sector. The second point that I'll address again is one that was explicitly addressed last night by myself and that was a point raised by the Hon Scott Simpson—it was the same point that was raised by the Hon Michael Woodhouse last night—and that's around the definition of a worker who is engaged. We discussed this last night and discussed the fact that these definitions come from the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) framework because we are wanting to have consistency across the two frameworks and I discussed in some detail last night the way in which HSWA is still relevant under this legislation in terms of the primary duty of care that employers have. The reason that we have the specific definition around engaging a worker is because the definition of "worker" under the HSWA does include a slightly broader category than just employees. The example I gave last night which I'll repeat again for the benefit of the committee now is that in a COVID-19 vaccination certificate environment—for example in hospitality—we have the requirement in place which I think is accepted by the Opposition that people who are working in those environments should be vaccinated to effectively match the requirements on customers. Well we would want that requirement therefore to apply to the person who was serving you your drink or your food regardless of whether they are an employee or if perhaps they were in a contractor arrangement. So that's why the definition of an engaged worker is in there because it covers off those scenarios. As I say we talked about that last night but I'm happy to reconfirm that for the committee again this morning. Mr Seymour raised a question about why it is that the details around the vaccination assessment tool will be set in secondary legislation rather than in the primary legislation. That is for the same reason that often these things are set in secondary legislation which is that they are things which can be contingent and based on public health advice which can potentially change in terms of the risk assessment and new information coming in. So the primary legislation empowers the Minister to set the vaccination assessment tool but I do think it is more appropriate that it sits within secondary legislation. For example if a different variant emerged and that changed the risk profile of the virus and possibly changed who we might consider a vulnerable person to be—which is one of the factors under the proposed risk assessment tool—you wouldn't necessarily want to have to go through a full legislative process to deal with that. It would be more appropriate to deal with it in secondary legislation and I think that's consistent with the way that we often deal with these things.Finally I'll just come to Mr Bayly's point. Most of his comments appeared to relate to his concerns no doubt genuinely as a local member of Parliament around the Auckland boundary and its operation. I do have to say that's not particularly relevant to this piece of legislation. Those decisions are not being enacted through this piece of legislation. But if I—[Interruption]—he attempted to draw a link to section 11. I'll just for the benefit of the committee make it clear that section 11 doesn't in any way broaden the powers of the Government in this area in any particular way so I don't think there's anything there that the member should be especially concerned about."