Faafoi Kris: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 19 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5980. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 1 of the Health and Safety Reform Bill. Can I thank the Minister in the chair Michael Woodhouse for answering a number of questions that were posed to him from this side of the Chamber. There was one question that Chris Hipkins posed that the Minister may have forgotten or did not address in his earlier statement and that I am certainly interested in too and that is where businesses are of a size whereby they may or may not be caught—where they have either under 20 or over 20 employees.There is concern I guess—and I have had it from one business owner—as to whether they may or may not be caught and that other business units that may be of a size of say 32 employees may break into two separate business units so they are not caught by this legislation. It is something that I have certainly spoken to one business in the building and construction sector about. That local business takes health and safety very seriously and wants to make sure that it adheres to any health and safety regulations but it also wants to make sure that any other business that is competing with it cannot necessarily game the system by separating into two business units so they are not caught by this legislation.I guess that if there is any safeguard or response that the Government may have then I would certainly be interested in hearing from the Minister on that. I think Chris Hipkins brought that up as part of clause 3(1)(d) and so if the Minister does have a response to that it would be very useful.I also want to move us to a different clause clause 17 and that is the meaning of what is reasonable and practicable. I guess this is what you would expect under this piece of legislation that a good employer or a good workplace would do to take measures to mitigate any risks especially in high-risk units for workplaces in order to prevent any injury or harm to their employees. Clause 17 talks about the availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or minimise the risk and after assessing the extent of the risk and the available ways of eliminating or minimising the risk the cost associated with available ways of eliminating or minimising the risk including whether the cost is grossly disproportionate to the risk.I think this is a pretty key piece of this legislation because for those firms that have not done this kind of work there have been in many cases deaths and injuries in their workplaces. I do want to acknowledge the family of Mark Samoa who was a worker at CentrePort on the waterfront here in Wellington who was killed at his workplacein January 2013. When the High Court made its decision in the prosecution of CentrePort for his death it said that CentrePort had failed to have a procedure for the interaction between the pedestrians and the forklift that dropped the bales I believe that crushed Mr Samoa at his workplace. The judge found that because CentrePort failed to have such a procedure for this work it also failed to train supervise implement monitor and communicate the procedureto its staff.I believe that this piece of legislation does give more safeguards to workers. It does put the onus on employers to make sure that this kind of thing does not happen again. But as has been said by many people on this side of the Chamber we believe that that right should be available to all workers—not just to workers in a business unit of a certain size but to all workers—regardless of whether they work for a company that has a staff of under 20 or over 20. I think this is something that the families of those victims seriously want to have looked at. There was a very frank comment from Rhonda Samoa the sister of Mark Samoa. When the verdict was given in that High Court case she said: “I know human error was involved here but there were not enough measures in place to protect against that.”She went on to say: “Unfortunately it’s taken [a court case] to give [CentrePort] a good [kick] up the arse.”On this side of the Chamber we are asking that the Government seriously think about this so that we do not have to have another High Court case and that we do not have to have more deaths and that businesses such as CentrePort in this case get the kick up the arse that Rhonda Samoa suggested that that company needed just to keep her brother safe in his workplace.Clause 17 talks about the kinds of protections and reasonable steps that a company should take—