Dyson Ruth: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6116. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am really pleased to contribute to Part 5 which I think is misleadingly titled “Miscellaneous provisions”. I do not mean that it is deliberately misleading but I think it could imply that it has not got a lot in it when in fact there is a huge amount of really important provisions in this part. It covers clauses 205 to 239 and although I do not want to focus most of my contribution on the last clause I would invite members to read clause 239 “Consequential amendments”. It just says: “Amend the enactments specified in Schedule 3 as set out in that schedule.” I looked at schedule 3 and it just goes on and on and on. I am quite surprised that there has been to the best of my knowledge—and I have been listening in the Committee to the debate—very little if any debate on the raft of legislation that is described in consequential amendments under clause 239 and set out in schedule 3.Although I have referred to clause 239 and I might get back to it later the main contribution that I would like to make is in terms of both the drafting and the content in an area that my colleague Sue Moroney quite accurately predicted and that is in clauses 211 and 212. These are the two areas dealing with health and safety at work including the publishing of a strategy and workplace injury prevention.I want to ask about the drafting first of all. I know that the Minister in the chair the Hon Nicky Wagner is not responsible for any of this legislation but as she is the Minister sitting in the chair I would encourage her to get advice from her competent officials and answer some of the questions that have been raised. It is really frustrating when you do not have the responsible Minister but you do have legitimate questions that are unanswered. Sometimes Ministers just use their lack of portfolio responsibilities as an excuse but I know that they could ask their advisers for some contributions and be of assistance to the Committee as we go through this Committee stage. This is our only opportunity as the Committee of the whole House to get answers about specific parts of the legislation that we are debating. Once we are through the Committee stage that opportunity is lost to us.So I would like to ask in terms of the drafting precedents about clause 212 “Workplace injury prevention”. That clause describes two provisions—section 264A and section 264B—of an entirely different piece of legislation the Accident Compensation Act 2001 and how that legislation “requires WorkSafe and ACC to at all times have a workplace injury prevention action plan that meets the requirements of that section.” I do not recall other legislation in which provisions are contained that just say “another Act has this in it”. It does not have any legislative requirements pertaining to the Health and Safety Reform Bill; it just refers to what is in another Act and I want to know about the drafting precedents of that. We have been told that it is not consistent with modern drafting practice to refer to other bits of legislation that may be relevant and to me this seems to be inconsistent with that advice which I have heard discussed in the Chamber previously. So that is my first question—not about the content but about the drafting and what I think is unusual and not in keeping with parliamentary practice in 2015.The next point that I want to raise is actually more specifically about the policy and the intent in clauses 211 and 212. Let us start with clause 211. It is titled: “Health and Safety at Work Strategy” and it says in subclause (2): “The strategy must be developed jointly with WorkSafe.” It does not say who it is jointly developed between. One may assume that it refers to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety but nowhere in this clause is the Minister required to develop a strategy. The Minister is just required to “publish a strategy” and I think that leaves it up to the goodwill of the Minister to actually develop a strategy jointly with WorkSafe if that is the intention. It may be jointly with ACC or it may be jointly with any number of people but it is not at all clear what clause 211(2) means in terms of who the parties to the development of the strategy are.The Minister should in my view lead the development of a strategy. I am surprised that after 7 long years the Government has not worked out that we used to have a workplace health and safety strategy. It was a robust strategy. It set a framework of action for Government departments and agencies. I do not know what has happened to it. The Minister probably did not know it was in existence because this seems to be the first ever time that attention has been focused on the need for a strategic framework for Government departments and agencies to work to.I am concerned about subclause (4) which says: “The Minister may amend or replace the strategy at any time.” To me that gives the Minister powers that I think may not necessarily be abused but that I think are not representative of the need for collaboration and understanding and commitment to the implementation of a strategy. Having a unilateral ability to amend or replace a strategy is not the way to get buy-in from employers and workers in New Zealand for the successful implementation of a strategy. If we have learnt one thing through this Committee process—and listening to some of the contributions from the other side sometimes I wonder whether there were lessons learnt—it is the need for people to understand and buy into and then commit to the implementation of ensuring that our workplaces are safe.I just want to turn my attention now to the provisions of injury prevention that are outlined in clause 211(5)(b) which is ACC’s injury prevention priorities and again I refer to clause 212. I want to tell the Committee of the whole House a little story about what I think were two excellent injury prevention programmes. One is directly related to the provisions in this legislation and one is not but I want to tell the Committee the story of it anyway if I may. The reason I say they were excellent injury prevention programmes is that they were independently peer reviewed in a robust fashion and were found to be excellent.The first programme was an older persons’ fall prevention strategy. It was led by good organisations throughout our country sometimes Presbyterian Support and sometimes Age Concern. It was a very simple programme which of course was designed to reduce the number of falls by older people. Otago University’s injury prevention research unit peer reviewed it and said that it was excellent. It was simple it was accessible it was free and it was reducing the number of fallsin New Zealand that older people had inflicted upon themselves. I think that sounds like a really good idea. When an older person falls and breaks their hip they die a lot earlier than if they had not fallen and broken their hip. We know that is a fact. So if we can prevent falls that hurt people cost the health system and cause earlier deaths than otherwise would have occurred we should do it and we should put Government money into it. One of the first actions of the incoming National Government in 2008 was to cut the funding for that programme.Another programme that had exactly the same outcome—that is excellent injury prevention outcomes but funding cuts—was the health and safety training. It went to three levels—introduction level second level and third level—and was developed jointly between the then Department of Labour occupational health and safety experts and ACC. Workers from all over New Zealand were able to go to those courses and learn about making their workplace safer not just for themselves but for other people and then go back to their workplace and pass on that knowledge. That is a great driver of a change in the culture of New Zealand’s workforce and that is what we need. We need better education and better understanding and leadership to drive a change of culture that will reduce the number of injuries.Again one of the first actions of the incoming National Government in 2008 was to cut the funding for those programmes. So they are no longer available despite clause 212 describing workplace injury prevention and explaining the requirement for WorkSafe and ACC to have at all times a workplace injury prevention action plan.