Moroney Sue: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14591. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. I was in fact on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for all of the submissions on this bill and for much of the process undertaken with this bill.Of course Labour is supporting this bill but we know that it can be improved even more particularly in Part 1 where we know the Government has departed from recommendations from the royal commission. It is really important that we ask the question of why that is. Why is it that the Government has gone out of its way to create WorkSafe New Zealand in a different format than that recommended by the royal commission? This is a very serious issue. We know the serious impacts when this goes wrong. Sadly we know it all too well recently in this country. But for the Government to depart from a recommendation of the royal commission it means that the Government quite specifically wants to challenge what the royal commission came up with. I would like the Minster in the chair the Minister of Labour to actually get up and explain to the Committee why that is because in my experience a Government does not do that for no good reason; it does it for a reason. I would like to understand the underlying agenda in setting up WorkSafe New Zealand in quite a different way from what the royal commission recommended.In particular and my colleagues have talked about this the tripartite nature of WorkSafe New Zealand was something that the royal commission thought veryimportant in terms of getting this right. Yet the Government when it brought this bill forward has failed to do that. As I said just before it quite deliberately failed to do that and it did that not only against the recommendation of the royal commission but against the advice of many of the submitters who came before our select committee who argued that they wanted to make sure that the right people representing the stakeholder groups in health and safety were on the WorkSafe New Zealand board.I am hoping that the Minister of Labour will explain why it is that instead of talking about having a workers’ representative—in other words a union representative—on the WorkSafe New Zealand board we have got this strange legal description of a person who has “perspectives of workers:” whatever that might mean. I do not know whether that has ever been tested in the court before. My guess is that it has not been. We do not know what that phrase means. It could mean anyone who has ever been in a workplace before. It could mean anyone who has ever met a worker before. It could mean the grandmother of someone who is currently in the workforce. It could mean the grandchild of someone who is currently in the workforce. We do not know in fact what that means. Yet what we do know is that the Minister has specifically and deliberately chosen to change what the royal commission recommended and to go down this path instead—this path of describing people when we really do not know who they are.At least if it had said “a representative of the Council of Trade Unions” which it ought to say in my view we would know specifically exactly what we were talking about there. But we have no idea who this person is or who these people are because it says: “When appointing a member of the board the Minister must have regard to the need to ensure that WorkSafe New Zealand has among its members persons who have collectively knowledge and experience of and capability in the following: (a) public sector governance: (b) central government processes: (c) New Zealand’s workplace health and safety environment including workplace illness and occupational disease:”—and then mysteriously—“(d) perspectives of workers:”—and then—“(da) perspectives of employers:”. Well what might that mean? I think that is equally as difficult to analyse.Darien Fenton: Of an employer?SUE MORONEY: Well yes I would probably understand some perspectives of employers. I do not think I would be the right person to represent them on the WorkSafe New Zealand board but I could argue that I have a knowledge of the perspectives of employers. That is because I have negotiated against them for many many years as a union organiser. But I do not think employers would want me necessarily to be their representative on the WorkSafe New Zealand board. So—