Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Mr Assistant Speaker thank you very much. I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on this Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. Before I start my contribution I want to genuinely thank the member across from me Harete Hipango for bringing this bill to the House. We did support it in the first reading to get to select committee to hear from submitters and genuinely New Zealand First supports the intent of what it is that you are trying to fix right here.As you've already articulated and as we've already said to you we won't be supporting this moving forward and there's good reason—Andrew Bayly: Why?CLAYTON MITCHELL: Well if you listen I'll tell you Mr Bayly. That reason is quite simply because we don't think it goes far enough when it looks at the unintended consequences that the employment relations health and safety amendment bill originally did. Now I can say that New Zealand First was the only party in the House in 2016 when this bill was actually introduced that didn't support the bill. Now we 100 percent support the health and well-being of every single New Zealander going to work whether it be for volunteer or other but there was a number of unintended consequences that this bill raised. This was one of those unintended consequences.It was actually the select committee that I sat on with Mr Bayly where we had serious debates about some of these unintended consequences and there was agreement even in select committee about some of these issues. But when we put our Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) forward to try and fix up some of these unintended consequences we were actually shot down. Now we're not opposing your bill for that reason and we're not playing petty politics here but we believe as part of the five-year review we need to look at a wider scope of work to tidy up some of those anomalies.Let's just go through this bill—what this actually does. Where you've got two identical volunteer not-for-profit organisations—and there's nearly 100000 of these types of operations around the country—but where we've got two identical operations working next to each other one which has 100 percent volunteer organisation with no persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) there is no legal culpability for any of the people giving their time in service to this specific industry. And there are hundreds of examples from football clubs and rugby clubs and fishing clubs and hunting and tramping clubs netball clubs etc. There's a plethora of them but an identical organisation set up right next door with the same structure—with the exception that they've got a chairperson that's got a remunerated salary because they do all the rosters or they submit all of the council application forms; they're having a paid position. We've got one organisation over here which if there is any issue with health and safety then nobody is legally culpable but just because we've actually put somebody with a small remunerative package or up to 2½ full-time staff this person is legally culpable for any mishap or accident in a workplace. Now that is an anomaly. It wasn't designed to be that way that you could have identical situations in a volunteer situation. So in discussions with the Minister at great length as part of this review this specific issue will come up again and it will be looked at seriously as to how we can best tidy it up.The other unintended consequence which is in alignment with this one here but comes up in section 37 of the principal Act is around PCBUs where a PCBU is also an employee or a worker. In this situation where you've got a husband and wife a de facto relationship or a partnership in a farm—and I'll use the farm as an example because it's a great example—where the husband and the wife in this situation are both a PCBU and a worker. Say the husband goes out on his quad bike doesn't put his helmet on and has an accident where he's seriously harmed; automatically the wife becomes the PCBU because he was the worker that was injured. The wife who's still alive the wife that is dealing with being a grieving partner is legally culpable for that. Now that's not the intention of the Health and Safety at Work Act. This was raised with Minister Michael Woodhouse when we were going through this. This was raised at great length with National. There are a number of these minor technical issues—unintended consequences—that this bill has and to fix this up today right now leaves a whole lot of other work that still needs to be addressed.So we're not turning our back on this at all. In fact we believe that more work needs to be done and we need to see collegiality across the House when it does come up. These are real situations not undermining the fact that every single member in this House every single person in this country every worker and every volunteer in this nation wants to see our workers and our volunteers come home safely every single day. We do have an abominable record for the harm that is caused in workplaces largely in the non-voluntary sector but in certain sectors—agriculture and forestry etc.—we need to do as much as we can and I go back to that point. New Zealand First did not support the bill going through the House. We were the only party that didn't not because we don't want to see safety in the workplaces but because we wanted to make this bill better than what it was. We knew that the National Party agreed with our concerns. We talked about it at great length but when an SOP was put forward they were shut down.Another unintended consequence of the current bill right now is that when it comes to very very important personal protective equipment (PPE) we all understand that an employer should ensure that their employees have got their personal protective equipment in—their PPE. But under this bill no levy or charge can be put on the employee. Now I agree that every single employee should have protective equipment given to them free. However with no personal responsibility being labelled on the worker they lose their equipment they give their equipment away and it is an absolute cost to a business—Hon Michael Woodhouse: How is that to do with volunteers? CLAYTON MITCHELL: —that we could tidy up. By fair wear and tear and looking at the personal protective equipment—I mean Mr Woodhouse you've got your head in the sand if you don't understand. Hon Michael Woodhouse: No I just know what this bill says. It's got nothing to do with what you're talking about. CLAYTON MITCHELL: When you talk to the businesses this is a problem. This is—I'm talking exactly about why our support for this bill is not going forward. It is very important for people to understand some of the other unintended consequences that the National Party didn't pick up on when they had the opportunity to. You were playing petty politics and we want to fix this bill up to make it a better bill moving forward. The submissions were exactly as we said—what we wanted to hear from was those voluntary organisations. We had a small but significant amount of submissions put forward. Going through and reading those I heard those for and I read those against. I have to say that I think some of the intent behind some of the unintended consequences of this was a little bit lost. People were diminishing and saying that people that were working inside a voluntary organisation were somehow less protected and that's not true. The reality is that every single person in a workplace has got an absolute duty of care a responsibility to their own health and safety as well as that of other people. This bill didn't undermine that at all and I think that was misconstrued. What we think is the right pathway moving forward is that at the five-year mark of this current legislation we give it a serious review. We as a Parliament should come together to look at this objectively to think about the well-being and welfare of people. There is a heck of a lot of bureaucratic overload put on inside this legislation and I think we can cut through some of that red tape and put genuine health and safety first. Those costs are obviously being put on to some of these workplaces and some of them dare I say it are a little bit ridiculous. I mean it's great if you own a scaffolding company but I've just built a house and I had to have scaffolding all the way up around my house for about three months at some ridiculous cost because of the concerns over health and safety. So I think there is some clarity and some tidying-up of some of that bureaucratic overload but there are just those unintended consequences. So again to the member Harete Hipango: for bringing this bill to the House we thank you. It's not a lost cause. It's not a lost bill. New Zealand First is still there. We haven't changed our view on it but we believe that more work needs to be done because I believe this issue is larger than just this one point that has been raised. So thank you to the House for listening and we will continue our work together.