Woodhouse Michael: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoodhouse Michael: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 19 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:6007. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): We come to what is really the meat and drink of the bill. I get the feeling that Parts 1 and 2 were the curtain-raiser to what is the main event and the reason that Opposition parties are so opposed to the bill. I certainly have appreciated the robust but respectful interventions so far and I trust that they will continue through Part 3. I have reasonable expectations about the degree to which we are able to create an epiphany and unity around the Chamber by the end of the night but we will give it a go. I want to start by referencing—Hon Ruth Dyson: Do a rousing version of “Kumbaya”.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That is right. I want to reference the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety report because it has been quoted quite a bit particularly in the context of worker representation. I have said publicly that I have been disappointed at the misrepresentation of the Government’s position in this regard. I stand by that and I want to explain why.It is very clear to me that there is a disassociation between health and safety participation and health and safety representation. They are two quite discrete things but very often in the public narrative they have been conflated. I just want to quote the task force report at paragraph 234 235 and 236: “We consider that there needs to be a major ‘mind-shift’ in New Zealand society and in workplaces. This ‘mind-shift’ needs not only to lead to more opportunities for worker participation but also to set an expectation that everyone in the workplace is responsible for workplace health and safety.” It went on to say: “… the Taskforce considers it is important that each workplace is able to identify the approach to worker participation that is appropriate to its circumstances. Case study research commissioned by the Taskforce reinforced that worker participation arrangements are varied and ‘how they work in practice is somewhat different from that envisaged by the legislation’. While a one-size-fits-all approach to effective worker participation is not appropriate PCBUs do need to ensure that they have effective systems for worker participation …”.It did go on in another part of the report to say that health and safety representation also needed to be beefed up and I accept that. I believe this bill does that. What we have is the task force saying three things: worker representation needs to be beefed up; worker participation needs to be across the board; and crucially there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to this. I think that point is the crucial point when it comes to arguing about the merits or otherwise of the mandatory requirement to have health and safety representation superimposed on what we agree is the mandatory requirement to have worker participation.This is fundamental to the approach of what I believe is a sensible and balanced approach to where the Government has landed in this bill. We will argue the merits of that through Part 3. I do want to—and I will attempt to do this as gently as possible because I have tried very hard in the data that I have explored to find a correlation between the presence of a health and safety rep in the workplace and the incidence of serious injury and death in the workplace and I cannot. I am not saying for a moment that health and safety representatives are not important—in fact quite the opposite. But what that says to me is that there are many other factors at play in determining whether practicable steps are being taken in a workplace to keep people safe and whether all workers are participating in that health and safety process.I have reflected a lot on this and in a previous life as a chartered accountant giving business advice to small businesses one of the things that I observed in those businesses was that often somebody gets to be the go-to guy. They become the health and safety rep and it is that guy’s responsibility. Indeed it is a bit of a cop out. This was redressed by the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety report. It is really important to me that that not be the case because worker participation is the most important change that we need to make in bringing about the culture change that is necessary in our workplaces. I firmly believe that for many organisations if they do not have the right culture settings just having a health and safety rep is the easy path.You know what the harder path is going to be I suspect? I think the harder path is going to be when a small business that is not in the classification of high risk says “You know what the health and safety rep is not the right model for us. We’re going to have another way of engaging all of our workers in health and safety.” whether it is going to be weekly tool box meetings whether it is going to be a connected online health and safety app—because remember a lot of these sort of plumbing firms or construction firms or whatever they are out and about. They are not in an office. They are all over the town sometimes and getting together and understanding where the hazards are what the risks are and how to manage them is not a one-size-fits-all approach.All of that said the purpose of this is not to diminish the important role of health and safety reps. They are very important but they are not the only way to deliver effective health and safety participation and that culture. So this framework has been very clear that the majority of workers in New Zealand—more than three-quarters—will be in organisations where when the staff ask for a health and safety rep they will get one. I have every confidence that of the other quartile the answer to the request for a health and safety rep as it is now will be “Yes.”But it is not a one-size cookie cutter approach to worker participation. I set out in the upper quartile of risk the principles that we will use to identify and consult on the regulation that will determine high-risk industries and the risk of a catastrophic event. We know that Pike River is driving a lot of our thinking. An industry with a fatality rate of more than 25 per 100000 workers and an industry with a serious injury rate of more than 25 per 1000 workers—with just one exception everybody above that line is in. We have added in construction on the basis that there is an occupational disease risk with asbestos and silica and I think that is appropriate albeit that I have to acknowledge that the construction industry is on a very very positive path to improving its serious injury rate. It has nearly halved in the last 5 years and we have got to acknowledge that.Most of farming is out. That has caused quite a surprise and lots of conspiracy theories about internal ructions and so on but the simple fact is yes we need to improve our health and safety performance on farms and yes there is a high number of people with serious injury and death but they are also our largest industry. So when you standardise those rates by the size of that industry and the size of the workforce it falls down the rankings and out of that top quartile. I do happen to believe that farming is one of those industries that does require a different approach because of the nature of the workplace and that the health and safety rep system may have been the easy path out anyway. One would probably see I think some farming entities taking that up but actually what I want from farming is a much much more nuanced approach to health and safety because it has to lift its game. We are going to resurrect the quad bike safety committee because that is kind of the ground zero for farming injuries and deaths and if we can fix that and if we can ease farming concerns about the regulator which actually we are on a really good path to I think we are on a much better trajectory for improving health and safety in that industry.I stand by these changes. I strongly endorse them as being the right approach and the balanced approach to effective health and safety representation and most important the culture change through worker participation that this country needs. We said it at the start and we have said it at each reading: laws and regulations are not going to make the change we need; behaviours and attitudes are and that involves every worker every person conducting a business or undertaking and every officer.