Parker David: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 27 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6290. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I intend to address two issues the first being the ludicrous change at the last minute to those workplaces where employees are not entitled to a workplace representative and the second being the inappropriate provisions relating to trials that have abrogated the civil liberties of New Zealanders in a way that has been criticised by the New Zealand Law Society.The first point as has been said by prior speakers—the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy the special consultative group that the Government set up and overseas practice all show that having worker representatives who have a right to call for a formal process in their workplace is a fundamental ingredient of safe workplaces. We know that we have got a very poor record in New Zealand of serious injury and death and we know that a core recommendation of the royal commission and the consultative group was that that be remedied by having workplace representatives.What are the media saying about the contortions that the National Party has put itself through? I want to read from today’s Dominion Post: “All workplaces irrespective of their size and the industry they are in should be entitled to ask for a health and safety rep.” Then they talk about the 20-person staff limit and the current definitions of what is high and low risk. They say: “There’s no logic to it and some of the defences of the exemption for dairy beef and cattle farmers have been ludicrous.” As my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has already pointed out the definition seems to be constructed deliberately so as to leave out dairy farming and cattle farming and we know from evidence that I think is incontrovertible—no one has disagreed with it—that even those statistics are under-representative of the true rate of accidents on farms. So even if you take that into account their ludicrous definition would be breached.Then the idea that these farms are some sort of hayseed unsophisticated small enterprise is just wrong. These are multimillion-dollar enterprises. Dairy farms—the cows would be 750 kilograms three-quarters of a tonne the weight of a small car. As others have noted no doubt we have many quad bike accidents. We have electricity electric fences the means of powering those fences electric boom gates to move the cattle along large irrigators—there is a lot of dangerous equipment on a farm. And we have itinerant workers and seasonal workers who are inexperienced coming to these risks every year. A lot of the staff are working in workplaces where the owner of the farm is not there. It is quite often a sharemilker or another contractor who is conducting the farming operation. These are large multimillion-dollar organisations with high risks and there is really no case for them to be exempted. I think that is a woeful mistake in respect of this legislation. I am not going to say any more than that because I think those issues have been well covered by others.I do want to address in some detail the concerns of the Law Society which I think have been somewhat brushed aside in respect of the process that was introduced at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We know that in respect of legislation that comes before this House if there is something that infringes or potentially infringes civil liberties the Attorney-General has to under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act produce an assessment of it—the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. That does not happen in respect of the changes that are made at the select committee or in Supplementary Order Papers that are tabled in the House during the Committee stage.In this case very late in the process the Government at the select committee after submissions had been called for and had closed introduced some changes in respect of the way in which trials would be conducted where there was classified security information involved. The Law Society was not told about it. The Council for Civil Liberties was not told about it. They were surprised when they found out about it. There was no mention of it in the second reading speech from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety. There was no mention of it by anyone in the third reading speeches today. There is a scant two-line reference to it in the select committee report back and it does not actually describe the nature of what has been done. The Law Society wrote a letter to the Minister on 21 August complaining about it. The society noted that this was in its opinion a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.I want to remind the House that the Act at section 25 says that the minimum standards of criminal procedure include the right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial court; the right to be present at the trial and that is abrogated in some circumstances by these provisions; the right to present a defence which is undermined by these provisions; and the right to examine the witnesses for the prosecution—all of which are absolutely basic rights set out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. In addition the Law Society points out that these provisions which abrogate those rights have been inserted without any public consultation any right of submission and no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. It is true that there was a minor amendment to the wording that the Law Society had previously seen put in place by the executive effectively by Supplementary Order Paper just yesterday or the day before. But the effect of that is not to cure the problem.The legislation as amended is torturous to read. I have read it 10 times. I am not sure what it means. I have spoken with Austin Forbes QC. He has read it a number of times and he cannot make clear sense of it either. But what is clear is that the later parts of schedule 2A of the Health and Safety at Work Bill which give instructions to the court to be able to hear certain types of evidence without the accused and the accused’s lawyer hearing it or being present in court when it is given have no meaning at all unless they apply sometimes.So the Attorney-General cannot have been correct when he implied to the media—or this is what the media took from his comments—that the change meant that these were no longer problematic. It cannot be right because those provisions sometimes apply. I know that Austin Forbes thinks that the effect of the change to new clause 1 of schedule 2A is that effectively where you have a proceeding that involves classified security information although it is not saying it in that clause the rest of that schedule applies. So it is not an exclusion of prosecutions from the rules in schedule 2A; it is just saying that it is subject to the provisions of that schedule.The Law Society make the point that the breadth of evidence that can be covered is far too wide. If you are going to have a truncation of the normal rights to a fair trial you should do it as narrowly as possible. I am not even convinced that it is ever necessary in respect of a prosecution under health and safety legislation. But let us assume for the moment that it is—which I do not accept—you should do it as narrowly as possible. The sort of information that comes within the definition of “classified security information” is far too wide and goes against the Law Commission’s recommendation which says that in these cases you should really be dealing only with matters of national security and that a distinction should be made between national security and broader notions of international relations or economic interests. I agree that we have not had the opportunity to have that discussion. This is very poor legislation.For the Attorney-General to then criticise the Law Society and say that it was somehow misinformed and getting it wrong is in my opinion beyond the pale and I do not think that the Attorney-General should have said those things. This is an inappropriate breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and of the ability of people to have a fair trial and I do not think that we in this Parliament have properly protected that fundamental interest.I also note that we have taken away from the court the general discretion to oversee this. If it is dealt with under the Criminal Disclosure Act 2008 the court has the ability to actually say: “Well the police might claim that that should be confidential but we don’t agree.” That jurisdiction of the court has been ousted. It is wrong. It applies to the police not just the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau. This is far too broad it is wrong in principle and I cannot see how it can ever be justified in respect of health and safety reform legislation.