Moroney Sue: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6112. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): I am pleased to have an opportunity to rise and speak to Part 5 of the Health and Safety Reform Bill. The part that I really want to focus on for my contribution is clause 212 which is about workplace injury prevention. [Interruption] Yes I know that the Hon Ruth Dyson has got an equally important and different contribution to make around that same point. I am going to stick to the issue that we debated at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee around this part.We were given some assurances by officials that I want to make sure of and I guess I want to ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Nicky Wagner to make sure that it is also her understanding of the assurances that we were given. This was exploring the issue around workplace injury prevention programmes which have to be provided by both WorkSafe and ACC. Currently my understanding is that what we have in the Accident Compensation Act which clause 212 refers to is a provision that requires the expenditure of the money that is put aside for workplace injury prevention programmes to be used in a way where they demonstrate that those workplace injury prevention programmes would result in a reduction in levy rates or expenditure. In fact the wording in the Act is that a reduction in levy rates or expenditure is expected.What I raised at the select committee was the concern that in fact some really good workplace injury prevention programmes would by the nature of being successful sometimes increase levy rates. I am just going to have to back-pedal a little bit and explain to people about how ACC levy rates are set. They are set in a manner where if an industry or a sector has a large number of injuries or accidents or workplace deaths then it will have a higher ACC levy and if it has a lower rate of notifications of injuries or deaths or accidents then it has a lower levy. So it would seem intuitive that workplace injury prevention programmes would bring the accident rate down and bring the death rate down and would therefore lower the levies.However in some instances and particularly with regard to occupational disease that can actually have the opposite effect. What I mean by that is that sometimes people do not know that the symptoms that they are suffering from are a result of an occupational disease that they may have picked up some time earlier a long time ago at a different workplace because they simply are unaware that those symptoms are associated with perhaps a chemical that they used to handle in a previous workplace. So a workplace injury prevention programme that actually raises awareness of occupational disease the symptoms associated with it and the outcomes of that may actually increase the number of claims that are put forward to deal with the outcome of that occupational disease and therefore could actually end up increasing the ACC levy being paid by a particular industry or sector.As perverse a result as that may seem I was concerned that clause 212 in Part 5 of this bill may in fact stop such workplace injury prevention programmes from being accepted approved and paid for by either ACC or WorkSafe because of what that clause says. It does say that “Section 264A of the Accident Compensation Act 2001 requires WorkSafe and ACC to at all times have a workplace injury prevention action plan that meets the requirements of that section.” That section as I said before requires that a reduction in levy rates or expenditure is expected as a result of those.Why I raise that is that we were given assurances by officials—and I would like those assurances repeated by the Minister for the benefit of this Committee—that although that may well be an expectation that is put on programmes that are funded by ACC that particular provision would not be extended to the workplace injury prevention programmes provided by WorkSafe. I am debating this bill in the Committee stage rereading clause 212 and feeling nervous all over again because it does stipulate that both ACC and WorkSafe have to have regard to that clause in the ACC legislation. I am now just as nervous as I once was that we are going to have this provision applied to WorkSafe programmes as well.I did though ensure that the select committee—the select committee agreed with the issues that I was raising. We wanted to ensure through our commentary that we were clear in our instructions to Parliament about what our understanding was. In the commentary that has been reported back on the consideration of this bill by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee there is a section that I just want to read out. I want to make sure the Committee understands what the select committee believed from the official advice and I would like the Minister to reiterate that we have got this right.Under the heading “Injury prevention” in the commentary it states: “Although reduction in ACC levies is not the only driver of injury prevention programmes we were concerned that such programmes would be constrained to only achieving reductions to levies when some programmes should raise awareness and therefore increase the number of ACC claims being made. We were assured”—and that means by the officials—“that WorkSafe’s injury prevention programmes can continue to be funded by WorkSafe and that such funding would not be dependent on a need to achieve a reduction to ACC levies as a criteria.”Getting an assurance on that before we vote on this part of the bill is very important. We want to make sure that the Minister’s understanding is the same as what the select committee was advised otherwise the Labour Party will continue to have a concern that a whole range of very effective workplace injury prevention programmes would not be able to be funded either for ACC provisions or by WorkSafe provisions and that would particularly put at risk injury prevention around occupational disease. But it would not just be occupational disease; it would be anything where raising awareness of the issue would in fact perhaps lead to more claims being put forward to ACC and an increase in levies or expenditure occurring by ACC.Further on with regard to the issue of workplace injury prevention I do want to note that under this Government the funding for workplace injury prevention programmes fell drastically. It has somewhat been restored but has still not been restored to the level that it was way back in 2008. I think that in conjunction with clause 212 in Part 5 of the bill the Government needs to give us an assurance that the funding levels will not only return to what they were way back in 2008 but in fact catch up with the inflationary costs that have occurred since then and catch up with the increase in workforce participation that has occurred since then and it needs to make sure that we have workplace injury prevention programmes that are funded to a level where they make a difference. This is what the bill is about. It is about actually preventing injuries at work where we can do that best. The reason why this bill has come about is that we have got such a lousy record when it comes to preventing injuries in the workplace and certainly the Government’s cuts to funding since 2008 have not helped in that regard at all.The other contribution I would like to make on Part 5 is with regard to the health and safety at work strategies. Again in clause 211 in Part 5 we know that “The Minister must publish a strategy called the Health and Safety at Work Strategy that sets out the Government’s overall direction in improving the health and safety of workers.” I think that when that is published it is going to be very interesting to see what the Minister has to say about the level of risk on farms. Certainly there is a lot of confusion over what the strategic view within National is on that issue. So I look forward to seeing what Government members have to say about the unforgivably high number of workplace deaths that we have in the farming industry. I hope it certainly is not explained in that strategy as being low risk because I think every New Zealander understands that that is just simply not the case. The strategy must be developed jointly with WorkSafe and the Minister must make reasonable efforts to publish the first strategy within 24 months after the commencement of this section.