Hipkins Chris: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6093. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I welcome this opportunity to contribute to the debate on Part 4. The part of the bill that I would like to speak about is different from the part that members have been talking about thus far. I would like to talk about the appointment and powers of inspectors. This is something that comes up a lot in the businesses that I have been visiting and talking to talk about health and safety. They have certainly been turning their attention to these issues.The issue that small businesses and small to medium sized businesses are raising is the balance of power or getting the balance right with regard to inspectors between a punitive enforcement approach and an enabling supportive advice type of approach. What a lot of people are raising with us is that they want to be compliant they want to adhere to the law and they want to do the right thing. What they actually want is some support to enable them to meet all of the obligations under the legislation.Businesses see a positive role for inspectors coming in pointing out the areas where businesses need to improve and actually taking a proactive enabling and supporting role. However certainly if you read this section of the bill around who the inspectors may be and what their powers may be it certainly suggests quite a punitive approach to the role of an inspector. If we want to talk about the culture change that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety spoke about in earlier parts of the debate surely the role of the inspectors can also be a positive one.There is no doubt whatsoever that these punitive measures that are here are important and that in fact we want to ensure that the inspectors have the powers that are listed here but we also want to ensure that they have the ability to play a more constructive role in providing businesses—and any organisation in fact—with advice on how they can do better and where they can do better. I just wonder whether the Government is giving sufficient attention to getting that balance right. Does it simply see the inspectors as being that kind of last-ditch approach saying: “Here are all the things you’re doing wrong.” and taking the prosecutions or whatever rather than helping to effect the culture change?Under clause 181(1)(b) I note that the regulator may in writing appoint as an inspector any employee of the State services. I wonder whether the Minister could elaborate for us some practical examples of where he thinks that kind of power may be used.The area that I am really interested in is around education because a lot of schools are grappling with their obligations under this legislation. At the moment the primary inspector of schooling and early childhood education as well is the Education Review Office. So would for example the Government envisage that the inspectors or the people conducting Education Review Office visits to educational establishments may have the powers under this legislation to also be inspectors for the purposes of the Health and Safety Reform Bill? That could have some positives and some negatives. It could change the nature of the relationship between the educational institutions and those bodies but that could be in a positive way and also in a negative way.I want to give the Minister an example that was raised with me specifically today and that is around school science labs and their use of chemicals. At the moment many schools use chemicals in their science labs and the storage practices are quite variable. The schools actually want to comply but there is not a heck of a lot of enforcement or a heck of a lot of advice given to schools on this. I understand it is something that the Education Review Office used to inspect but no longer does.Therefore would the Government envisage that being the sort of reason that clause 181(1)(b) might actually come into force? So the Education Review Office is delegated the responsibility for example to actually be the health and safety inspector—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): It is clause 181(1)(a).CHRIS HIPKINS: Sorry clause 181(1)(a)—under clause 181(1)(a) because they are a department not part of the State services. I thank the Chairperson. Would the Government envisage that an Education Review Office inspector for example would be given that power?Schools want to comply but I think we would all agree that there are some significant risks involved here around the use of—I have mentioned science labs and their use of chemicals. Other examples may be workshops within schools. They have very dangerous machinery that they are using within workshops. Is that the sort of example that the Government may see being used here?I note as I go through when we talk about the powers of entry and inspection when we talk about the power to take samples and objects and other things and when we talk about the power to deal with the cause of imminent danger these are all powers that very much suggest that the inspectors are dealing with a case where things are already wrong and there are things that we want to stop or things that may even result in negligence or cases of prosecution for example. But what happens when the organisation concerned in this case a school wants to comply and wants some proactive advice? How does the Government envisage that that would be given effect to by the inspectorate or in fact does it not see the role of the inspectors as doing that at all?I guess those are my questions to the Minister and I will be interested in his answers in due course.