Moroney Sue: WorkSafe New Zealand Bill Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill Mines Rescue Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: WorkSafe New Zealand Bill Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill Mines Rescue Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 14 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14744. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): I rise to speak to the third reading of the legislation arising from the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. The right to go to work leave your loved ones in the morning and come home safe and unharmed at night is a pretty basic right and in this instance that right was not upheld. Those 29 men left in the morning and they never returned. They may never return from where they currently are. This legislation is one chapter in the book of things that we need to learn from this disaster. Labour is supporting the third reading of this legislation because this is part of what we have learnt from this tragedy. In a previous decade it was Cave Creek. It seems that pretty much every decade in this country we need to remind ourselves about the importance of workplace rights. It seems that about every decade we need to go through the misery and the tragedy and relearn lessons that we have learnt before. I hope that this is the last decade when we will have to revisit these types of remedies.Some people might think it is the first time that some of the things contained in this legislation have ever been contemplated but actually if you look back through history some of these are things that we once had and that were stripped away in the name of deregulation in the name of having the market—the invisible hand of the market was going to fix everything. If there is one thing that I can say during this debate that I hope will resonate in this debating chamber for all the years that it needs to it is to ask that we please never have to learn the lesson again. Can we please never have to learn the lesson again through losing lives. The market and deregulation do not keep people safe at work—they do not keep people safe. Regulation is an important factor in having civilised decent workplaces where people can actually have the expectation of the basic right to earn a living and not to die from it—the basic right to earn a living and not to die from it.There are some inadequacies in this legislation. We would have much preferred that all of the recommendations from the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy be followed but they have not. I genuinely hope that I or other MPs in the future will not be back to stand up and revisit that in the future. When the Government has inquiries of any nature it would be useful that it picks up all of the recommendations and does not cherry-pick recommendations. I think that that is another disaster waiting to happen. When Governments do not actually look at thewhole picture and just cherry-pick pieces that they feel comfortable with then we are doomed to fail yet again.I also want to echo the words of my colleague Darien Fenton and urge the Government to not believe that it has fixed the problem because of the passing of this legislation this afternoon. This is but one chapter of what needs to happen. The broader context is actually having people valued their voices valued their work valued and their workplaces valued and not taking the approach—as the Government has done in other pieces of legislation—of stripping away workers’ rights. That is the context in which this series of bills needs to sit. I think that the Government does need to stop pause and think about the broader context of what constitutes a decent fair and safe workplace.The last thing that I will do in the course of this debate is acknowledge the loss that the families have endured and encourage the Government to make good for those families. They are still suffering. They will continue to suffer for a very long time. This is but one chapter. I am pleased that Parliament is today making this move but there is so much more to do in honouring those men their families and the tragedy that has taken place.