Mitchell Clayton: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5170. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First):Goodness me I think I might be the final speaker on the economic development and infrastructure sector in the estimates debate. There does not seem to be anybody else jumping up for this particular—Hon David Cunliffe: No no.CLAYTON MITCHELL: Oh you have got a call to go. I might not be the last one.After the delivery that we got from the Hon Simon Bridges I have to say that I had a little bit of sick in my mouth and felt a bit woozy from all the propaganda that I was hearing from that side of the Chamber. To be fair I think Mr Bridges would make a better job of writing children’s novels where there are candyfloss clouds lollypops for trees and of course the rest of the country is made of Cadbury’s chocolate.I would like to spend my time talking about two particular parts in this debate on economic development and infrastructure and one is transportation. I am not going to spend a lot of time on that. There are two parts to that. There is the rail part and the regional roading part. A lot of time has been taken up on that by a number of members in the Chamber because having good roading infrastructure and rail infrastructure is very very important for New Zealand.What I am going to spend a bit more time on is talking about the labour market. I think it is really important because we are right in the final stages of putting together our new Health and Safety Reform Bill. There has been a lot of passion with people coming in and delivering their messages. Some people have serious concerns and there are a lot of people on tenterhooks waiting to see the outcome of what the select committee has got through. Of course we were very close to delivering that last month and then it was pulled off the table by Cabinet and now we have got it back for the final stages.More important there are a couple of reports that have been written. In fact one of them I will just touch on now. It is from the Press on 19 June. The headline is “Dangers of mines and quarries were forgotten” and the article talks about mines and quarries. It said: “In the early to mid 1990s the regulations for these industries were enforced by the Mining Inspection Group (MIG). This was a group of around 10 to 12 mines and quarry inspectors who visited the sites regularly and enforced regulatory safety standards.” I think that is the key here. We all realise that there needs to be some changes with our health and safety reforms. However to throw the baby out with the bathwater as this report said previously is not the right way to go. It is not smart. It is starting from scratch and I do not think we are actually going to be teeing this off to the level that we need to tee it off to to make it absolutely pitch perfect.When we look at the current occupational safety and health legislation there are three sections that really jump out for me as being front and centre and are the things that I think really need to be considered for the future well-being of our employers. Section 15 “Duties of employers to people who are not employees” in the Health and Safety in Employment Act says: “Every employer shall take all practicable steps to ensure that no action or inaction of any employee while at work harms any other person.” That comes up in sections 15 17 and 19 of the current Act.The reason why I am talking about that specifically is that when we listened to Mr English’s Budget debate speech on 21 May this year he made a very strong point with regard to his comment: “The Government is also investing $32 million over four years to increase the number of labour inspectors and strengthen enforcement of employment law.” Well I have to say I thought it was quite an ambitious comment to say that for the next 4 years the Government is going to spend $32 million because of course I think there will be a big surprise if the Government gets through to the next election in fact—that is if there is not already going to be a snap by-election.What that means is that an increase of $8 million a year is going to be spent which is around about $153000 a week. If you average that out into an hourly rate at $100000 a year that is going to provide for around about 80 enforcement staff full time on $100000 a year to go and do the job of ensuring that the enforcement of this Act is upheld. Well goodness me! If this is the delay in getting the support and the funding I say it is a little bit too late. There has been a lack of costings versus the value of investment into looking after the health and safety of our workers. If this Government had only had the foresight to put in that sort of funding 7 years ago—and let us not take it all and put all the blame on National but it was Labour as well—and if it had that sort of enforcement and those sorts of officers in place we would not have the problem that we have got currently with our health and safety situation.