O'Connor Damien: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 20 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:6050. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I appreciate the opportunity to make another speech in this part of the debate. I would like to refer to clause 65. If one were to listen to Mr Young over there who chaired the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and I appreciate his fairness and his objectives in this legislation—and if we were to take a principled approach much of what he said would probably be true. But the problem is that the Government has intervened and made arbitrary changes to areas that might have been considered by most people to be fair and balanced and uniform and standard.I go to clause 65 which talks about the election of health and safety representatives which was clearly an objective and a necessary requirement established both by the select committee in the original legislation and again in the bill as reported back from the select committee. So it is a vital component of health and safety in the workplace moving forward. Then clause 65(3) says that a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) “is not required to initiate the election of 1 or more health and safety representatives if the work of the business or undertaking—(a) is carried out by fewer than 20 workers;”. I have spoken about this before. The next subclause 65(3)(b) as proposed by Supplementary Order Paper 108 says it “is not within the scope of any high-risk sector or industry prescribed by regulations for the purposes of this section.”This is where it all falls apart and it is really quite strange. This is from a party that has always considered itself to be the champion of farmers and the rural sector—the party that criticises us on this side of the Chamber from time to time because there are not a whole lot of farmers. It is absolutely unbelievable to think that a party of so-called farmers’ advocates can come up with arbitrary definitions that say that cat breeding pet breeding snake farming and worm farming are high riskin agriculture yet sheep cattle and dairy farming are not.It begs the question: how could those members have arrived at this? Can I just go back and explain because this is not being flippant; the wider public and employers across this country will be asking this. All of them are being expected to step up—to step up and offer a safer regime of health and safety. For some it might cost some money and it might require training of their employees; for others it will not. The one thing that I learnt as the Minister when we implemented the ban on smoking in bars was that all that the industry requested of us was fairness across the board—fairness to ensure that the objectives of the Government were going to be implemented on everyone. But no—what we have here is the most bizarre and ridiculous demarcation which is almost impossible to understand. So the question is: why?Well let us be clear here. In my view it was a debate within the National caucus and it was about the farmers versus the others—actually the farmers are getting to distrust John Key. They do not like him because he is a trader. So the farming sector actually went to Judith Collins. The farming sector went to Judith Collins and asked for an intervention to try to head this off. The problem is that Judith Collins and those people do not understand. So somehow the people who were pushing back on this legislation and who were trying to make it easier for the farmers got sucked into believing that worm farming is more risky than dairy farming. That can be the only explanation as to why we have this bizarre situation being implemented across agriculture where worm farming is more risky than dairy farming as an occupation a profession and a business.I have not been a worm farmer I must confess. There may be dangers. Actually I asked Mr Williamson to please get up and explain why it is that a worm farm is more risky than a dairy farm. I can give you a long list of tasks on a dairy farm that are risky. Call them “high risk” or not I do not know; I just accepted them as risky and when I had employees I managed the risks accordingly. But we are moving up and I accept and most people in agriculture accept that we have to step up as we have in environmental management—