Delahunty Catherine: WorkSafe New Zealand Bill Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill Mines Rescue Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: WorkSafe New Zealand Bill Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill Mines Rescue Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 14 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14745. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare Pāremata. I too am proud to stand here and take a small role in this issue. I will start by acknowledging the MPs of the West Coast the families of the West Coast the people who put work into trying to make this legislation arising from the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill better legislation and all the effort of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I would also like to start with a quote from my own community Waihī which could equally be from Pike River. It is an old quote: “If blood be the price of your cursed wealth good God we have bought it fair.” That quote from the 1900s is a sad reminder that health and safety in the mining industry have followed tragedy and disaster rather than existing beforehand over and over and over again. Once again at Pike River coal production Government inaction and deregulation led to the deaths of 29 people who did not need to die.The mining industry is littered with avoidable deaths as is the forestry industry and others at this point in time. I do commend the previous speakers who pointed out that the environment of deregulation is an environment that can equate to death. Deregulation in the workplace can lead to death. So we have to be very serious about what we are doing in this House right now and very serious about whether these bills meet the needs of that environment because we have gone so far away from safe working environments based on strong organised labour for whom the employer has a good relationship based on recognising that production does not come first over health and safety. Health and safety should come above production. It is very saddening to see once again that we are writing pretty good but not perfect legislation and making steps forward after the event.The two things that I want to talk about are the after-the-event nature of this legislation and also the nature of truth reconciliation and that relationship with resources which others have touched upon. In the history of mining the failure to listen to people who have tried to blow the whistle has led to disasters like this over and over and over again. As Kevin Hague so clearly said it is time to put this right. We are pleased to support these three bills and this one is well overdue but it is with great sadness that we remark on the price paid. Indeed we want to support other members’ calls for proper compensation. The reason that we support that call is that truth and reconciliation acknowledgment accountability and apology do not add up to peace of mind for those who have been harmed without resources. We see in many processes around the world that words are beautiful things and apologies can be accepted but ifthere is no resource to back those words and if there is no acknowledgment that the cost is not only human but financial and real for those people then we cannot have peace.It was very disturbing today to hear the first item on the news when I woke up which was that Cabinet had decided that no compensation would be paid to the Pike River families because of precedent. It was very disturbing when you think about the South Canterbury Finance $1.6 billion payout and other interesting payouts that have not been treated as precedent but the Pike River families will not get compensation. This is alongside the comments of Andrew Knight of New Zealand Oil and Gas that there would be no more payout to the Pike River families. The Green Party says that truth and reconciliation are necessary and good law but that there also needs to be resources to acknowledge these people.Others have commented on some of the problems with the legislation although we support the good work and its good intent. But we do feel that some of the issues that Andrew Little raised around the incident controller consulting but with no time frames and issues around the tripartite model and the need for union workers with a background in understanding these issues to be part of the picture and the need for adequate numbers of mines inspectors to be part of the picture because this is not a trust board like any other. We need trust not trust boards. We need proper representative involvement in workplace safety and there is expertise across the workforce in workplace safety.I would just like to say as a final comment—