Parmar ParmjeetDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for the opportunity to speak on the second reading of the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. I want to start by congratulating my colleague Harete Hipango for her bill coming to this stage and it came to this stage because as we have just heard from the New Zealand First member Clayton Mitchell they supported it in the first reading. It's quite disappointing to see that they are not supporting it any more. I was actually waiting to hear a reason from that member for not supporting it any more and the only reason I heard was exactly what the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway said which was that they are doing a big review. The review is going to happen in 2020—that's what we hear—but here is an opportunity to fix this right now because we have this bill in front of us. So why miss this opportunity and wait until 2020? I couldn't see any reasonable argument for that in that whole speech. This bill is not intended to undermine the health and safety of anybody—volunteers or workers—because when we passed the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 which came into effect in April 2016 at that time we decided to exclude volunteer organisations. We decided to exclude clubs and recreational bodies and at that time we were not saying that we were undermining the health and safety of those volunteers. No the reason was because we knew that those volunteer organisations have a special contribution that they make to our community and we wanted to make sure that they are able to continue to make the contribution that they make. Volunteer organisations are there to help others in the community and we have full confidence in them to look after themselves. Health and safety rules apply to everybody—yes everybody has to take care of health and safety rules. So to say that volunteer organisations don't comply with health and safety is not acceptable. The reason for exclusion from the definition of a person conducting a business or undertaking" is this time by allowing them to have somebody working for a maximum of 100 hours. Volunteer organisations allow people to participate in the community in the real sense to provide services that they really believe in and that they are passionate about. During the select committee process as we have already heard from various members we received 34 submissions and I heard a member saying that it was a small number of submissions. In my view 34 submissions is a reasonable number for this very simple and pragmatic bill. Of course we can't compare this with the End of Life Choice Bill but if we compare this bill with other bills and compare the numbers of submissions I think we received a reasonable number of submissions. There was a reasonable amount of interest in this bill. Twelve submitters spoke to the Education and Workforce Committee and as the select committee chair I am really thankful to them for their contribution. I also want to thank all members on the committee as well for their contribution. The important thing to note here is that this is to allow volunteer organisations to deliver and to be able to do what they actually are intending to do. So there are various ways they can make their services efficient and that is what we want to do through this legislation. For example if volunteer organisations are working in the field of providing help to victims of domestic violence they'll be out there talking to clients and taking them to various places. It could be the Ministry of Social Development for financial assistance or it could be a safe house or it could be a lawyer. So they are really good at doing those things. Maybe they need somebody to do some work in their office—just simple admin work. Maybe they need somebody to actually come and advise them on health and safety for argument's sake. So the health and safety of those volunteers is important too and maybe they are not able to find a volunteer who is able to come in and advise them on health and safety. These people are dealing with these other people that are going through some really traumatic situations and maybe they need some counselling. So this would have allowed these volunteer organisations to have the ability to have someone come and work for a maximum of 100 hours to provide such services or it could be just applying for funding because these volunteer organisations do struggle with funding applications because they don't have the expertise and they have to apply to 50 or 20 different donors or funders to be successful—to get enough money to keep going. So I think the Government members need to reconsider their approach and I challenge Government members. There is still time because we are going through the second reading—we haven't finished the second reading. So I'm asking—I'm urging—Government members to reconsider their approach because there are 1.2 million people in our country that are contributing their time as volunteers. They'll be really grateful—these 1.2 million people will be really grateful to Government members if they consider supporting them. But no I don't see any response from Government members sitting there and it looks like they have already decided. New Zealand First of course supported this bill in the first reading and now of course they can't support it. We know that because they have to vote in line with Labour and the Greens. So I think it comes down to that. Why wait until 2020? This is the opportunity. So I'm urging Government members to reconsider their approach. There is still time; we are going through the second reading. It's really disappointing to see that the Government is not supporting this very important bill and I support this bill and commend this bill to the House. Thank you."