Horan Brendan: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — In CommitteeText is subject to correctionHoran Brendan: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 05 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14388. Text is subject to correction.]BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I would like to take just a brief call on Part 1 of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. It establishes WorkSafe New Zealand as a stand-alone body—a Crown entity. It takes the important occupational health and safety work that was only recently folded into the superministry the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and places that important work into a separate entity WorkSafe New Zealand. It does that because that work cannot be done well it cannot be done effectively and it cannot be done reliably in a superministry.In clause 9 the bill provides that the main objection of WorkSafe is “to promote and contribute to the prevention of harm to all people at work and in or in the vicinity of the workplace securing the health and safety of workers and workplaces.” That is a pretty big ask and one the chief executive and the board of WorkSafe will have to work hard to achieve. Their work will be scrutinised. They will be held to account for the safety of every New Zealand family that hopes that their fathers and mothers return home safe and return home alive at the end of each day. I wish them well. I would draw attention to the forestry industry and some of the tragic injuries and fatalities that have occurred there.In clause 10 we have a baker’s dozen of functions that WorkSafe must discharge in order to fulfil its clause 9 objective. I would like to turn to Subpart 3 because this legislation not only is about the health and safety of all workers and all workplaces but also transfers the employment of around about 300 people. I am speaking about the people who today are working for the health and safety group of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. When this bill comes into force they will keep doing the same job but their employer will at the stroke of a pen become WorkSafe New Zealand. This is not uncommon as Governments reorganise the public sector from time to time—indeed some say too often. But reorganisation has been happening since the time of Petronius Arbiter if I am to believe the apocryphal quotation attributed to that long-dead Roman but I digress. What is important is that the employment protections of the 300 workers are protected.A newspaper article caught my eye around about a month ago and it was the story of a teacher-aide in Whanganui who had lost entitlement to paid parental leave because although she was doing the same job at the same site her employer had technically changed from one school board of trustees to another. She had therefore fallen between the cracks. When I looked at this Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill as reported by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I saw that in clause 12 it explicitly protected the KiwiSaver rights and the Employment Relations Act coverage of the 300 workers being transferred but it seems that people amongst the workers with new babies might lose parental leave. So I released Supplementary Order Paper 371 and I wrote to the honourable Minister Simon Bridges at more or less the same time.To give the Minister credit he and I spar at times in this Chamber—there is sometimes a little Tauranga tension—but on this occasion he accepted the point. He undertook to obtain urgent advice and he undertook to address the issue of transferred employees and parental leave in a Government Supplementary Order Paper. I was happy with that but then the Minister went and did better. With my resources I had been able to release Supplementary Order Paper 371 to protect not only KiwiSaver but Employment Relations Act rights and parental leave but the Minister with the entire machinery of government available identified a better solution. It is new clause 12which is on Supplementary Order Paper 374. It simply says: “The employment of a transferred employee by WorkSafe New Zealand is be treated as continuous employment for the purposes of any enactment.” That is a great solution. The 300 workers who are working for the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment today will when this Act comes into force be treated as having continuous employment and will lose no rights and no entitlements that are available to them under any Act of Parliament. I thank Simon Bridges for that.I cannot believe I am saying this but I hope this can become a standard piece of drafting for future legislation on transfers of employment. I note that in the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill which the Government has indicated will progress this week it is proposed to transfer some Housing New Zealand Corporation staff into the Ministry of Social Development. I would hope that the Minister in charge of that bill Nick Smith will be able to follow the lead of his colleague Minister Simon Bridges and incorporate the substance of this clause 12 into that bill.I will conclude by saying that I hope the establishment of WorkSafe New Zealand is the beginning of safer workplaces in our nation. I hope that they will be as my colleague said before me fully and adequately funded and resourced so that their fathers and mothers their sons and their daughters will return safe at the end of each day.