Mitchell Clayton: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6107. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on Part 5 “Miscellaneous provisions”. We do actually have a couple of things to talk to and in fact we have got two amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 110.I would just like to start by commending some of the words that the speaker previous to me Mr Iain Lees-Galloway has just said. He brought up the work groups as being of some concern. We spoke earlier about those work groups the appointment of those work groups whether there is any sort of ambiguity about how we are going to determine what those work groups are going to look like and what they are going to consist of. We actually had an amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 110 to do that which was of course an amendment to clause 66 in Part 3 but we have sort of moved on from that now. It was unfortunate that we did not get the support from Labour for that because that would have addressed this issue about getting WorkSafe to resolve any issues as an independent arbitrator in that instance.Now I would like to move on to what we have some concerns about and we have got two amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 110 to help amend. It relates to clause 227 “Further provisions relating to regulations”. We have had some fantastic discussions in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about some of this but we have also gone out and done a lot of research with the people that this section may well and truly affect. We are talking about Federated Farmers. There is a united front there that have some concerns about this part and its provisions and hence we have put our provision forward.What the bill has got here under further provisions in clause 227(1) is: “Regulations made under this Act may—(aa) impose similar or additional duties on a person in relation to the same circumstances as this Act does: (a) be of general or limited application:”. The parts that concern us are subclause (1)(d) “apply differently to people of a differing age or health status and may apply only to people of a particular age or health status:” and subclause (1)(e) “apply differently to different classes of person workplace plant structure substance or kind of risk:”.The issues that this may raise are in relation to a workplace that is not considered dangerous—you know sharemilking is not considered dangerous nor is farming and the like—but it is where you have got a father and son or a family member going out to feed out or to make hay. As in many other cases I was one of those young children on the farm. I used to drive the tractor for the farmer who was actually a very close friend and I used to work with his sons. This clause may well stop that from happening if the children are under the age of 15 years old.It may also have an effect if you consider working in a takeaway for example. If a chip fryer was seen to be dangerous plant or equipment which of course it could be because of very very hot oil and fat that clause may actually preclude young people from actually working in those fish and chip shops and the like. The clause goes on and may have some implications around young people working on goodness me a lavender farm or even working in a butterfly factory. I say that with a pinch of a smile but it certainly does have some issues.What we are proposing here is to replace clause 227(1)(d) with our amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 110 which says: “apply differently to people of a differing age but only in respect of machinery or equipment and may only apply to people of a particular age:”. So this “particular age” may be different to what the other ages are saying of a much younger age. And of course we also have in proposed new paragraph (da) that it will “apply differently to people of a differing health status or physical capability and may apply only to people of a particular health status or physical capability:”.We see this as being a serious issue in and around some of those workplaces particularly in farming situations where of course young family members are actually involved in the day-to-day running of that farm. It may also include those persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) the workers the bosses the parents of young children who go and of course do work experience in deemed dangerous areas such as a workshop if it is a building workshop or something of the like or somewhere where there are hazardous substances around. I do not think we should be precluding that work experience and that engagement with those young people and stop them from entering those workplaces as I think that will have a detrimental effect in the long term.We have another amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 110 which is to clause 227(2). This here is about well-intentioned actions if you like. Say you have a situation where you are working on a farm and you have clocked off for the day and you are driving home and you see that one of the sheep may have escaped inadvertently. You pull over to the side of the road and with good intentions although you are off the clock you actually try to remedy the situation by getting that animal back into its pen or back into the place where it should be.Under this bill at the moment that could actually put the boss the PCBUand the worker—albeit they are not on the clock—in a situation of getting a fine or getting into trouble or basically being in breach of this condition. What we would suggest is that we would put in this proposed new subclause 227(3): “Regulations made under this Act may not hold people liable for any consequences arising from well-intentioned voluntary acts.” So in the event that there was an accident getting that stock from the road or there was a problem with getting that stock and the worker got hurt that would preclude the PCBU—the boss if you like—and the worker from any legal action or any wrongdoing or being culpable in any way.I think there is a lot of what has been put forward in this Health and Safety Reform Bill that actually does work and I think in general terms it will work. However I think that it could be done a lot better and I think that if we could actually get some support for a number of these amendments from the Government we would actually see happier people out there—the people who are actually working and living and breathing this. Some sensible sound Supplementary Order Papers and amendments would actually go a long long way.We are disappointed that we have not got a number of our amendments supported to date. Again here is another piece of sound common-sense advice that we are putting forward that would actually make a huge difference in the long run to make this legislation more palatable as it goes through today. Thank you very much for your time.