Belich CamillaCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to be able to make a contribution to this Forests (Log Traders and Forestry Advisers Repeal) Amendment Bill. I have to say it was a bill that I wasn't that involved with. I wasn't in the Parliament when my colleague Duncan Webb was involved on the select committee so I had to look into the history of this bill.And to start with I was thinking well this actually looks quite good the fact that we have some constraints on the one of our most dangerous work areas which is forestry. But then when I looked at the content of the bill I realised obviously that's not the purpose of this bill. It was very much to do with regulating the sale and the trade of logs which is not the biggest issue in my mind for regulation. And I thought a bit more widely about this and looked at the existing framework in relation to some of the health and safety provisions that we have in forestry. And the reason that this comes to mind in forestry is as Peeni Henare indicated before forestry is our most dangerous profession by quite some magnitude. So if you look at the number of people who are injured and the number of fatalities that occur these are much much greater in relation to forestry than they are in almost any other industry.So there is in the explanatory note an explanation of why this bill has been brought to the House. It's to do with the National Party's position in relation to the election. Fair enough. You win the election; you get to implement the policies that you campaign on. And I know that this was an important thing that the National Party has had a long history opposing.I didn't agree with the focus though on lack of regulation. So that's why it was really important to me when I read this bill and we were considering our support for this bill to go through the types of regulations which were actually included in this particular bill and just to assure myself that they aren't ones that could be associated with having a safer regime for forest.I am interested to hear and participate in the committee stage where we'll have the opportunity to question the Minister more on the regulatory framework and just to tease out a little bit what was meant in the original legislation that this repeals which actually talks about professionalising forestry. And you know I have a degree of sympathy with the idea that because it is such a hugely dangerous trade and a necessary one—obviously we do need logs to be able to build and it's important for our trade. There's lots of important things associated with forestry and my contribution is not at all meant to cast any doubt on a lot of people within that sector who do want to have a robust regime in place but the original bill did say that they wanted to kind of look at making sure they got rid of cowboys. And that's something that I would agree with. And so that was something that I was concerned about.But when I actually looked at this particular bill there's obviously the repeal of the traders and forestry advisers. I have listened to the points that have been raised in the House and it appears that the objectives that were meant to be achieved by that particular part of the bill perhaps haven't served the purpose or they're not as necessary from the proponents in support of this bill. So I can accept that. And I did note that also there is still an aspect of this legislative change which will go ahead in terms of the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Act. And so this bill as I understand it takes the commencement date out to I think 1 August 2027. So there is a component still and I'm sure the Minister will be able to go through this in subsequent readings and also on the committee stage that is still maintained.But overall I agree with my colleagues that we should support the repeal of this legislation but also to note the concerning rate of injury and workplace deaths that occur in the forestry injury and not to accept wholeheartedly some of the language in this bill around the need for lack of regulation because I think regulations that keep people safe regulations that save lives and regulations that mean that people come home at night to their families are really important. For all too many forestry families that hasn't happened. So this particular bill doesn't go very far at all towards that objective but I would encourage the House and the Minister to make sure that they are aware of those issues and work towards them.