Robertson Grant: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 20 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:6066. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Suddenly there is not so much enthusiasm to debate Part 4.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): It’s a chief listening time though.GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes that is right. It is drive time as they say at quarter to 6. Obviously I will make a very brief reference to Part 3 in the context of Part 4 because the decisions that have just been made to pass the amended Part 3—which I believe to be wrong and a travesty in terms of what this bill could have been—have a consequence in Part 4 which is that in the absence of having workplace health and safety representatives in now a very large number of workplaces—Hon Ruth Dyson: 97 percent.GRANT ROBERTSON: Whether or not it is 97 percent 95 percent or 90 percent it does not really matter. It is thousands of workplaces in New Zealand that now will not have elected workplace health and safety representatives which is a bizarre situation and a dangerous situation created by a National Government hell-bent on rewarding the people whom it thinks are its voters at the expense of New Zealanders’ lives.This bill was meant to be about risk to workers and it has turned into a bill about National managing its political risk and that is just what has happened in Part 3. But the consequence of that for Part 4 is that those who are charged with inspecting workplaces now have a lot bigger job to do. In the absence of those representatives there will be more of a call upon labour inspectors to find their way to workplaces.If we look at it this way there are a number of Labour Party speakers who have said throughout the debate that there are a number of changes and enhancements to workplace health and safety law here that we think are good. In order for them to be enforced we will now require a greater level of activity among workplace inspectors. If we look at all of subpart 1 we are talking about workplace inspectors taking on roles in places where we do not have workplace committees and where we do not have workplace health and safety representatives. They will be required to effectively take up the duties of those who would have undertaken those positions.We know that if Mr Woodhouse was in the chair he would actually stand up and tell us: “No we’ve employed more workplace health and safety inspectors.” and that would be numerically true. But it is nowhere near sufficient for New Zealanders to have confidence that this law that is being put in place today will actually be implemented.There is no point in National Party members standing up and going on about the obligations that there now are on employers and then on the other hand not providing the enforcement mechanism to make sure those things are implemented. We know that that is what is required. Time after time when we see inquiries and court cases into workplace deaths what we learn is that it is all very well to have rules but they are not always followed. We are not making laws as Mr Scott would have had us know in his previous intervention for the employers who are good employers. If we did that we would have very few laws on our statute book about anything. We would not have a Crimes Act. Good people do not commit murder so we would not need to have a law against it.That is what happens here. That is why you need inspectors. That is why you need proper laws—not for the good employers but for the bad employers. I would venture to suggest that that is exactly what the inspectors required under Part 4 of this bill will actually be having to look at. Good employers will create their own health and safety representatives and their own health and safety committees regardless of how many employees they have. It is the bad employers the lax employers who have decided that they will put profit above human lives who are the ones who will be required to have inspectors appointed under Part 4. Unfortunately the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is woefully understaffed when it comes to this kind of activity—incapable in my view of being able to ensure the full implementation of this law.So I want now to look at clauses 123 to 126. This is the question of improvement notices and I think this is where we start to see the work that would need to be undertaken.