Hipkins Chris: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 19 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5969. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Thank you very much Mr Chairperson for giving me this opportunity to speak for the first time on the Health and Safety Reform Bill. Can I begin by acknowledging all those who have lost loved ones in the workplace through workplace-related injuries. Can I also acknowledge all of those who have had their lives altered by injuries in the workplace and acknowledge that there are many many people who are injured in the workplace every year. The impact of those injuries goes on for some time—often long after the physical manifestations of those injuries have well healed—and I want to acknowledge all of that.I want to talk first of all about the purpose of the bill and the principles behind it and then I have got quite a few technical issues that I want to raise with the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety to see whether we can get some answers on those. The first part of the bill that I want to talk about is under the purpose clause clause 3(1)(g) which basically states that the bill aims to provide “a framework for continuous improvement and progressively higher standards of work health and safety.” I have been visiting a number of firms in my electorate asking them about this and it would be fair to say it has certainly got businesses talking this particular debate. It has got them considering the implications of this legislation for their workplaces. I have actually been surprised by the level to which those firms are already engaging in the detail and are already preparing for this bill to be implemented. Some of the concerns that they have are not some of the ones that I might have necessarily anticipated.I visited for example an engineering firm that employs more than the 20 people mentioned. It is concerned that if the small business exemption goes through that many of its competitors—people it is competing with for contracts—are not going to be subject to this bill but it is. So its concern for example was what happens if a firm simply separates itself into a number of different firms under one umbrella in order to get around this bill. It could find itself competing with that firm and therefore it is subject to a higher standard than some of the people it is competing with.It is concerned about that and I think that is a legitimate concern so I am interested in hearing from the Minister how it will be that that will be avoided—how that kind of behaviour from firms will be avoided. It seems to me that if a firm is able to set up say a new firm—a subsidiary company for each new contract that it gets—and employs fewer than 20 employees within each of those subsidiary companies and therefore is able to get around the provisions of the bill then I think that really starts to question quite fundamentally whether this is going to achieve the goal that is set out quite clearly there in clause 3(1)(g).The second point that I want to raise is around clause 3(1)(d): “promoting the provision of advice information education and training in relation to work health and safety;”.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Which clause?CHRIS HIPKINS: Sorry where was I; clause 3(1)(d) around the promotion of advice information and so on. The feedback again that I have had from businesses in my electorate is that they want to comply with health and safety they want to provide good safe workplaces and in many cases they are going out of their way to do so.One of the firms that I visited for example had just spent $25000 getting people to come in and audit its work practices so that it can actually get a good report on whether it is doing things well. What it is concerned about is that it cannot get straight answers as to whether or not what it is doing is going to be compliant and whether in fact it is meeting the standard for making best endeavours and all of those sorts of things to ensure that it is providing a safe workplace. So I guess the question for the Minister is what leadership the Government will play in that regard through WorkSafe ACC and others and saying to employers “Yes you are actually doing the right thing.” or “No you need to shape up.” because those employers do want to comply with the bill and at the moment they are not sure that they are necessarily going to be able to and I think that is certainly is something that they would like to have answers for.I want to turn then to clause 6 which is “Application of Act to Armed Forces”. There is an exemption here for those who are on operational service within the New Zealand military. I can certainly understand that you know you are putting troops into harm’s wayin the military for example and so to some extent there are going to be health and safety risks in that. That is inherent in being involved in military service. However there are other examples that I would like to tease out more where this may create some strange behaviour.The question that I particularly have is around for example a disaster domestically within New Zealand. So if you take say the Canterbury earthquake where the military may be deployed on operational service as a result of a disaster here at home would this exemption apply there and what would the justification for applying that exemption be in that circumstance? It seems to me that you could have something like the Fire Service or the police—other forces that are operational in those things—that would have to comply with the bill and then you could end up with the military not having to comply with the bill. I would like to know a little bit more from the Minister about how that might come into being and what might happen around that.Clause 7 “Application of Act to aircraft in operation”—I worked through this one carefully and tried to get my head around what it actually means. The example that I am interested in here is aircrafts that start their operation in New Zealand but may have a continuous flight that stops off along the way. There may be two long-haul flights for example. They start in say Auckland and travel long haul to somewhere they often have a change of crew and then travel on to another destination.My reading of that clause would be that if the crew is still employed by the same employer even if the crew is domestically resident somewhere else would it be covered by this? I would expect that yes it would be covered by this but I would be concerned that there may be ways of an air operator getting around that so I would just like some clarification from the Minister on that particular part of the bill. It seems to me that if you have got a New Zealand airline—and we now have more of those operating here domestically in New Zealand than we have had previously which is a good thing—what we would want to avoid is it getting halfway through a journey and then being able to opt out of the health and safety law because it is changing crews and potentially even changing the part of the airline that is operating the aircraft at that time. So I would like to get some further clarification from the Minister on that particular one.I then move to clause 11 which basically states that this bill will not apply to “a prisoner who is carrying out work inside a prison.” I would like to hear the justification for that because again we come back to the issue where if you have got a firm that is based in a prison and is using the prison workforce—which is something that I personally believe in because I believe in having prisoners being provided with employment opportunities and upskilling opportunities through work in prison—whoever is operating that worksite may be competing to get business with a firm from outside that is not operating with a prison workforce. So why would you have the health and safety rules apply to the firm outside but not to the firm inside the wire—inside the prison?Why would you say to a prisoner who is doing exactly the same job as somebody working in the same role outside prison that they have less of a right to health and safety than somebody working outside the prison? So I would be very interested to hear the justification for that clause 11 and why it is that the Government thinks that prisoners should be exempt from this legislation when they are doing a job that is equivalent to exactly the same job that someone outside prison is doing. I do not think that there is any justification for that and I would be very very interested to hear from the Government as to whether in fact there is justification or whether this is perhaps an unintended part of this bill.Those are my first questions. I am looking forward in due course to getting some replies from the Minister to those. I have got others which I am sure we will get to as the debate progresses.