Hague Kevin: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 27 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11380. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green):Tēnā koe. Can I begin with the unusual step of acknowledging my colleagues from West Coast - Tasman Chris Auchinvole and the Hon Damien O’Connor and congratulate them both on two excellent speeches.In the 1980s and 1990s New Zealand experienced a wave of change underpinned by the boneheaded notion that if a Government takes a hands-off attitude to more or less everything then the free-market competition that results between unregulated companies will somehow magically produce the best outcomes for everyone. The theory was applied not only to goods and services but also to whole industries and areas of core public services like electricity generation health and education. One of the casualties of this enthusiasm for deregulation was leaky homes. Ordinary people became the victims of corner-cutting and butt-covering by all those who could now get away with it. The same thing happened with finance companies.Another casualty was safety in underground mines. In 1992 the Government threw away the prescriptive mine safety rules that had been built up by the experience of centuries—many years—underground. These rules were eventually replaced with requirements that mining companies take safety measures that are “practicable”. That requirement has embedded in it affordability because a company that cannot afford a particular safety measure will not find it to be practicable with the result that different mines will have different safety standards. At the same time the “triangle of safety” as Dave Feickert refers to representatives of companies workers and Government who all have responsibility for safety was demolished with the abolition of check inspectors and then a radical downgrade of the Government’s mines inspectorate. Thus the National Government in the 1990s first of all radically weakened the actual rules for underground mine safety and then dismantled the structures to monitor and enforce compliance.None of these changes was reversed by Labour in its years of Government and throughout all of that time experts warned that that erosion of safety would result in the loss of life. It did in 2006 and then again in 2010. In 1995 in his submission to the inquiry into the administration of occupational safety and health policy coalmining safety expert Bill Brazil whom the Hon Damien O’Connor has already referred to said: “Furthermore the [Health and Safety in Employment] Act is being used as a manipulative device to eliminate management structures and many historically formed mining codes of practice that were firmly established in the heart of previous legislation much of which has proved successful over 100 years. Should this situation be allowed to continue without intervention the end result can only be the escalation of potential for further disaster.” How right he was.From my kitchen window I look out at the Paparoas where 29 men still lie. I am reminded every day of my commitment that those men’s remains are brought back to their families that the investigation of their deaths sees justice done and that systems are reconstructed to protect all other underground miners from avoidable risk. Mine was one of the very first calls for a royal commission of inquiry into the Pike River tragedy. Then I came to this House day after day pressing the Minister of Labour to reinstate the mines inspectorate and overhaul the health and safety regulatory framework until the Government eventually capitulated created the High Hazards Unit and established the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. The royal commission and the independent task force both produced excellent recommendations.I would like to say that the job of reconstructing those safety systems to protect miners is now being completed with this bill the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill but I cannot. When the Government said it would implement all of the recommendations of the royal commission I cautiously welcomed the announcement but said the devil would be in the detail. Now we have seen some of the detail and it has become clear that the Government intends a pale facsimile of what the royal commission and the independent task force intended. Of course we welcome the Government’s eventual acceptance that a stand-alone occupational safety and health agency is required. But rather than the very strong tripartite model recommended by the royal commission and strongly endorsed by the independent task force the Government instead proposes as Darien Fenton has already commented the vague formulation that the Minister will have regard to the perspectives of workplace participants as one of six general criteria for appointing board members.The functions of the new entity owe much more to the standoffish half-hearted and proven inadequate approach of the Department of Labour to these responsibilities than to the strong authoritative and proactive agency that had been intended. The agency will enforce the legislation but every other function—and there are 13 functions—is toadvise promote provide guidance and generally give the appearance of action without authority. The Government is proceeding to provide for advisory groups when this has been resoundingly rejected by participants in the task force process particularly as it seems that this will be accompanied by the dismantling of the Workplace Health and Safety Council. I invite subsequent Government speakers to tell me if I am wrong but if I am right such a dismantling would seem to contravene International Labour Organization conventions to which New Zealand is signatory.The changes in Part 2 of the bill certainly go part-way towards re-establishing that triangle of safety I referred to earlier and I am pleased that it is largely based on the Queensland Coal Mining Safety and Health Act. In a variety of places however the bill resorts again to weasel words. For example in the proposed new section 19Q in clause 27 which is pivotal mine operators must show that there is “a documented worker participation system that provides reasonable opportunities for the mine workers to participate” in improving health and safety. I want to state categorically that that is not enough. Successful mine safety programmes require that there is full worker participation. It can never be acceptable under the law for an employer to be able to say: “Well we provided them the opportunity but they didn’t show up at the meeting.”I remain profoundly disappointed that the Government has not moved to address the “all practicable steps” formulation in the Act itself. More prescriptive regulations for mining should emerge from the new processes being established but unless the problem is dealt with in the Act I believe it will continue to drive haphazard practice in industries such as forestry which also has an appalling safety record. Part 3 of the bill establishes a wider role and sounder footing for the Mines Rescue service and that is long overdue. The pity is that the Government’s woeful management of Solid Energy and its current underground coalmines may have already meant a critical loss of expertise from our Mines Rescue service.All in all one has the impression that the Government has not learnt its lesson and again hoped to get away with superficial or half-hearted adjustment rather than the fundamental change that is called for. On 22 November 2010 John Key said: “I have no reason to believe that New Zealand’s safety standards are any less than Australia’s and in fact our safety record for the most part has been very good”. He has since denied in this House that deregulation was at the heart of the systems failure that allowed the Pike River tragedy to occur and one has the impression with this bill that the Government is responding to public perception rather than a genuine understanding of the need for fundamental change. We will support this bill at this stage we will follow the submissions with very close interest and we will need there to be significant change to continue to support it.