O'Connor Damien: Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4731. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): In reply thank you for the opportunity and I appreciate those members who have contributed to this bill the Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill. This was my best attempt to react and to take action from the report of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. It said as one of its first things to do: “Major change required and fast”. I drafted a bill. The only avenue available to me was through the member’s bill process and I put this bill in there. Unfortunately it took some time to be pulled out. In the meantime I acknowledge that the Government took the recommendations and developed changes to mining regulations and legislation and then promised to move on health and safety. There are 29 families who will remind each and every one of us of the failings of Parliament and the failings of legislation to put in place proper protection for their loved ones in underground coalmining.About 2 months prior to the Pike River disaster having written to the Minister of Labour at the time warning her about conditions in the coalmining industry I received a reply: “I am advised by the Department of Labour that there is no recent change in the pattern of mining serious harm notifications that might give cause for concern.” That Minister has long gone but what I have heard from the Government in this debate is the same naive approach to health and safety and to mining regulations that that Minister had swallowed also. In the process of development of the legislation that has been passed now for underground mine safety the quarrying industry lobbied to be excluded even though it is acknowledged as being a high-risk industry and now this Parliament will be reminded by three other families who have lost loved ones in the short space of time—in fact in this year alone—in the quarrying sector that they wanted their loved ones to return home from work as well and the legislation and the absence of regulation for quarrying meant that those workers were not protected. Scott Baldwin Tane Hill-Ormsby and Murray Taylor have been killed in their workplaces because the National Government was lobbied to make changes to the proposals from the Pike River disaster and the recommendations from the royal commission and it dumbed down that legislation.What I say in the House here is that the Government has made changes to underground mining regulations and safety and made some improvements but it has also made compromises as well. What I ask through this legislation is that the Government would support the bill going to a select committee to enable us to review the progress that has been made and to ask the question of whether we need to make further changes. At the moment the wider body of health and safety legislation has been parked up because the Government is subject to lobbying. In the same way there may be families in the future who have every right to come to this House and say “You failed my partner. You failed my husband.”—not you Mr Assistant Speaker but this House—because we ignored the wisdom before us and through lobbying dumbed down legislation and did not have in place the proper protection for people at work. This bill is a legitimate way of having a comprehensive review.I acknowledge the Green Party and New Zealand First for their support—they too see the wisdom—and I would like to acknowledge my West Coast colleague Kevin Hague who has always stood beside me in trying to force the Government into a better space on health and safety legislation. The 1992 legislation and the regime were based on a flawed philosophy but this Government’s oversight is based on flawed information and so we face a situation where because of lobbying and because of bad information this National Government is going to vote down this piece of legislation. This is a lost opportunity that would have allowed us to review the progress that we should be making in mining quarrying and workplace health and safety.