Moroney Sue: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14604. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you for the opportunity to rise in support of Part 2 of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill but with reservations. I will probably speak to those reservations before I speak to the part of this—the part of this part—that I do want to fully endorse. The reservations do come hard on the heels of what Kevin Hague was just describing: the view espoused by the Government that quarries and tunnelling operations should not have the same provisions as underground mines.When I was listening to the submissions on this bill at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I heard some of the companies—not all of them but some of them—involved in quarrying operations and tunnelling operations come forward to say that their workplaces were not dangerous enough to need these provisions and a chill went down my spine I have got to say. I have heard underground mining companies over many years say exactly that about not needing the provisions that are actually in this part of the bill. Mining companies have for many years said that they should not have a check inspector regime. Of course they are not called check inspectors in this part of the bill but essentially that type of role is what is in Part 2 of this bill. I think we call them industry safety representatives in this legislation. But to hear the same arguments come out of the mouths of employers from quarries and tunnelling operations which are very dangerous—slightly different hazards but none the lesshazardous operations—was chilling because I am sorry to say that I have heard it all before. Those pleas were ignored at this country’s peril. I do not want to ever witness that again but I suspect we may well do.We heard from Ray Bianchi from the Northern Amalgamated Workers Union which represents most of the employees who work in quarries and in tunnelling operations. In much more colourful language than I can use in this debating chamber he described just how dangerous quarries are when explosives are being used to move big mountains of rock—of course a hazardous type of situation. As Kevin Hague has just said the complexities of hazards in those sorts of environments should not be underestimated because it is the nature of the holes in the Swiss cheese lining up that brings about these terrible terrible disasters. We know now—well actually we knew before but we know it in our hearts now—that if we do not mitigate the risks at every level of those types of operations then we are inviting disaster and we are inviting the sorts of tragedy that the people of the West Coast have endured.I am supporting Andrew Little’s Supplementary Order Paper 388 which brings back into this legislation tunnelling and quarry operations so that workers in those areas have the same degree of protections as those working in underground mines. I fear that if we do not do this—if we do not return to what the original drafted legislation said in this regard—we will make the same mistakes that were made that led to the Pike River mine disaster. So I want to urge all members of Parliament to think very carefully because their vote will be recorded on Supplementary Order Paper 388 and they will be held to account for any disasters that follow in my view. I will feel very pleased that my vote will be recorded in favour of returning tunnelling and quarrying back into this legislation.Before I came into Parliament my job—the thing I got paid to do for a living—was to train health and safety representatives at work. I am very very pleased to see now in Part 2 a full regime that will actually mandate health and safety representatives in the workplace in the way they ought to be. I encourage the Government to take what it has written in this piece of legislation and extrapolate that out to all workplaces in New Zealand because this does truly reflect the representative nature as it should have been.