O'Connor Damien: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6115. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I will go to clause 228A which is the issue of exemptions. Not having been on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I have not been privy to the discussion around this but I am trying to think of where exemptions might occur. We have had a reference to the armed forces earlier in the body of the legislation and there are some criteria of course—“The regulator may exempt any person” and just to go back it is exemption from compliance with regulations. So the regulations will be imposed but the clause will allow an exemption from compliance with that. I have been trying to think through situations where that might occur because it says in clause 228A(2)(b) that “the exemption is not inconsistent…”. So it must not be granted if “the exemption is not inconsistent with the purposes of this Act.”—that is the exemption may be granted but the purpose of the Act must still be complied with.Although I have raised the issue earlier in the debate around the bill’s purpose being to provide a balanced framework rather than an effective framework—which I would always have advocated for—the requirements and the purposes cover a fairly wide range of things such as fair and effective workplace representation and encouraging unions and employer organisations to take a constructive role. The question I ask of the Minister is for what purpose would we have an exemption? It is not a flippant question. It is one that I am struggling to understand because the purposes of the bill are sound. Although I may take issue with the words I think we know what we are trying to achieve here and to allow exemptions from compliance is somewhat of a dangerous thing. In the armed forces I think there is some understanding of why there is an exemption. I have been an adventure tourism operator and I have been a farmer. These are both in my view high-risk areas in spite of the view of the Government but I still cannot think of areas where I would want us to deviate from the objectives and the purposes of this piece of legislation. Keeping that in mind I would have thought that we were covered and did not need an exemption.I am looking out—there may be in nature of course unforeseen circumstances but you cannot regulate for them in my view or for exemptions or maybe this is the area that the Minister wants to refer to. If there is a natural event and if it has not been possible to comply with the regulations maybe then that would stop a prosecution from occurring or would stop an inspector from coming in and initiating that. But I would think and hope—and it is the loophole that I guess they used in Pike River—that in unforeseen circumstances there is a plan B or a plan C or a plan D because we should not undertake anything that would put anyone’s life at risk. We are trying to protect employees and employers—and anyone else of course—in and around the workplace. So I ask that question of the Minister in the chair Nicky Wagner and hopefully she can come back and answer it.There are other provisions in here and one of the things that I want to look at is notification. It is a very important part in clause 221(1)(d) where notifiable events—which is the right term for it I think—are referred to in regulations “prescribing matters (including requirements) relating to notifiable events at workplaces including—(i) regulating the taking of any action to prevent a notifiable event …”. The question I have is about how we ensure that every employer understands what a notifiable event is and will those events be written down in regulations or will they justbe covered as a general principle?It is at the cutting edge I guess of implementation of prosecution and of the fear that some employers have. A notifiable event in one workplace—I guess cutting your finger in an office—might be seen as a major event but in defence of the farmers if you cut your finger while you are fencing it is probably not a notifiable event. I am just assuming that the regulations cover that. I have to say that I would have hoped that the regulations would allow that kind of variation—take a cut finger say—across a number of occupations and it would have been better to do that than to say that some occupations were simply low risk and to cover it in that way.I think that the approach that the Government has used in this area has been absolutely wrong and there will be people here who are interested in the farming sector and they may think they have gained a huge victory in this. I could go back—and indeed I have gone back—to the 1992 legislation and the debates here in the House when the National Government Ministers said that they had made great headway in achieving a balanced piece of health and safety legislation. That Government had done away of course with mining legislation or had assumed that a code of practice might come in so people—probably farmers and others—saw it as a huge victory.I have not counted up the number of people who have been killed and I am not naive enough to think that every one of those deaths would have been prevented but if we had taken the approach as many other countries have done—not the one of the 1992 Government and now of the 2015 Government both of which were National Governments that says that a balanced approach is necessary. Well when it comes to people’s lives we need better than balance. We need effective legislation that ensures that any young or old person who goes on to a farm or into a forest or who is in an office workplace is going to be safe. You do not have to go very far in terms of Google to pick up example after example of death and the failure of our systems on farms to protect workers and a continuation of the same is not good enough.In fact when seatbelts were introduced in this country there were many people who said: “Look we can’t force this on people. We can’t ensure that everyone in a car wears a seatbelt. We’ve got to be reasonable about this.” Well no the law said we had to and now we have got to the point in our culture and our approach to car safety has improved to the point where young children will scream if they are not in a seatbelt and that is a great outcome. And there will be a point in the future on farms when the culture and approach to safety is one that does generate a far better outcome.I am concerned that the compromises to achieve the so-called balance and to maybe look at notifiable eventsin a slightly different way between farms and other workplaces—or indeed between different types of farming. A worm farm being a high-risk venture and a dairy farm being a low-risk one—the ridiculousness the stupidity of that is not lost on just about every single New Zealander. I come back the issue of exemptions because the Government has made an exemption for a whole class or classes of farming which is stupid and I am fearing that the exemptions that are wide open through legislation—in clause 228A here—may allow the Government because of political lobbying or anything else to leave open other exemptions that might not protect workers in this country.We do not want some kind of ridiculous authoritarian regime. We do want to improve the culture but it is absolutely essential that we take a fair approach to all employers throughout New Zealand—all employers should take on board their responsibility as do all employees. But to leave out as the Government has some key areas where it is obvious—every day in the paper; I am sure that every single day in rural and provincial New Zealand we would have a report of at least an injury and all too often unfortunately a report of a death—and to make those exemptions makes a mockery of what this Parliament is trying to do. I hope that this clause here which is again allowing exemptions is not abused by the same stupidity of a Government or a regulator—