Young Jonathan: Health and Safety Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeYoung Jonathan: Health and Safety Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 30 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5525. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): Firstly I would like to thank the members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for the work that they have participated in in the formation of this second edition of the bill. Can I also thank the officials who assisted us. Can I also acknowledge the women—Sonya Rockhouse Anna Osborne and Deborah McMillan—who are here at Parliament this afternoon to hear this very important bill be debated.In the explanatory note in the first draft of the bill before it even went to the select committee it said that the main purpose “is to provide a balanced framework to secure the health and safety of workers and workplaces.” From my understanding it was never designed to be a one-size-fits-all. The balanced framework is not just about employer and employee responsibilities; it is about having an appropriately flexible regime where it is not the imposition of one single system of doing things in companies that have already very effective health and safety practices. The balanced framework is about a safety regime that is proportionate to the level of risk in the workplace driven by a principles-based system that establishes that all persons conducting a business or undertaking have a primary duty of care to their workers. As part of that primary duty of care the persons conducting a business or undertaking put in place worker engagement and participation practices that enable the workers to be part of building the health and safety framework to ensure that their workplace is safe.What has come through the select committee hearings and come through quite obviously is that a significant change is needed in the health and safety culture in the workplace in New Zealand. Our thinking must change. Laws are very important but laws in themselves are not enough. We need leadership we need commitment and we need comprehensive participation right through the workforce from the top down and the bottom up. Because of the tragedies of the past in the development of this bill health and safety dominates in a far stronger way our thinking today and so it should. The momentum for change has started a number of years ago and we are already seeing improvements in workplace health and safety even before the bill becomes law. That is the power of culture change.Over the past 5 years from 2010 to 2014 inclusive on average about one person a week has lost their life in the workplace. We know of course about the tragedy of Pike River. We acknowledge that. We also acknowledge that in 2013 the forestry sector lost 10 lives and the agricultural sector lost more than twice that. Because of that we are seeing those two industries apply real change to their practices. Forestry’s workplace fatalities have fallen from an average of six a year down to a single life lost in these last 2 years and every single life lost is tragic. Again I acknowledge those who have lost a loved one. Our goal must be zero lives lost. Agriculture which has seen the highest loss of life of all sectors has seen a 33 percent reduction in workplace fatalities so far this year and a lot more is yet to be done.This improvement tells me that health and safety is truly on the agenda of New Zealand. There is a wide acceptance that our past practices were unacceptable. Secondly it shows that the ability to drive down serious harm and death in the workplace is possible when an industry sector puts its mind to it. This has happened before the bill has become law.The third thing I take from these recent statistics is that this law reform has the potential to drive those changes in thinking and practice even deeper into the workplace than what is currently happening which will enable us to make even greater improvements in workplace health and safety.I want to talk about what has emerged to be a controversial issue and that is worker engagement and health and safety representation. The Green Party’s view is that this bill provides less opportunity for worker engagement than the provisions of the laws that this bill seeks to reform. I say that is incorrect. The Health and Safety Reform Bill actually strengthens existing requirements for worker engagement and participation and stronger worker participation underlines the expectation in the bill that everyone in the workplace is responsible for workplace health and safety and that workers are empowered to intervene when they see an unsafe situation.The current law says that if you have more than 30 employees you must develop a participation scheme. We have removed that threshold. Under the changes all persons conducting a business or undertaking—whether they are small or large low risk or high risk—are still required to engage with their workers on matters of health and safety that affect them. They also have to have worker participation practices that give their workers reasonable opportunities to participate effectively in improving work health and safety. Every person conducting a business or undertaking every employer or organisation that employs someone has a primary duty of care to engage with their employees. If the persons conducting a business or undertaking and the workers have agreed procedures for that engagement the engagement must be in accordance with those procedures. This bill is quite explicit in what worker participation looks like.I want to speak on worker representation. Opposition members of the committee have nailed their flag to the mast of worker representation. I suspect as the previous speaker said that their support of the bill hinged on this issue. At the select committee an amendment was proposed by the Opposition members. We were told that this amendment was highly significant for their ongoing support of the bill. I regret that they do not support this bill. I believe that the intent and also the outcome of this bill will be a massive improvement in health and safety in New Zealand.Clause 62 which they proposed to change is on the nature of engagement. It says: “If the workers are represented by a health and safety representative the engagement must involve that representative.” The proposed amendment was to remove the words “health and safety” so it would read: “If the workers are represented by a representative the engagement must involve that representative.” So this was throwing it very broadly—that there would be a whole raft of representatives involved in the engagement process between the person conducting a business or undertaking and the workers. We were told to think very carefully about that before we rejected the proposal. We did think very clearly about it.I had heard criticism that this bill was a stalking horse for unions in the workplace. But to be truthful in the select committee process I had not seen massive amounts of evidence of this; I saw what I expected to see. But this proposed amendment that was going to suggest that if a worker was represented by a union obviously then the union representative would have to be—Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance. I think the chair of the select committee is straying into select committee business that has not been reported back to the House. I seek your guidance on whether he is actually breaching privilege in that regard.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member has been given some latitude because the previous speaker made strong accusations around matters that were dealt with in the select committee and had been left out and made accusations as to why that should happen.JONATHAN YOUNG: Speaking to the point of order the amendment is on the website available to the public.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: That has been ruled on.JONATHAN YOUNG: Thank you. What I want to say in this regard is that the proposed amendment would have opened up an issue where if the worker was represented by a union then the union representative would have to be present at the engagement between the person conducting a business or undertaking and the worker.The point I wish to make is that I voted against that proposal because I fundamentally believe that across-the-board engagement directly with workers will achieve a more integrated and comprehensive culture change than relying on a past paradigm of a union representative being the intermediary for workers. The biggest thing this bill does in terms of worker participation—the biggest thing this bill does—is connect the workers directly with the owners and managers and create a top-down and bottom-up discussion and decision-making process about health and safety.I am not denigrating the work of unions in health and safety but the New Zealand workplace is changing. Health and safety is not the prerogative of just the unions; it is now the prerogative of the persons conducting a business or undertaking and the people they employ. This is the culture change we need where everybody owns the issue the problem and the solution. We are moving away from the few who are thinking about things to the many who are thinking about these things. I think that is the reason we have found the right balance. I commend this bill to the House.