Stewart Barbara: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStewart Barbara: Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 27 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11383. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BARBARA STEWART (NZ First):New Zealand First will be supporting the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. We welcome the changes that this bill will make to our mining sector. Health and safety is absolutely essential in this particular workplace. New Zealand First agreed with the report of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and we are happy to now see that many of its recommendations have been heard and are being implemented. The Pike River tragedy as we all know cannot be blamed on just one factor but resulted from a series of errors. It is very sad that it took this devastating tragedy and 29 lives to make the changes necessary to improve the health and safety regulations in the mining sector happen. New Zealand First acknowledges the families and friends of those lost in the Pike River tragedy and all of those other people caught up in this disaster who are dealing with and dealt with this particular tragedy. And of course we need to acknowledge the two West Coast MPs as well the Hon Damien O’Connor and Chris Auchinvole.We are very pleased to see the workplace agency WorkSafe New Zealand that is being created under this particular bill. The intention of this agency is to improve workplace health and safety through the creation of a stand-alone health and safety agency that will have a dedicated focus on health and safety. We were very impressed when we had a look at clause 10 on the WorkSafe agency’s functions. It appears to be quite a thorough list. At the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we will examine these very thoroughly. But we want action with authority when it comes to these particular issues.In 1998 New Zealand First voted for the Ministry of Energy (Abolition) Amendment Bill (No 2). In doing so we were advocating for a centralised agency that would be responsible for all things that related to health and safety. We believed then and we believe now that a sole Government agency ought to have centralised responsibility for ensuring that responsible health and safety practices are undertaken in every workplace in New Zealand. It has been a very unfortunate fact that successive Governments either underfunded the Department of Labour resulting in very few health and safety inspectors or allowed the Department of Labour to underfund the mining inspectorate for which it was responsible—a disaster just waiting to happen. When one goes to work in the morning there is the inherent expectation that one will return home safely after a day’s work and that health and safety requirements in the workplace have been complied with to ensure that this actually happens.The bill also provides amendments to the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992. This change will see new clear mining regulations such as processes for better managing hazards increasing minimum standards requirements for health and safety standards and strengthened training and competency requirements. The royal commission’s focus on this was for a mostly underground mine. However the changes in this bill will focus on all mining operations due to the hazards that they actually present. New Zealand First has always supported an increase in health and safetyregulations for our workers. We are also aware too that the unions have voiced their concerns around this particular issue. During the select committee process we need to review whether or not the unions can be involved in checking out the credentials of some of these health and safety inspectors. We look forward to hearing their submissions and many others through the select committee process and we believe that each and every one of them needs to be taken into serious consideration. We support changes to health and safety and we look forward to the contributions from others on this committee.The royal commission found that the effectiveness of the mines inspectorate had been declining for many years and by the time of the tragedy the Department of Labour unfortunately had only two mining inspectors. Basically this was totally insufficient for New Zealand. They were unable to discharge their statutory functions. In short in whichever form old or new the deterioration of the mines inspectorate was an inevitable consequence of political neglect after 1998. While undertaking that task it also decided to integrate the mines inspectorate a leftover aspect of the Ministry of Energy residing in the Ministry of Commerce into the larger Occupational Safety and Health Service within the Department of Labour. Questions were raised about this from both sides of the House regarding how the newly transferred mines inspectorate would actually be funded. It is also worthy of note that well and truly before the Pike River tragedy the Opposition had raised questions about the adequacy of the mines inspectorate. We know that several mine inspectors had lost their jobs in transfers and were paid out redundancy accordingly. Many of these positions were not refilled and as outlined in the report that left only two inspectors. This in itself was a recipe for disaster.We know having read through the royal commission report that there were a number of safety issues at Pike River that went totally unaddressed. Failure across a number of Government departments and sections of Pike River management contributed to this tragedy. This is a view that we believe is advocated in the royal commission report where it explains the Swiss cheese model of causation where it is maintained that there needs to be a perfect storm of failings across agencies coupled with human error before an accident on this scale can actually occur.We welcomed the royal commission report on this tragedy and we now welcome this bill to implement changes to improve the sector; they are very much needed. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill to make these much-needed improvements. Safety should never ever be compromised particularly in the mining industry. This legislation is absolutely essential and we look forward to working on it.