Little Andrew: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14607. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): Part 3 of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill covers the new role and I think the more clearly defined role of the Mines Rescue Trust which has for a long time played a very important role in the mining industry. It has provided the training and the ready response force if you like for mines and mine disasters or mine incidents around the country. It is a very dedicated team. There is a core staff of only a handful of people. Working miners are taken off the job and provided with comprehensive training and they are available to be deployed to mine incidents whether on the West Coast or in the Waikato or in other places where there is mining going on.One of the things that came out of the Pike River disaster—and I certainly know this from when I was down there at the time with my union hat on—was that there was in the initial stages great concern about who was controlling the Pike River incident and whether or not the expertise of the Mines Rescue Trust was being properly deployed. This is no criticism because we can make observations and judgment in hindsight but the reality is that in the early days as that tragedy unfolded the police reaction to the Mines Rescue Trust was that they thought it was some sort of little society like some little sort of sports group or something that just happened to rock on up with these well-equipped well-trained mining folk ready to go into the mine. The trust was given frankly short shrift. This was commented on by the royal commission which said that the Mines Rescue outfit must be given a proper statutory definition—even though it had its own Act beforehand it must be given a proper statutory definition including of its duties and powers—and this bill now goes some way towards doing that.The Minister of Labour’s Supplementary Order Paper 374 provides some extra provision about what happens with an incident. It provides for the appointment of an incident controller and it provides for WorkSafe New Zealand to establish an emergency protocol. All of this is good stuff but I want to draw the Committee’s attention to something that I think is a problem in it. It was a problem that was addressed specifically by the royal commission—I know that it was the subject of submissions by various parties to it—and it is about the decision making during the course of the incident.There was a very great sense of frustration during the first week or 10 days of the Pike River event when those people from the various emergency services and the Mines Rescue Trust gathered at the mine site to make decisions but were prevented from doing so because the police at least and possibly even the Fire Service insisted on sending decisions back to Wellington to be made rather than making them at the site. The Department of Labour was the other one too or what was known then as theDepartment of Labour. It got heavily involved in the decisions but that slowed things down.My concern is that the proposed clause 54B on Supplementary Order Paper 374 provides in subclause (4) of that new clause for the incident controller to “consult other relevant persons or agencies including the persons and agencies described” earlier in the clause and that includes the Fire Service the police and anybody else. I draw the Committee’s attention to the comment made by the royal commission in its report about the decision making at the time. It talked on page 350 of volume 2 of the report about planning activities that must include risk assessment but it went on to say this: “Reviews of risk assessments should not go through several layers of bureaucracy as occurred at Pike River.” What was happening during the course of the Pike River incident was that every time people thought they should do something or a particular proposal was put forward about a course of action that would be taken there was then a risk assessment that had to be carried out on it. It was those risk assessments and the decisions that were being taken that were sent off to Wellington to the Police National Headquarters and the head office of the Department of Labour. That slowed things right down.So on that basis I am putting forward an amendment that adds a proviso to subclause (4) of the proposed new clause 54B. It allows the incident controller to consult—as they should do and indeed that did happen at Pike River—but adds “providing that such consultation does not impede the incident controller in making decisions in a timely and efficient way”. What is important of course as an incident like this unfolds is that decisions do have to get taken and we do not want the obligation to consult the other parties most of which will themselves have personnel at the incident to be sort of ankle-tapped by the fact that they are referring to their various head offices and taking risk assessments. I think that in one case one of the agencies involved was taking legal advice as this was all unfolding so there was a law office involved and giving advice as well. All of that slowed things down.I know from talking to some of the Australian experts who were giving advice from Australia in the early stages and who then came over to do what they call gagging the mine—filling it up with gas to put out the fire—that a lot of those folks were saying how difficult it was to get some very important decisions taken because everything seemed to be referred off to other places and parts of the country. So I say that I hope the Minister in the chair the Minister of Labour takes that on board and if necessary talks to the officials to make sure that in enacting this provision we do not impede future incident controllers in the way that those in charge of the Pike River incident clearly were impeded from taking decisions in a more timely and effective manner.We know that there was this model of crisis incident management that the emergency services at Pike River were following. It was untested and untried in an incident as big and as significant as Pike River. It has been developed. There has been debriefing by the agencies involved in that. This legislation once enacted will allow WorkSafe New Zealand to undertake much closer oversight of the development of those protocols. That is a good thing.Like many things in this bill there are some very good things but we do not want to sink the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar as they say on ships and elsewhere. We do not want to ruin what is a very good set of provisions by glossing over what I think is perhaps a minor oversight taken from reflection about the Pike River incident itself. So I urge the Minister either to consider that very carefully or to at least rise and take a call to explain to us and assure the Committee that this proposed new clause 54B will not impede good-quality effective and timely decision-making in an incident such as Pike River.After all as we know from that experience and indeed from many others time is usually of the essence.Once decision makers are empowered to make decisions and once the agencies are all there we do not want them to be obstructed by the need to hang about and wait for all their hangers-on and others who all want their 5 cents’ worth when that may not be necessary for the effective conduct and controlling of an incident such as this. So once again I urge the Minister to think carefully about it and to make sure that this good legislation—this new legislation which charts a new path forward when it comes to disasters in mines and potentially in other places in the future—is not let down by a provision that could obstruct good-quality decision-making.