Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHealth and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 27 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11373. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) BillFirst ReadingHon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour):I moveThat the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to consider the bill and at the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 30 October 2013.This bill is part of the Government’s commitment to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy by the end of 2013. The bill paves the way for a new set of mining regulations that will improve health and safety in the mining industry and bring New Zealand’s regulation ofmining health and safety in line with international best practice. We owe this to the workers who lost their lives at Pike River and to their families and to all current and future workers in the mining industry.The bill before us today is an omnibus bill. It addresses those recommendations of the royal commission that require new or amended primary legislation. It will establish a new stand-alone Crown agent WorkSafe New Zealand to focus on workplace health and safety it will amend the Health and Safety in Employment Act and it will replace the Mines Rescue Trust Act.The first part of this bill as I have said establishes WorkSafe New Zealand. The creation of a stand-alone Crown agent with a dedicated focus on health and safety was a key recommendation of both the royal commission and the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. It signals the step change required in the regulation of health and safety in the workplace.WorkSafe New Zealand will play a significant role in achieving this Government’s target of reducing workplace fatalities and serious injury rates by 25 percent by 2020. This goal should be representative of the type of approach that this new regulator should take. Improving health and safety is not about simply giving people checklists and telling them what to do; it is about letting them know what they need to achieve so that they can then set about achieving that.Part 2 of the bill amends the Health and Safety in Employment Act to provide the necessary statutory support for the new mining regulations. This includes establishing new classes of duty-holder under the Act specifically “mine worker” and “mine operator”. It also includes a definition of the mining operations that will be covered by the new regulatory regime for mining. This will include all surface and underground mines and some quarries and tunnels.Part 2 also provides for enhanced worker participation arrangements in the mining industry. The provisions strengthen worker participation in health and safety in the mining industry and in particular the functions and powers of health and safety representatives. At the same time it ensures there are appropriate checks and balances to prevent undue interference in the day-to-day running of mining operations.All mining operations will be required to have a documented worker participation system and this system will cover all mine workers at a site including contractors and subcontractors and their employees. The functions and powers of site health and safety representatives will be explicitly set out in the legislation. These include the ability for suitably trained representatives to perform inspections and stop operations if there is an imminent risk of serious harm occurring. The bill also establishes a new position of an industry-wide health and safety representative to provide in the royal commission’s words an extra set of eyes and ears and a further line of defence.These positions can be appointed and funded either by a union or by another group of mine workers. The functions and powers of both site and industry health and safety representatives will be balanced by provisions that ensure the health and safety representatives carry out their functions only for health and safety purposes and do not unnecessarily impede production.Part 3 of the bill ensures that the legislation that supports the Mines Rescue service is fit for purpose today. The Mines Rescue service plays a crucial role in emergency response. The royal commission recommended that the Mines Rescue Trust Act better reflect the functions that the service actually carries out and that there be a review of the adequacy and fairness of the levy that funds the service. Part 3 also reflects the Government’s decision to broaden the response to the royal commission to other forms of mining as well as underground coalmining. It does so by expanding the coverage ofthe Mines Rescue service. The governance of the Mines Rescue Trust is also amended to reflect this change in coverage.The Mines Rescue service has unique expertise in training and equipping brigades to respond to emergencies assisting mine operators in emergency preparedness and deploying brigades and providing advice to mine operators during emergencies. All of these capabilities will be reflected in the new functions of the Mines Rescue service provided for in the bill.The bill also enables the levy that funds the service to be set in regulations. Officials are currently developing proposals to ensure that the levy adequately covers the core functions of the service while remaining fair and proportionate for the mine operators that will be required to pay it.The introduction and consideration of this bill is happening in parallel with public consultation on the wider package of proposals for the new regulatory regime for mining. Although the consultation mainly concerns the proposed mining regulations it also covers the worker participation and mines rescue elements of this bill. This parallel process is necessary to meet the commitment to implement the response to the royal commission’s recommendations by the end of this year.Submitters have been advised that their submissions on these issues will be taken into account when officials advise the Government and the select committee on any changes that may be needed to the bill. The public discussion paper also informs likely submitters of this bill and invites them to get involved in the public submission process on it.This Government has made a commitment to the families of the victims of the Pike River mine to ensure that we follow through on every recommendation of the royal commission. If there can be any good from the tragic loss of lives then let it be movement from platitudes to action and a creation of frameworks that will shape better behaviour and outcomes in the workplace. This bill is an important step in this process and will improve workplace health and safety in the mining sector and beyond in New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.DARIEN FENTON (Labour):I rise to support the referral of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I am pleased also to hear that there will be a reasonable process and time to consider what is a very very important bill but is also highly technical when it comes to the mining regulations.I want to start by noting again with sadness the needless deaths of the 29 men in that awful tragedy at Pike River mine. I know the families will be following this legislation with great interest but also it will bring up many of the issues for them again. I know their lives have been broken by this tragedy. I hope that they have a real opportunity to meet with the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and put forward their views. In fact the select committee was discussing that this morning. I think there is a willingness by the committee to actually go to them and allow that to happen.The bill establishes WorkSafe New Zealand which is a stand-alone Crown agency for workplace health and safety. As I said Labour supports it although we have some reservations that we will want to explore at the select committee. Secondly the bill implements the recommendations around an effective regulatory framework for mining. It makes quite big changes to worker participation in health and safety. We want to see these changes implemented without delay. As I said the changes to mining are particularly technical and as the Minister of Labour observed the Safe mines: safe workers consultation is still incomplete and still carrying on so that needs to feed into it.It is really important that during the process the workers who are expert in the field who actually do the jobs and the people who represent them have real input and that those who actually work in mines quarries and tunnels are heard. That is why I am pleased we have more time. The establishment of WorkSafe New Zealand was also the recommendation of the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety which produced a very comprehensive report. It was a consensus report around the need for major change in our approach to the health and safety of people at work.One of the things the taskforce was particularly clear about was the need for tripartite involvement. It was very clear about that and in fact the Minister told the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee just 2 weeks ago that the WorkSafe board would include union representation. But we also know of course that the Minister is not that keen. I have seen the Cabinet papers and there were a few ifs buts and maybes.When we look at the legislation we see in clause 7 “Worksafe New Zealand’s board” that the Minister must appoint at least five but no more than nine people as members of the board. It talks about the knowledge and experience required including having experience in the public sector central government processes and the health and safety environment and then there is this peculiar phrase “perspectives of workplace participants”. What the heck does that mean? Is that supposed to be a half-hearted attempt to include workers and their unions? Could the Minister not bring himself to use the “u” word in this legislation? If he really means it when he talks about tripartism he should be able to use that word and it should be very clear in this legislation.Clause 7 then goes on to talk about business generally. The governance arrangements are left in the hands of the Minister. I am sorry but on our side of the House there is not an awful lot of trust in that Minister and in leaving it in his hands. The perspectives of workplace participants could be the perspectives of employers. So the select committee has to look at that and demonstrate that it has heard the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety and its main recommendation about the importance of tripartism. That means unions workers employers and the Government working together not excluding them—not saying: “Oh they’ve got some perspectives of workplace participants.” That is a big let-down and I think there will be a lot of discussion about that in the select committee.The functions provided for the WorkSafe New Zealand agency in the bill are a shadow of those recommended by the task force. The agency has no power to approve codes of practice. There is no role for it in making or amending regulations. It has no clear lead role in workplace health and safety. It cannot make recommendations about the nature of funding. It has no role in fostering tripartism or working with unions. Those are significant gaps in the role of this new agency that will need to be addressed to make this real and to make it work.What I think we are seeing in this bill is a hanging-on by that Steven Joyce monolith “MoBIE”—Moby Dick—that was created and was not up to the job and by those senior managers who were around when the Pike River mine disaster occurred who have not been held to account for the decisions that led to that tragedy who are desperately trying to cling on to power in that shrinking department.For goodness’ sake let us get this agency off on the right foot and accept our history. Let us understand our history and accept that the exclusion of workers and workers’ organisations in the health and safety changes to legislation in 1992 was a monumental stuff-up which ultimately led to the tragedies at Pike River and to those that continue every week in New Zealand workplaces. Every week people die.I was reading Subpart 3 of the bill which is about the transition to WorkSafe New Zealand. It deals with the transfer of existing employees under “MoBIE”—the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—to WorkSafe New Zealand. It is veryinteresting because as I have already pointed out to the Minister today the number of health and safety inspectors will be around half the number we had 2 years ago and will be at the lowest level we have had since the late 1940s. That is how far backwards that change programme has taken us.It has been called “lifting our game” and whether the Minister likes it or not the process has been such a botch-up that the inspectors—many of whom have 20 or more years of experience and who have been through restructuring after restructuring—are calling it “shifting the blame”. I think that is appropriate because nobody at management level has been held to account for the mess that led to the Pike River mine disaster. Redundancy notices have been issued to some and inspectors are going down the road. Trainees will be taken on to fill the gap. They will be unwarranted trainees and I am told that they are going to be expected to do some of the duties of inspectors. That is really really concerning.In my last 2 minutes—there is so much in this bill and we will get a chance to look at it—I just want to go back to the point that I make again and again to this Minister about work rights and the link between work rights and health and safety which he does not get. Obviously he does not accept that the task force has identified that the health and safety problems we have in New Zealand arose from the deregulation of the labour market in the 1980s and 1990s. That was the beginning of this. At the same time as we are considering this bill in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we are also considering a bill that will cut wages that could force workers to work longer hours and that will cut meal breaks and rest breaks—a fundamental health and safety entitlement of workers.We are going to have a big debate about this bill but what I would like to see as we progress through this—and we all acknowledge how important this is—is that we get to a point where we reach some understanding in this House that health and safety and work rights go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. Until this Minister understands that his weakening of employment security and other employment rights will contribute to health and safety problems our death toll and injury toll in New Zealand are going to continue to escalate. Thank you.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National):The significance of this bill the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill will not escape the notice of any members of this House. I am quite sure of that. I wish to enthusiastically herald its introduction and commend it to all parties and all members for their attention. The name of the bill and of the Act once passed carries and conveys the reality and the significance of this piece of legislation the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. I have said before in this Chamber that an unforgettable part of my life is the memory of sitting through day after day of the testimony heard by the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. I certainly was not alone but significantly I sat in the company of family relatives and friends of the 29 who were lost.There are four main aspects of this bill that I wish to join the Minister of Labour the Hon Simon Bridges in giving emphasis to. I would like to do that now. First this bill acts on the recommendations of the royal commission establishing a new stand-alone agency to improve safety in the workplace. Second the bill demonstrates that the Government and indeed I hope all parties in Parliament are committed to the Pike River Implementation Plan. There are 16 recommendations from the royal commission to be implemented by the end of 2013. Third the Government is committed to improving workplace safety by specific dates with firm targets of a reduction in workplace fatalities and serious injury. Fourth the bill needs to be seen by company directors public servants politicians employers and employees contractors and indeed all who are associated with engaging in the workplace not just as a significantstep and not just as meeting the requirements of the royal commission but as an inexorable determined drive with the full weight of parliamentary commitment to ensure workplace and safety reform. Reform is not an option; it is a commitment and an essential requirement.Let us look at some of the specifics. This bill establishes WorkSafe New Zealand as an independent Crown entity. It amends the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 to give new regulations creating clear expectations in managing hazards in the mining industry. It regulates managing those hazards and it strengthens the minimum standards. It strengthens the health and safety management systems it provides new safety-critical roles it raises training and it increases competency standards. I would like to give emphasis to the following point—and I can almost hear a cheer down on the West Coast. It creates the position of check inspectors in mines. It empowers the mines inspectorate at a greater level. It creates a New Zealand Mining Board of Examiners. It allows for the creation of new regulations to be made following the bill’s passage. It lifts New Zealand to the same level of standards that meet best practice throughout the world.Andrew Little: Let’s not go overboard.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: It creates a Mines Rescue Act 2013 which will better reflect the role and functions of the Mines Rescue Trust in providing specialist search and rescue services in mining emergencies training and equipping mines rescue brigades providing advice to mine operators during emergencies and assisting with the development of emergency plans. I note the comments of my colleague on the other side. No none of this will happen by itself Mr Little. It will require the full efforts of everybody involved.This is not a once-over-lightly bill. This strikes to the very heart of the requirements of the extractive industry. I understand that the Pike River families are being kept informed of progress towards re-entry of the mine with all the necessary safety precautions for doing so and they are aware that it will be at least a further 3 months before anything can begin. This bill is not the end of the Pike River mine disaster. This bill does not give closure for families. It is a continuum for them and indeed for us. But the families relatives and friends of the 29 the communities of the Coast and those committed to winning the benefits of the extractive industries for the rest of us can be assured that it is a beginning. It is the beginning of a serious reform programme the beginning of a commitment and the beginning of ensuring that we have listened and learnt and that we can all look forward to adding to our visual memorials adding to the thoughts of our minds and adding to the grief in our hearts through ensuring the legislative benefits of learning from the past.This bill is a continuum in showing that like the fallen in the war the 29 who fell in the mine disaster will not be forgotten and we will and do remember them. This bill is a part of the legislative proof that we are determined to look after the interests of those engaged in mining. It heralds a new beginning for the extractive industries and I look forward to playing a full role with other members from all sides of the House in the select committee process for this. I commend this bill’s first reading for the unanimous support of the House. Thank you.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman):It is with a sad heart that I stand to speak on the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill but it is also with some relief. Bill Brazil who will be up there somewhere looking down spoke to me in 1994 and said profound words—post the deregulation of mining regulations and health and safety regulations in 1992—that we were destined to repeat the tragedies of the past because we had stepped back from prescriptive mine regulations developed over 100 years of tragedies internationally picking up thewisdom from each and every one of those tragedies into a set of regulations that took the best of international knowledge in an attempt to protect workers who were always and who are always working in a unique and usually quite risky environment. I say to Bill that we have finally made the progress that you spoke of. Tim Hix was another miners union delegate whom I worked with—not in a mine but prior to that—whose death was commemorated 10 years ago last weekend. He was someone who knew of the dangers and who was passionate about driving change but unfortunately whose life was taken from him before he could make real progress.This is a good bill. It is not perfect and I am sure the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee will deal with it appropriately. There are lessons for each and every one of us in the passage of this legislation. For politicians it is a lesson for us on all sides of the House that when we receive advice from officials we have a responsibility to ask the hard questions. It is not good enough to just accept that advice and move on. If we think there may be something wrong or some deficiency in that advice then we should pursue it. I say to the Ministers over on the other side of the House now that they should heed my words not because I am full of all wisdom but because of personal experience and because of watching this sad process since 1992 where Minister after Minister has refused to accept the wisdom of people literally at the coalface but has accepted the advice of people sitting on their arses in Wellington. Yes and I say it with a little bit of anger because that is exactly what they were doing: making judgments on what was right and what was not right for the safety of people working underground. It is time we brought check inspectors back in people at the coalface who know what is dangerous and what is not not people sitting on their butts in Wellington. That is what the deregulation brought to the coalmining industry.It is a lesson for officials. Officials work under pressure and they do not always have the resources so sometimes they make up advice on the best of hints or their preconceived notions. It is not good enough. If officials know that they do not have the proper resources to make and provide the proper advice then they too have to speak up because that is exactly what was happening here. Officials sought advice from the big coalminer Solid Energy over a number of years. The big coalminer wanted to get on change the culture in the mining industry get rid of all the old unionists all the old miners who had the knowledge and get a new breed of young keen energetic miners who were prepared to work for bonuses who were prepared to forgo some of the lessons of the past in order to get the coal out of the ground. The lessons for the officials are to ask more than just the mining companies for advice and to seek advice from everywhere you can.For company directors there is a lesson here. You may flit around from one company to another pollinating the advice from one sector to another. Being an independent corporate director is a great honour in this country. Well with it comes responsibility. The people who went to that company Pike River Coal looking to get a good return for the investors had a responsibility to make sure that the investment was sound not just for return to investors but for each and every person involved in that project. They did not. My colleague Andrew Little has taken initiative to try to address that. The lesson for company directors is to ask more than just the chief executive officer; ask the people at the coalface ask the people in the company what is going on and take responsibility for your investment and your job.There is a lesson for the miners. Their enthusiasm to work with one another in risky environments to get on and do the job to grow the project and to deliver incomes for their families incomes for their mates and income for the community is something we must respect but it should not be at the expense of safety. Safety should never be compromised. Some of those miners knew that things were not right. They wereconcerned about jobs for their mates. They were concerned about incomes for their own families. So sometimes as is human nature they overlooked the obvious. With best intents they ignored some of the lessons of the past and some of the wisdom that was surrounding them. I am sure there will be many miners—not just the ones at Pike River but in fact those at Spring Creek Mine where the mine was shut down effectively for 6 months after the Pike River disaster because it too was unsafe. We have to take the lessons from the past and not forget them.For the community for the people on the West Coast sometimes we place too great a weight on the individuals who go and do the jobs to earn the income to provide the secondary businesses and a nice healthy vibrant community. We place upon their shoulders a huge responsibility and the miners feel that. So perhaps we in the community expected too much of them knowing full well in the case of Pike River that it was a high-risk environment. Relying on an unregulated health and safety system was not good enough because human nature and commercial drivers will fail us time and time again. We know that. I do not think anyone in this House wants to bring in legislation or regulation unnecessarily. We do it for good reason most of the time. We do it to protect ourselves from others to protect ourselves from ourselves and to try to have a community and a working environment that are safe and that can allow people who go to work to go home at night and look after their families.The legislation that was changed in 1992 by a National Government that was determined to deregulate anything it could get its hands on was a failure. It was irresponsible. In fact we have seen over many years deregulation being called the panacea to all economic woes—the way forward. Well this was a sad and tragic experiment. I acknowledge the work and the commitment by this National Government to put back into place some prescriptive legislation for underground coalmining. It is necessary. Bill Brazil told me that in 1994. He was right. I take some responsibility. Should I have shouted and screamed from the rooftops? Should I have marched in the streets to get the legislation changed? Perhaps I should have but it is incumbent upon this House here each and every one of us to not buy into this ideology that says that less regulation a hands-off Government and hands-off regulation are going to protect each and every one of us. There are some people who work in risky environments and there are some people who are less able than others who need protection. It is the responsibility of this House and of any Government to put in place those necessary protections.Today we are introducing into the House the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. Can I acknowledge Bernie Monk Nick Davidson the families and the people who were determined to push ahead to have a proper inquiry in order to understand what went on here and then to ensure that change occurred. This is the start of that change and we commit to follow it through for better mining safety.KEVIN HAGUE (Green):Tēnā koe. Can I begin with the unusual step of acknowledging my colleagues from West Coast - Tasman Chris Auchinvole and the Hon Damien O’Connor and congratulate them both on two excellent speeches.In the 1980s and 1990s New Zealand experienced a wave of change underpinned by the boneheaded notion that if a Government takes a hands-off attitude to more or less everything then the free-market competition that results between unregulated companies will somehow magically produce the best outcomes for everyone. The theory was applied not only to goods and services but also to whole industries and areas of core public services like electricity generation health and education. One of the casualties of this enthusiasm for deregulation was leaky homes. Ordinary people became the victims of corner-cutting and butt-covering by all those who could now get away with it. The same thing happened with finance companies.Another casualty was safety in underground mines. In 1992 the Government threw away the prescriptive mine safety rules that had been built up by the experience of centuries—many years—underground. These rules were eventually replaced with requirements that mining companies take safety measures that are “practicable”. That requirement has embedded in it affordability because a company that cannot afford a particular safety measure will not find it to be practicable with the result that different mines will have different safety standards. At the same time the “triangle of safety” as Dave Feickert refers to representatives of companies workers and Government who all have responsibility for safety was demolished with the abolition of check inspectors and then a radical downgrade of the Government’s mines inspectorate. Thus the National Government in the 1990s first of all radically weakened the actual rules for underground mine safety and then dismantled the structures to monitor and enforce compliance.None of these changes was reversed by Labour in its years of Government and throughout all of that time experts warned that that erosion of safety would result in the loss of life. It did in 2006 and then again in 2010. In 1995 in his submission to the inquiry into the administration of occupational safety and health policy coalmining safety expert Bill Brazil whom the Hon Damien O’Connor has already referred to said: “Furthermore the [Health and Safety in Employment] Act is being used as a manipulative device to eliminate management structures and many historically formed mining codes of practice that were firmly established in the heart of previous legislation much of which has proved successful over 100 years. Should this situation be allowed to continue without intervention the end result can only be the escalation of potential for further disaster.” How right he was.From my kitchen window I look out at the Paparoas where 29 men still lie. I am reminded every day of my commitment that those men’s remains are brought back to their families that the investigation of their deaths sees justice done and that systems are reconstructed to protect all other underground miners from avoidable risk. Mine was one of the very first calls for a royal commission of inquiry into the Pike River tragedy. Then I came to this House day after day pressing the Minister of Labour to reinstate the mines inspectorate and overhaul the health and safety regulatory framework until the Government eventually capitulated created the High Hazards Unit and established the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. The royal commission and the independent task force both produced excellent recommendations.I would like to say that the job of reconstructing those safety systems to protect miners is now being completed with this bill the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill but I cannot. When the Government said it would implement all of the recommendations of the royal commission I cautiously welcomed the announcement but said the devil would be in the detail. Now we have seen some of the detail and it has become clear that the Government intends a pale facsimile of what the royal commission and the independent task force intended. Of course we welcome the Government’s eventual acceptance that a stand-alone occupational safety and health agency is required. But rather than the very strong tripartite model recommended by the royal commission and strongly endorsed by the independent task force the Government instead proposes as Darien Fenton has already commented the vague formulation that the Minister will have regard to the perspectives of workplace participants as one of six general criteria for appointing board members.The functions of the new entity owe much more to the standoffish half-hearted and proven inadequate approach of the Department of Labour to these responsibilities than to the strong authoritative and proactive agency that had been intended. The agency will enforce the legislation but every other function—and there are 13 functions—is toadvise promote provide guidance and generally give the appearance of action without authority. The Government is proceeding to provide for advisory groups when this has been resoundingly rejected by participants in the task force process particularly as it seems that this will be accompanied by the dismantling of the Workplace Health and Safety Council. I invite subsequent Government speakers to tell me if I am wrong but if I am right such a dismantling would seem to contravene International Labour Organization conventions to which New Zealand is signatory.The changes in Part 2 of the bill certainly go part-way towards re-establishing that triangle of safety I referred to earlier and I am pleased that it is largely based on the Queensland Coal Mining Safety and Health Act. In a variety of places however the bill resorts again to weasel words. For example in the proposed new section 19Q in clause 27 which is pivotal mine operators must show that there is “a documented worker participation system that provides reasonable opportunities for the mine workers to participate” in improving health and safety. I want to state categorically that that is not enough. Successful mine safety programmes require that there is full worker participation. It can never be acceptable under the law for an employer to be able to say: “Well we provided them the opportunity but they didn’t show up at the meeting.”I remain profoundly disappointed that the Government has not moved to address the “all practicable steps” formulation in the Act itself. More prescriptive regulations for mining should emerge from the new processes being established but unless the problem is dealt with in the Act I believe it will continue to drive haphazard practice in industries such as forestry which also has an appalling safety record. Part 3 of the bill establishes a wider role and sounder footing for the Mines Rescue service and that is long overdue. The pity is that the Government’s woeful management of Solid Energy and its current underground coalmines may have already meant a critical loss of expertise from our Mines Rescue service.All in all one has the impression that the Government has not learnt its lesson and again hoped to get away with superficial or half-hearted adjustment rather than the fundamental change that is called for. On 22 November 2010 John Key said: “I have no reason to believe that New Zealand’s safety standards are any less than Australia’s and in fact our safety record for the most part has been very good”. He has since denied in this House that deregulation was at the heart of the systems failure that allowed the Pike River tragedy to occur and one has the impression with this bill that the Government is responding to public perception rather than a genuine understanding of the need for fundamental change. We will support this bill at this stage we will follow the submissions with very close interest and we will need there to be significant change to continue to support it.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East):I would like to congratulate the Minister of Labour the Hon Simon Bridges on bringing through to the House the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. As many members of this House have said and I am sure further speeches will indicate this bill relates to a very serious tragedy in our country’s history. We wish to pay tribute to those lost in that tragedy and also to their families and the wider community of that region. To all those who are involved in the productive industries of New Zealand in forestry in mining and in agriculture where lives are at risk because of the nature of those industries it is difficult. That is something we need to be very aware of and cognisant of in this House to make sure that we take the best approach possible.I would just like to pay tribute to the local MPs from that area Chris Auchinvole and Damien O’Connor who have spoken in this House and their words. They as local members will have been touched immensely by the events that happened there. We look forward to their contributions through these debates. We look forward also to thecontributions of the political parties involved in the process. We are very fortunate to have on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee members who have a good awareness of labour relations law and regulations and we look forward to their involvement in making sure that we get the best possible result.I guess the only disappointing part has been the Green Party and its last speech. This is not something I think for which anybody can attribute blame. It is a very difficult situation. We hope that the Green Party will be constructive in the way that it works within the committee towards getting the best results for New Zealanders our industry and especially those people who put themselves at most risk day by day working in our very dangerous productive industries. Thank you.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.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland):I am pleased to take a call on this bill the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill and I want to join with other members of the House in acknowledging and paying tribute to those fine men who lost their lives as a result of the Pike River tragedy. I do that knowing that words will never really adequately express the sort of anguish and loss that occurs in these sorts of events but I do so in a manner that suggests that in terms of life and its cruel outcomes and tragedies often we have to look rearward to learn what to do next. In that sense there are really no “what ifs”; there are just lessons to be learnt and this bill is very much about what is next.In acknowledging the lives lost I also want to acknowledge the families that remain behind and the role that they themselves and others around them may play in the select committee process. I want to also acknowledge Damien O’Connor and Chris Auchinvole—members from the affected area of Pike River—and the steadfast support that I know they have provided to those involved.This bill is an omnibus bill. It really does recognise many of the lessons learnt and it reflects the findings of the royal commission of inquiry. I just want to briefly touch on the three main spokes that the bill is dealing with. Firstly it establishes WorkSafe New Zealand a Crown agency that essentially starts a new health and safety agency. To some extent I think we can all have some degree of scepticism inasmuch as actually workplace health and safety is not about just the structure that sits above the workplace the chief executive officer the supervisors within the workplace or the workers themselves; it is a combination of all those factors and in some circumstances as Barbara Stewart the member who has just resumed her seat recognises a perfect storm will work against all those things at play. But this is about ensuring that the legislative framework that is being worked through here does as much as possible to ensure that all the relevant components are lined up.The second part of the bill contains the amendments that will be made to the Health and Safety in Employment Act and the new regulatory regime that sets out some clear expectations in terms of hazard management. The third limb of the bill creates a new Act called the Mines Rescue Act. A number have commented on the circumstances that have led to this. I very much want to encourage us now to think about what is next and the way in which we as members of Parliament can support not only workers within this industry but workers across New Zealand in constructing the best legislative framework we can for their health and safety and for the health and safety of their families. I commend the bill to the House.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):I rise to speak on the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill and in acknowledgment of the last speaker Mr Sabin I just say that I do not think the families or the miners who continue to mine in this country today and their communities and the unions to which those miners belong expect this House to continue to come up with comforting words to continue to ease the grief and the loss. What they do expect is this House to come up with meaningful and genuine action that genuinely takes account of the now studied failures and gaps in the system that led to the Pike River tragedy.The Government and the Minister of Labour the Hon Simon Bridges and indeed Chris Finlayson before him as the Acting Minister of Labour and Kate Wilkinson before him who was the Minister of Labour in office at the time of this tragedy are entitled to the gratitude of the House for bringing this important bill to the House at this time. As we all know it follows the royal commission and its study of the dreadful disaster. The Pike River coalmine tragedy was the worst industrial disaster in more than 40 years and we now know and we need not be ashamed or feel guilty about it any more that it was the product of poor regulation poor oversight and inspection and poor governance and management.The royal commission was very clear. The Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 was at that time half-baked and a half measure. We have learnt that lesson. We have been told that. Even the subsequent attempts by the Labour Government to fix it up—good attempts and the correct efforts to be made—were not enough to make it a robust and enduring but ultimately safe piece of legislation. We have made the mistake before. We made it in 1992. Let us not make the mistake again. This is not about just the Pike River 29 and we do not honour just the Pike River 29 with this bill and getting it right. There are the three miners who died on the West Coast in 1998 the one down in Ōhai in 2003 the one in 2006 and now the Pike River 29 in 2010.This bill is an opportunity to set a new standard for health and safety in all workplaces for all employers and for the benefit of all workers in New Zealand. This bill is a chance a first step to honour those dying on our farms in our fisheries on our construction sites and in our forests. I acknowledge the work of Helen Kelly of theCouncil of Trade Unions on her campaign on forestry safety. This bill is a first step and a first chance to honour people like Ken Callow of the East Coast and Adam Olsson of Taranaki. This bill is largely confined to the mining industry and that is a good industry to start with given its track record.Although we support the bill at this stage we are saying it is a good first draft and that is all it is. It beefs up the inspectorate and it creates WorkSafe. It is explicit about worker participation and it provides for industry health and safety inspectors which is the check inspector that certainly the union and its members in mining have been calling for for many years. I first made the call for check inspectors in 2004 and made it again in 2005 and 2006—and so it went on—in my capacity as union secretary.But let us not forget about the reality of workplace relationships and employment agreements. Workplace relationships and employment agreements are about a relationship of power and control. That is something else we should not feel ashamed of or guilty about admitting. That is the reality. It is the legal reality and it is the practical reality. The employer has ultimate control. The worker has a duty of obedience. That is how the workplace works. But health and safety risks hazards at work and danger at work directly affect workers. It is workers who are the ones who are killed and maimed when poor health and safety happens at work. It is not management; it is workers. Input by workers into health and safety and risk assessment and risk management must be real and genuine. Their voice the worker voice must be genuine and meaningful.The royal commission of inquiry into the Pike River tragedy went to great lengths to underscore the need for worker input. It talked about tripartitism and so did the recent Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. They both underscored the need for worker input and they said that tripartitism must start from the top. So we should expect to see it in the governance of WorkSafe we should expect to see it in the governance of Mines Rescue and we should expect to see it in the health and safety measures in the governance measures in the workplace at the enterprise level—not with the directors although they need to be aware of it but in the way that health and safety is given oversight at the enterprise.Here is the thing: this bill if it is to be effective if it is to honour the Pike River 29 and everyone else who has died unnecessarily at work since 1992 will have to tell employers what to do. It will have to be instructive and mandatory. We must honour the call for a better stronger voice for workers in health and safety in our mines and in every workplace. Even when some employers turn up to this Parliament to quibble and cavil this House should not quail from legislating as far as is necessary to protect and preserve life and limb in the workplace. That is our duty. Anything less is negligent and that is what we on this side of the House will be going into this deliberative process with as our objective.Some aspects of this bill in its first draft do not come up to specification. For example new section 13AA in clause 25 which deals with the training and supervision of mine workers talks about employers taking “all practicable steps” to ensure that mine workers have been properly trained and are properly supervised. That is not adequate. It is not enough to take all practicable steps; it must be a requirement that miners employed to do the dangerous work of mining especially underground mining have the proper training and qualifications and are provided with the proper supervision.New section 19Q in clause 27 “General duty to involve mine workers in health and safety matters” simply requires as presently drafted “reasonable opportunities” for input. That is not enough. That will not be enough. If this bill comes back to this House with that language still in it we will not have done our job and the bill will not come up to the mark.New section 19R talks about the development of worker participation systems and it is there where we must be absolutely on our mettle to ensure that the worker voice is properly provided for and will be heard. Engagement between management and workers over health and safety must be real and it must be protected and supported by legislation. We do not need legislative skeuomorphism.Dr Cam Calder: Skeuomorphism.ANDREW LITTLE: We do not need a bill that looks like it is doing one thing but is actually doing another. I see that Dr Calder is taken with the language and that is good. He can go into the deliberative process in his caucus when the bill comes back for endorsement and ask the question of the chair of the select committee and indeed of the Minister: “Do we still have a bill that is just another piece of legislative skeuomorphism or do we have a real bill that will have real effects and will provide real protection?”.Barbara Stewart talked about one of the findings of the royal commission being the Swiss cheese model of failure and disaster. Well we need to go from the Swiss cheese model to the Swiss Army knife model. We need to go to a health and safety legislative framework that provides all necessary protections respects the role of management and provides proper protection for workers because nothing less will do. We have had the lesson—the bitter cold hard lesson. We have seen what bad legislation does. We can avoid it if we are on our mettle and perform our duty and we are here to do that.Dr CAM CALDER (National):There have been some very thoughtful contributions from all sides of the House on this piece of legislation the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. TangiwaiWahine  Christchurch Pike River—tragedies seared into our nation’s collective consciousness. I want to acknowledge those lost at Pike River and the continued pain and suffering of the loved ones left behind who will continue to mourn their loss as long as they are alive.We are committed as a Government to our Pike River Implementation Plan. This is an omnibus bill that enacts the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. It establishes WorkSafe New Zealand which is a new workplace health and safety agency it amends the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 and it creates a new Mines Rescue Act 2013.The Pike River Implementation Plan has 16 recommendations and we are aiming to have these implemented by the end of this year. National is committed as a Government to improving workplace safety across the board and so we have set a firm target for ourselves of having a 25 percent reduction in the rate of workplace fatalities and serious injuries by 2020. This is a significant step in the Government’s workplace health and safety reform programme. I commend this bill to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call—5 minutes.SUE MORONEY (Labour):Can I also start my contribution to the debate on this bill the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill by acknowledging the 29 men who died in the Pike River mine tragedy and their families. They suffered from losing one of the most fundamental rights at work: the fundamental right to walk out the door in the morning go to work do your job and return home safely to your loved ones. Sadly for far too many New Zealand workers including the 29 at Pike River mine that has not happened. The fact that that has not happened is a blight on our country and on our country’s laws and that is what we are attempting to resolve today.But can I say at the outset that yes we have learnt a lesson. Can we please never ever forget it? History is sometimes there to repeat itself and this is one piece of history that must never repeat itself. We must never have to relearn the lesson about deregulation of the workforce and in the workplace and the tragedies that it actuallyleads to because to me that is the lesson of Pike River mine and other tragedies. They were not things that were accidents. They did not just happen. They were designed to happen and they happened through poor design. That is what the royal commission told us. We must never unlearn that lesson again.In a decade’s time I do not want to ever hear any parliamentarian in this House argue for deregulation in the workplace because today we are accepting right across parties I think unanimously in the House that deregulation risks health and safety for workers. I expect that if everyone is genuine about their commitments to this debate they are accepting that premise. If they are accepting that premise then can I say to the Government that it cannot happen in isolation. It is not just one bill that needs to accept that reality. It is in fact all of the employment legislation before this House that needs to understand that reality. To accept just in this bill and not in others that deregulation risks workers’ health and safety is to pay lip-service to learning the lessons of the Pike River mine tragedy and other tragedies.I say this because earlier today I was on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and we were debating and discussing another piece of legislation before the House on employment rights. That piece of legislation does further deregulate the workplace.Mike Sabin: No it’s not this bill.SUE MORONEY: It is not this bill and that is my point Mr Sabin. It is not OK to recognise that deregulation is a bad thing just when it comes to this bill. It actually needs to be right across the board because the bill Mr Sabin that we were discussing actually reduces workers’ rights to—Mike Sabin: Yeah it’s not this bill—that’s my point.SUE MORONEY: My point Mr Sabin is that it actually reduces workers’ rights to having a lunch break and rest periods. That is a fundamental health and safety issue. That the members opposite do not seem to get that gives me no comfort because they can pass this bill and think they have done their job but if they continue to deregulate other parts of the workplace they are not honouring—they are not honouring—the lesson that needs to be learnt from Pike River mine and those other tragedies. They need to be serious about this not just with this piece of legislation but with every single piece of legislation that they currently have before this Parliament that attempts to deregulate the workplace. I am proud to stand and support this bill and I urge the Government to take this issue seriously with regard to other pieces of legislation.DENISE ROCHE (Green):I rise to speak on behalf of the Greens for this bill the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. The bill enacts some of the recommendations from the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy an inquiry that was pushed for by the Greens—and we are certainly glad that it was carried out. The commission’s report into the tragedy where 29 men lost their lives highlighted the areas where we could be doing a lot better to provide safe workplaces so that those men and other people like them can come home from work.There were 16 recommendations in the report. The bill deals with some of them but not all of them. The Greens will be supporting this bill. We recognise that health and safety regulation in this country is long overdue and it is time we focused on a framework that puts the safety of workers before the profits of business. It has been acknowledged that the loss of lives at Pike River was the result of a series of actions and inactions culture and a health and safety framework that lacked the appropriate checks and balances. So it is heartening to see some remedies in this bill.We support the creation of WorkSafe New Zealand. We believe that an independent agency that has as its main focus health and safety and that is charged with education monitoring and compliance will provide some safeguards. I note that around $34million has been allocated to the creation of this agency in the last Budget round. This has even had the Employers and Manufacturers Association quite concerned that that may not be enough to adequately resource and staff an agency so that it can fulfil its compliance and monitoring work. We support the introduction of stronger regulations and we recognise that this bill is a step towards encouraging worker participation and highlighting safety breaches and hazards. We welcome the provisions that create workplace health and safety representatives who have the power to suspend operations if there is serious concern for harm.But what we need is a shift in culture so that workers and contractors and staff in any mine are able to speak up if they are worried about safety. We know that we will see that shift in unionised workplaces. The research shows that where there is a strong union presence workers are safer because they can speak up. This is not the case in the forestry sector a deregulated industry where workers are isolated from each other and that has low union membership. This fear of speaking up is exactly what happened at a public meeting on forestry that I was at last week in Gisborne with my colleague Darien Fenton from Labour. None of the workers in the 50 or so people in the crowd said a word because there were bosses there—and they certainly spoke up.We recognise that this bill is quite a dramatic change from the original 1992 Health and Safety in Employment Act which introduced the deregulated framework for health and safety. This Act replaced other legislation in the mining industry that ensured that there was independent monitoring and compliance with health and safety standards in mines—my colleague Kevin Hague has talked about that. The 1992 Act ushered in a concept of the cost-benefit analysis being taken with workplace hazards. Employers were urged to take practicable steps to minimise and isolate hazards but only if they could afford to do so. I note that there was a draft code of practice in the mining sector that remained in draft form until 2006.So it is a huge step forward to have WorkSafe New Zealand and some provisions for the voice of workers but if we want safe workplaces across New Zealand not just in mines the Government must stop undermining unions and removing the ability for workers to bargain collectively. It needs to shift away from the truly awful amendments it is making to the Employment Relations Act and it needs to positively encourage workers to speak up and join their unions.We are looking forward to examining this bill more closely as it goes through the select committee process but in the meantime we commend this bill to the House.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):I am pleased to stand in support of this first reading of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. As I think I have said in the House several times before context is important. I firstly therefore join with colleagues around the House in acknowledging the context of the Pike River coalmine and the tragedy there that has facilitated the approach of this bill in the House. Secondly this area of safety is always something that is constantly evolving. As those who have spoken before me have noted this is a bill of three parts dealing with everything from the mines to an omnibus aspect and to the establishment of WorkSafe New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.Bill read a first time.Billreferred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour):I moveThat the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill be reported back to the House on or before 30 October 2013.Motion agreed to.