Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's with real pleasure that I rise to support the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. I stand by all of my statements in previous readings of this bill. We the Green Party support what has now been recognised by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a fundamental principle around the right of work to occupational health and safety as well as the right to bargain collectively freedom of association the end of forcing compulsory labour and the abolition of child labour the elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation. It's only recently that occupational health and safety has been added to those fundamental rights at the ILO which is a representative body involving business and unions and Governments.The vision and why that's been added there is in recognition that every working person has the right to expect to return home and to return home uninjured at the end of their day's work and that no one should die or suffer real harm just to make a living and that it's unacceptable for businesses to see workplace injuries as collateral damage and just a part of doing business which is not a reality. Many businesses don't take that approach; many many businesses recognise the benefits of when staff are safe and able to contribute to their workplace. That is actually the norm but not the rule.Has it been mentioned that 64 people died at work in this country last year and an estimated 750 to 900 people were killed by occupational exposure last year? We have potentially about 1000 who have died as a result of trying to earn a living in this country just last year. We had over 30000 people with injuries that required more than a week away from work. That is just those that come up in ACC data; we know that a significant number of injuries experienced by women do not show up in that data.So this a significant problem for us as a country. And if for some of us we may be a little emotive about this—given how many people don't come home actually I think it's justified to be a tad emotive about the fact that our regulations and our laws are not preventing that.Part of what the work out of the Pike River disaster was recognising was that a laissez-faire approach to health and safety does not keep people safe. What was recognised in terms of the lead up to the change in the law in 2015 the independent task force found that worker participation was a crucial weak link in our health and safety system.I really just want to challenge what we've heard which sounded like a very rational presentation that there is no need for this and no evidence supporting it. What we know is that we have far too many deaths. It's twice—per-head-of-population—the rate of deaths in this country compared to Australia; four times the rate of deaths in this country compared to the UK. We can't just say that this is just normal. It's not and it's a result of how we are doing business and it can be changed. But the evidence tells us that taking our hands off and just trusting businesses and workers to get this right themselves does not work and it actually leads to more harm and more deaths. There is really a huge amount of international and well as domestic research that tells us what does improve health and safety that can help prevent deaths and serious injury and one of the absolutely key things is worker voice and worker participation. That is what this bill is addressing. It is using the evidence to actually help improve a very significant problem. We know that—Toni Severin: What's your evidence? JAN LOGIE: We hear things like What is the evidence?" Another piece of evidence about this is that workers in small firms—those with under 20 workers—are significantly more likely to suffer a severe injury and injuries more generally compared to workers in large firms. Then we have evidence that worker voice and worker representation is something that helps with health and safety. Why would we not standardise our response in terms of worker voice across large businesses and small businesses? That's what this legislation does. It's based on evidence and it's addressing a very clear and serious problem. I do not want people I know or care for not to come home from work or for them to come home having been made sick by exposure in their workplaces so that then they lose their quality of life or their life later. There are absolute grounds for this legislation and it's urgent but it is not enough in itself. We actually need to do more and we've had significant issues raised through the select committee process around ensuring that the intent of the legislation is being properly implemented in terms of training for health and safety workers and I was very concerned to hear that the Employers and Manufacturers Association—who were quoted previously—have been running training that takes up the whole two days that workers are entitled to that does not give them the qualification at the end to enable them to issue provisional improvement notices to be able to actually ensure action on health and safety risks. There was a concern that that may not be consistent with the legislation and at the very least it is deeply unethical and it made me question their leadership in this area. We also from this had concerns that actually WorkSafe was not being proactive enough in terms of being able to enforce the existing legislation and provide the leadership that's needed to provide the cultural change across the country. We've also been hearing from the unions more recently wanting the implementation of corporate manslaughter charges where there is evidence that companies have made decisions to prioritise their bottom line over ensuring the safety of their workers that leads them to a death. I believe considering the size of our issue as a country that that is something that we also need to be looking at. While not large this is a significant and really important step and when the evidence from the officials show us that the cost of this scheme is actually outweighed by the reduction in terms of time off work through injury then I just cannot understand the arguments from the Opposition against that that are choosing only to look at the immediate dollar and not the life consequence or the medium to long term benefit to businesses from doing this. It's about time these things changed."