Little Andrew: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6140. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): As has been said many times in the course of this debate this was our chance to get things right when it comes to workplace health and safety. And I am not talking about our chance—it was not Labour’s chance and not New Zealand First’s or the Greens’ chance. It was the chance for this Parliament—every member in this Parliament—to get things right in the face of one of the worst health and safety records that any OECD country has in the aftermath of some of the worst tragedies we have had in workplaces in New Zealand.It started in most people’s living memory with Pike River: 29 lives snuffed out because of hopeless management total carelessness and an appalling level of regulation and oversight by the Government agency responsible for doing so. There has been a succession of deaths—far too many—in one of our other crucial industries the forestry industry. And then since that time there have been more than a hundred deaths in arguably our most important industry—agriculture and farming. So this was our chance as a Parliament on behalf of the millions of voters who put us here to reflect on the situation take some positive steps and get it right.The great thing is that we were going so well. There was a consensus that had been reached. I sat on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that first started considering this bill and there was a consensus. It was chaired by David Bennett at the time. There were other National MPs and MPs from plenty of other parties and we were united in our purpose. We understood what our job was. We knew the gravity of the task in front of us and we grasped it. We were making headway. The great thing is that at that time—and that was before the last election—we were in agreement. We were making a difference. We could see what the future looked like. We understood what the issues were and what was needed.Things were going well even after the election when the select committee resumed—different membership different chair. Jonathan Young the MP for New Plymouth took it up. He is a responsible member who had led other select committees and was very good at weaving together a consensus—because that is what his track record has been. So we quite rightly had confidence that the Government was serious about seeing through the task of getting health and safety in New Zealand right.But then in the last couple of months it changed. Something happened and it was not on our side. Something happened with the Government. Those members got unsettled and they wanted to make a change. They have undermined one of the most important tenets of workplace health and safety—that is effective representation by the workforce.Anybody who has had anything to do with workplace health and safety—and in particular has had anything to do with improving workplace health and safety often from a very bad starting point—knows that the starting point is the front-line workforce. It is their engagement and their understanding how they are educated and what they get to make of it their input into it and who represents them and how their interests and their concerns and their issues are advocated. That is what is most important and that is what the nervous Nellies in the National Government sought to undermine. If there is one thing that defines National it is that National has never understood working New Zealanders. It does not get it. It does not understand it—never cared about it.So now we are at the point in this Committee stage where we are being asked to sign off on a piece of legislation that does not respect its title. This is not health and safety reform. This will be a backwards step. Yes there are some improvements in enforcement a bit about extra powers about prohibition notices but the thing that matters most which is the engagement of working people with the risks and the hazards that surround them—that has been undermined. That is the most disappointing thing and that is why when it comes to the title of this bill it no longer reflects the task that was before the select committee—the task that has been before this House. We will always look across the Chamber for the rest of this Parliament and say to those members opposite: “You have let down working New Zealanders.”The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!ANDREW LITTLE: You have actually let down a lot of—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!ANDREW LITTLE: Sorry. Those members not you Mr Chairman have let down working New Zealanders. It is not just working New Zealanders they have let down; they have let down hundreds of thousands of businesses as well.Big and small businesses have been in touch with us. I had a farmer on the phone to me today saying that he cannot understand why the National Government has backed out of the issues about involving the workforce. He said that he was very proud of his farm. He was so proud and so pleased with the processes that he had put in place with the engagement of his workforce that he had got WorkSafe to come and have a look come and audit it and he was very pleased with the engagement of WorkSafe New Zealand. He was very pleased with the feedback that he got. He said that it gave him some advice like things that could be improved but he enjoyed dealing with it and he was proud to demonstrate the way he approached health and safety on his farm.I want to talk about clause 2 the commencement clause because I have never seen though admittedly I have been in Parliament for only 4 and a bit years a commencement clause that gives rise to so much uncertainty and that is so all over the place—more all over the place than the Māori Party—than I have seen in this clause here clause 2. There are multiple parts to the commencement of it. Some parts come into force on the day after the date on which the Royal assent is given and some of them are specified. There are more parts specified as coming into effect on the day after the Royal assent. Then there are other little bits carved out and they are saved for a different commencement date. Then there is this overriding thing that the rest of it will come into force by Order in Council which is when the Minister and the Cabinet decide. It may not be all the rest of it; it will be bits and pieces as and when they want.Well that is ridiculous. This is hopeless. This is typical of this National Government. It is a piece of legislation that is going to affect 2.4 million New Zealanders and no one will know when between now and 1 January 2018—which is proposed in Supplementary Order Paper 109—this is going to come into effect. Some bits will much of it will not and it is proposed that it will be at some time between now and 2018—2½ years away. What a ridiculous situation for New Zealanders to be in. What an appalling situation for that National Government to put this Committee in to ask it to approve a commencement clause that is such a dog’s breakfast. No one is going to know which bits are in at what time—some time in the next 2½ years.They sit there smirking and smugly laughing at each other because as typifies the members opposite they think when it comes to workplace issues it is all just a bit of a joke. You do not actually have to care. You just do stuff you make promises and then you break promises. You put stuff up you tell people you want to be serious about it and then you pull back because you are not really because when push comes to shove there is a set of interests that National will always give greatest priority to and it will not be the interests of working people.We see that in this legislation. We have seen it in its backing out on effective workplace representation. We see it now in a commencement clause that is going to cause just absolute confusion and create an utter shambles for people who will look at this piece of legislation and wonder when on earth the whole lot of it is going to come into force. When are the bits relevant to them going to come into force? When are the butterfly farmers and the worm growers going to know that they are going to be part of a high-risk industry that has to have workplace representation whereas their colleagues running a dairy farm or a beef farm are not going to have to? That is the question that is going to arise under this commencement clause. It is just all over the place.Unfortunately it exemplifies the worst of this bill. What should have been a bill that we championed all of us; that we all rallied around; that we could at this point be celebrating as the achievement of this Parliament as a whole—we are left disappointed. We are left disappointed and unable to understand—even aside from this legislation’s glaring holes and big flaws—when it is going to start.