Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill

Last week I was in full flight in the debate on the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill, answering some of the reasonable contributions from around the Chamber. It was a great pleasure to speak then, as it is now, because this is a bill that I anticipate does have multiparty support, and quite rightly so, given its content and given that we are all, I think, unified in trying to do something very good in terms of health and safety and lifting that in this country.

Let me not take up more time now; I may make a contribution later. Let me just acknowledge the member Brendan Horan, who came to my office with Supplementary Order Paper 371. It was a helpful contribution, and we have, effectively, been able to amalgamate it, or subsume it, into the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper, Supplementary Order Paper 374. It was, of course, to do with the entitlements of workers transferring from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment through to WorkSafe. So I just place on record my thanks to him for his useful contribution in that regard.

I am going to endeavour to do my best to speak on this bill tonight. As you can hear, I have somewhat of the lurgy that has been going around Parliament. However, I will do my best to put my views and those of others on this very, very important bill, the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill, on record. It is in the context of a lot of work that has gone on and a dreadful tragedy, of course, which occurred some 3 years ago now, and bearing in mind, as we always do, the loss of the lives of 29 miners—the unnecessary loss of life—and the work that came out of the inquiry of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coalmine Tragedy. That made recommendations around how we could get on top of our appalling health and safety record and the sheer negligence that had developed in the mining industry. That is what has given rise to this bill. I also want to recognise that there has been a health and safety task force. Some of its recommendations—I think it reported back in July—have been incorporated into, or have informed, this bill. Also, an exposure draft has been released by the Minister of Labour on a new health and safety in employment Act, which is being consulted on at the moment. So there are multiple changes going on in health and safety, and we also say so there should be, given our disgraceful record of health and safety in this country.

Part 1 helps establish the stand-alone agency called WorkSafe, which was a recommendation of the Pike River coalmine commission of inquiry and also of the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. Both made very comprehensive reports and, I think, have built consensus around the need for major change in our approach to the health and safety of people at work. That is why Labour is supporting this bill, has been pleased to participate in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee process, and will work constructively on other health and safety changes that are coming forward. That said, I cannot go far without noting that it is a real pity that at the same time that we are really trying to tackle health and safety in New Zealand and that we are really trying to get New Zealand off the map of the worst health and safety death and injury records in the world, we are changing employment law, which I think will have only a detrimental effect.

However, turning to Part 1, the task force was particularly clear about the need for tripartite involvement. The Minister has been a little bit cute on that. He did tell the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee earlier this year that the WorkSafe board would include union representation. He actually used the “u” word, which I thought was pretty brave of him because it is not in this bill. It is not in this bill anywhere. I recall that it actually made some headlines. People said: “Oh, the Minister of Labour is going to have unions in this new task force—shock, horror!”. But, of course, when you look at what is actually in the bill, although there has been an amendment that has made an improvement in who is on the board of WorkSafe New Zealand, it does not pick up the recommendations of the task force and does not recognise tripartism in the way that we certainly understand it and that the International Labour Organization understands it. I think that is why Andrew Little’s Supplementary Order Paper 387 has an excellent description of what should be in the bill. It should include a board of three representatives of Business New Zealand; three from the Council of Trade Unions, which is the most representative organisation of workers in this country; and three appointed by the Minister to represent other interests. That would be a truly tripartite board. As I said, this is what the health and safety task force originally recommended.

I have heard no clear reason from the Minister why he is departing from that. We had no real explanation in the select committee. We asked the officials at length to explain to us what “tripartism” means. Some of our National colleagues on the select committee had no idea and were, I think, a little bit outraged at the idea that the Council of Trade Unions would have some role. I recall that one of the members wanted to go to great lengths to talk about the very small number of unions that are outside of the Council of Trade Unions—why they did not get a say. Well, you know, they can. They can come and make submissions and so on. The point of a tripartite board like that would be that it was a genuinely independent voice for workers, employers, and, of course, the Government as well. That means there is consistent representation. There is a consistent voice.

The reason that we are so strong on this is that if you look at the theme through both the Pike River commission of inquiry report and the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety, it is the fact that the worker’s voice, in particular, in health and safety over the last 20 years has been lost. Employee participation has become a tick-the-box exercise. It has become something that many employers control, and where workers are simply afraid to stand up and have their voices heard. I think we have seen the consequences of that. I do not want to keep going over the tragedy. I would like to know from the Minister, though, whether he feels obliged to get on his feet to explain why he objects to the recommendation of a tripartite board. I would be interested to hear his views on that.

The other thing about Part 1 that I am a bit concerned about is that the functions provided for WorkSafe in the bill are pretty much a shadow of those that were recommended by the health and safety task force. For example, the agency has no power to approve codes of practice. There is no role 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, and it has no role in the important job of fostering tripartism or working with unions. I think that that is a real shame. I think that it is a missed opportunity. There is an opportunity for us to revisit the issue of the board representation. Hopefully, we would see from that tripartite leadership, as we have seen on the health and safety task force, and as we have seen through the business forum for health and safety as well, where it has been prepared to stand for business and say: “Actually, yes, workers should have a formal voice through their unions, and we shouldn’t be afraid of that.” So we are supporting this bill, but I think that it is a shame that we cannot get this agency off on the right foot. We need to accept our history and own up to it. That exclusion of workers and workers’ organisations in health and safety, and the changes to the Health and Safety Act in Employment Act 1992 were a fundamental mistake, which have ultimately led to not only the tragedy of the Pike River mine but many others—the disgraceful record that we have, where we see people die or get injured every week in our workplaces.

I accept that this Government is genuine and I congratulate it on the work that it has led, and I congratulate the Minister of Labour’s predecessor, Kate Wilkinson, as well. I congratulate them on that work, but I think there are two things: let us understand that unless there is a genuine workers’ voice, this is going to be problematical and will continue to be problematical. Let us also—please, Minister—understand that the other changes that you are proposing to legislate for are going to undermine the very, very good work that is being done in this bill. So in Part 1 there are those two things that I have mentioned. There is plenty more to mention, and I will have another call, I hope.

If I do not get the opportunity later, I do just want to mention the issue about the transfer of workers. I have not had a look at Brendan Horan’s Supplementary Order Paper 371—I am sure it is good, and we will support it; actually, I do not know whether we will support it but I will have a look at it. But what I do not want to see is a continuation of the botch-up that we have had with health and safety inspectors in the inspectorate, who, where we have had this change programme, have been through endless change. It was part of the problem that contributed to the Pike River mine disaster, in fact, where they were so under-resourced that they could not even get the travel costs to travel to inspect the mines. So let us make sure that in transferring those health and safety inspectors from the old Department of Labour—the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; whatever it is called these days—to the new agency, those things are taken care of as well, and that there is proper resourcing and that we get up to our full complement of—

I just want to take a reasonably brief call on Part 1 of this bill, the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. This is a very important part about the governance, if you like, of WorkSafe New Zealand, the new agency that will take responsibility for workplace health and safety leadership in New Zealand. Of course, we know—and there has been ample research—that good health and safety practice in the workplace also means good health and safety practice in the home and in the community more widely. Workers who are well drilled, well exercised, and well trained in health and safety practice in the workplace take it back into their homes and the wider community. One of the bigger claims on ACC is injuries caused by DIY. So this is a great opportunity, with WorkSafe New Zealand—a dedicated agency—to get it right.

It is a great opportunity to repair the mistake of 1992. The failure in New Zealand’s health and safety performance goes back to the failures in the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992, where we did a half-pie job in reforming health and safety. We drew on the English model, which had been in place—would you believe—since 1974, thinking that we would do the same thing. But, of course, we did our workplace health and safety reform at probably the peak of anti-unionism, anti-collectivism, and anti - independent-worker voice, and we did the wrong thing. We had an opportunity then to have the open-textured law that was the Health and Safety in Employment Act, which replaced the plethora of legislation that we had—the Machinery Act, the Construction Act, the Boilers, Lifts, and Cranes Act, and every other piece of industry-specific legislation you could think of. We replaced it with this open-textured legislation, but what we did not do was support that with a range of other measures.

One of the things we did not support it with was a commitment to genuine tripartism in the workplace. The reality is this: the people who are dying and who are being maimed and injured in our workplaces are not the managers and they are not the business owners; they are the front-line workers. Those ones—whether with their trade skills, their certificates of completion for their on-the-job training, or whether they are simply learned in the task they are required to perform—are the ones who are suffering the injuries, and they need to be involved in decisions about health and safety.

For that to be meaningful and, indeed, for that to be led, we need an agency that reflects that tripartism as well. The independent voice of workers must be reflected in workplaces, along with the independent voice of employers. They must all be reflected in the governance of WorkSafe New Zealand. That is about sending a signal about how we want health and safety management to be conducted in the future. But it also has a practical effect on the leadership of health and safety regulation in this country.

So I urge the Minister of Labour to rethink and to consider the Supplementary Order Paper 387 that has come forward, which provides for a recast board of WorkSafe New Zealand and equal representation of the social partners—workers, employers, and the Government.

I think that if this Minister were to do that, then that would send a very strong signal and would be a courageous step by a Minister whom I know has a got a long political career ahead of him—probably longer than mine. I would want him to be able to look back in some years’ time and say: “I did the right thing.” It is something that goes against the natural National Party grain—that is not a criticism; that is an observation—but we would look to a Minister who took a courageous step and said: “Yep. We want to really transform and change health and safety leadership and management in this country, and we are going to build our structures from top to bottom to reflect that.” Changing the governance of WorkSafe New Zealand by ensuring genuine tripartism and by incorporating the social partners would do that. That would be a cause for celebration and great admiration. Naturally, we support change, because the change in this bill will be positive for the workers of New Zealand. The change in that governance would add to it.

It is a pleasure to rise in the Committee stage of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. I want to pick up from where my colleague Andrew Little has just left off, in looking at Part 1. I will consider clauses 7, 8, and 9 in this contribution.

The establishment of a new workplace health and safety agency, WorkSafe New Zealand, is something that is vital, and it would be fantastic if we could agree and make changes to get something set up that is going to be world class and that is going to make a real difference. We know and we have seen firsthand in this country in recent times just how wrong things can go at work. The fact is that we want—and I am sure that is across this House—to see that we are as safe as we can be in our workplaces, and that people go to work, that they do their job to the best of their ability, and that they come home safely. The establishment of WorkSafe New Zealand is part of that. We believe that at the moment, unfortunately, there is a missed opportunity to create that world-class health and safety regime.

The first reason for that is, looking at clause 7, around WorkSafe New Zealand’s board. That clause provides, first of all, for the Minister to appoint “at least 5, but not more than 9, persons as members of the board.” When the Minister does that appointing of a member to the board—and there is a question about how genuine that process will be, and we can only assume that we will have Ministers taking very seriously that role of getting the best people to do the work—they are required under this legislation to ensure that the board “has among its members persons who have, collectively, knowledge and experience of, and capability in, the following:”, and then it lists a number of things.

We do not think that the notion of “perspectives of workers” in paragraph (d) of clause 7(2) and of “perspectives of employers” in paragraph (da) actually goes far enough in seeking and setting up what we really need, which is a tripartite board where there is genuinely equal representation, and where there are leaders from the business community, from relevant Government agencies, and from unions, the representatives of employees. Those people all need to have the ability to argue, create, and determine on that board—as equally valid representatives, if you like—the outcomes that we need. There is plenty of evidence to show now that diverse boards—and that is not just in this area but in business generally, and in community organisations—do better. Where there is not a mind-set of one group over another, and where there is a range and a contest of ideas, you get better outcomes. That is the real strength of having a genuinely tripartite board. It can take account of different views and different expertise, members can challenge each other’s ideas, and it can make better decisions because of that.

So I too, as Andrew Little has done, would urge the Minister to rethink this provision and to make sure that we do not have these strange words about “perspectives of” and that we actually have genuine representatives of employers, workers, Government agencies, and public sector experts. It is really important that we get that right because that is the leadership. That is the group that will determine a lot of other things.

Interestingly enough, in clause 8, which talks about the advisory groups, it says that “WorkSafe New Zealand may establish an advisory group” and then talks about “a forum for dialogue and co-operation between the Government, employers, and workers on workplace health and safety matters;”. To me that sounds like a tripartite kind of group, and it seems strange to me that the board—if you like, the head of the organisation—does not equally have that kind of structure. I do not understand the logic of that. So I think that it is important to think about the relationship between the WorkSafe New Zealand board and the potential advisory groups that WorkSafe New Zealand can establish.

The main objective of WorkSafe New Zealand, which is set out in clause 9, is, I think, quite a strong statement, actually. Clause 9 states: “WorkSafe New Zealand’s main objective is to promote and contribute to securing the health and safety of workers and workplaces.” I think that that is quite a strong statement.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. I was, in fact, on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for all of the submissions on this bill and for much of the process undertaken with this bill.

Of course, Labour is supporting this bill, but we know that it can be improved even more, particularly in Part 1, where we know the Government has departed from recommendations from the royal commission. It is really important that we ask the question of why that is. Why is it that the Government has gone out of its way to create WorkSafe New Zealand in a different format than that recommended by the royal commission? This is a very serious issue. We know the serious impacts when this goes wrong. Sadly, we know it all too well recently in this country. But for the Government to depart from a recommendation of the royal commission, it means that the Government quite specifically wants to challenge what the royal commission came up with. I would like the Minster in the chair, the Minister of Labour, to actually get up and explain to the Committee why that is, because in my experience, a Government does not do that for no good reason; it does it for a reason. I would like to understand the underlying agenda in setting up WorkSafe New Zealand in quite a different way from what the royal commission recommended.

In particular, and my colleagues have talked about this, the tripartite nature of WorkSafe New Zealand was something that the royal commission thought very important in terms of getting this right. Yet the Government, when it brought this bill forward, has failed to do that. As I said just before, it quite deliberately failed to do that, and it did that not only against the recommendation of the royal commission but against the advice of many of the submitters who came before our select committee who argued that they wanted to make sure that the right people representing the stakeholder groups in health and safety were on the WorkSafe New Zealand board.

I am hoping that the Minister of Labour will explain why it is that instead of talking about having a workers’ representative—in other words, a union representative—on the WorkSafe New Zealand board, we have got this strange legal description of a person who has “perspectives of workers:”, whatever that might mean. I do not know whether that has ever been tested in the court before. My guess is that it has not been. We do not know what that phrase means. It could mean anyone who has ever been in a workplace before. It could mean anyone who has ever met a worker before. It could mean the grandmother of someone who is currently in the workforce. It could mean the grandchild of someone who is currently in the workforce. We do not know, in fact, what that means. Yet what we do know is that the Minister has specifically and deliberately chosen to change what the royal commission recommended and to go down this path instead—this path of describing people when we really do not know who they are.

At least if it had said “a representative of the Council of Trade Unions”, which it ought to say, in my view, we would know specifically exactly what we were talking about there. But we have no idea who this person is, or who these people are, because it says: “When appointing a member of the board, the Minister must have regard to the need to ensure that WorkSafe New Zealand has among its members persons who have, collectively, knowledge and experience of, and capability in, the following: (a) public sector governance: (b) central government processes: (c) New Zealand’s workplace health and safety environment, including workplace illness and occupational disease:”—and then, mysteriously—“(d) perspectives of workers:”—and then—“(da) perspectives of employers:”. Well, what might that mean? I think that is equally as difficult to analyse.

💬 Darien Fenton: Of an employer?

Well, yes, I would probably understand some perspectives of employers. I do not think I would be the right person to represent them on the WorkSafe New Zealand board, but I could argue that I have a knowledge of the perspectives of employers. That is because I have negotiated against them for many, many years as a union organiser. But I do not think employers would want me necessarily to be their representative on the WorkSafe New Zealand board. So—

I apologise to my colleague Sue Moroney, who was in full flight. I would like to carry on. The profound wisdom of having a worker involved in the active management of health and safety is so clear when we read through the objectives of WorkSafe New Zealand in the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. It is being set up to advise on the operation of the workplace, make recommendations for changes to improve systems, develop codes of practice, and provide training. All of those things rely on—pardon the pun—the coalface wisdom of people going back into health and safety systems. And for the Government to ignore that is, perhaps, a continuation of the stupidity and the blind arrogance that led to the 1992 legislation. I use those blunt words because I can still recall a meeting with Bill Brazil, a previous mine manager, who said to me in 1994: “You will rue the day”—“you” being the Government; I was a member in Opposition at the time—“that you changed that legislation to discard the wisdom of 100 years of legislation.”

My colleagues have spoken eloquently on that, and I will go on to what I see as a rather ironic part of Part 1, and that is in Subpart 3,“Transition to WorkSafe New Zealand and consequential amendments”. That is a part that protects the terms and conditions of employment of those people who transfer from what was the Department of Labour—I guess it is the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—through into WorkSafe New Zealand. I applaud the provisions in here. Many, many—in fact, thousands of—workers in New Zealand would love to have had these provisions when they were kicked from a job into another one, or when the contractor or the name of the contract changed and they saw their terms and conditions disappearing in front of them. Well, the Government, in its wisdom—part wisdom, short wisdom, temporary wisdom; I do not know—has seen fit to ensure that the people who transfer into WorkSafe New Zealand will retain the terms and conditions of their previous employment. I applaud that. Then I have gone through to work out whom that might apply to, and I guess it could be a number of people. WorkSafe New Zealand should be a big organisation.

If I go back to the reason for this legislation in the first place, it is the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. There are a number of recommendations here, and what we are doing tonight is progressing legislation that is part and parcel of these recommendations. As we know, it was a thorough inquiry and it exposed a lot of flaws at almost every level of governance and management in the company, oversight by the Government itself, and a number of other areas. What it says here, of course, in the summary of the report, is that things had got pretty bad in the mining inspectorate. It says that, in fact, at the time of the tragedy, the Department of Labour had only two mining inspectors. It was under huge pressure. And then it goes on to say that in May 2012 the Minister of Labour announced extra funding of $37 million for health and safety administration, including an increase in the number of health and safety inspectors.

If we can go back to the mining industry, what this Government has done in setting up the High Hazards Unit, which sounds all well and good, is that it now has three mining inspectors in place—three. That is up by 50 percent, admittedly—from two at the time of the Pike River disaster to three now. Those individuals are under pressure now. It is maybe not quite the same as it was, but none the less they are under pressure. The Government made the announcement and everyone thought that we would have a huge boost in the focus on health and safety in the mining industry, but it has not occurred. It has not occurred, and the families of those people who lost their lives at Pike River do not feel too good about that.

One of the things that they had hoped to see was a substantive increase in the focus on mine safety. Admittedly, we have had a couple of mines close, unfortunately, under the National Government—one of them because of the Government’s own mismanagement of Solid Energy. We have seen mines close. That is unfortunate. Maybe the workload is not quite as good as it was.

I move, That the question be now put.

No, I am going to call the honourable member Kevin Hague. He is pleading with me.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair; I appreciate your perception of my pleading, because I have a number of comments to make. Back at the first reading of this bill, the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill, I indicated a number of concerns about Part 1, and I want to talk about how those concerns have or have not been addressed through the select committee process and the detail of the bill that is before us right now.

The first of those concerns relates to how the board of WorkSafe New Zealand is to be comprised, and I speak, therefore, in relation to Supplementary Order Paper 387 in the name of Andrew Little. Dave Feickert, in particular, is a mine safety expert. He talks about what he calls the triangle of safety and draws the attention of this House and the industry to the fact that successful mining industries—those that are safe—have this thing called the triangle of safety, where there is responsibility taken for health and safety in the mine by the Government, by employers, and by workers. The example that we have talked about previously in other readings of this bill is in relation to inspectors. We have said that there is a role for the employers, the workers, and the Government in the inspection of a particular mining operation for compliance with health and safety regulations and requirements. This is the key. In the triangle of safety we expect each to take responsibility and to recognise and own responsibility for health and safety.

What that means in relation to this new entity WorkSafe New Zealand, which we expect to be the leader in workplace health and safety, is that we want each of those entities to have a sense of ownership of that organisation. That is why the task force recommended a different model for the composition of the board of this organisation. It recommended what I would call a representative model, which is the kind of structure that Andrew Little sets out in his Supplementary Order Paper. Instead, the Government has chosen what I would call a reflexive model—that is, a model in which the members of the board of that organisation are responsible not to organisations from employers and from workers, but instead they are all responsible to the Minister—and that is antithetical to the idea of having a tripartite sense of ownership and responsibility for health and safety.

I do not think that the select committee heard a single submission supporting that reflexive model. Instead, we heard both from unions and from employers supporting the recommendations of the task force that the structure for the board of WorkSafe should be a representative one. If we think about it, that is the democratic model actually comprising that board. The reflexive model that the Minister has used is certainly appropriate for the boards of some entities, but for an entity like this, which we expect to have that tripartite sense of ownership, it is the wrong model. When we asked officials why it was that despite all of the submissions that we received and despite the recommendation of the task force for a representative model, they had selected a reflexive one for us to have in this bill, they effectively came back and said: “We just prefer it.” There were no reasons given. So I echo Sue Moroney’s call for the Minister to explain the reasons that he has chosen a reflexive model, rather than a representative one.

So fundamentally this part of the way the board is comprised is wrong. I have to say that I suspect that the reason that the Government has got it wrong is that it does not want the triangle of safety. The Government does not want to share responsibility, to share decision making, with workers and employers. [Bell rung]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am going to hear the honourable member Kevin Hague.

Thank you very much, Mr Chairperson; I appreciate the opportunity to speak further on this matter. What I have suspected all along is that fundamentally the royal commission was recommending a response that was a regulatory response, which would involve the Government intervening more in the affairs of employers in workplaces, and this is a Government that comes from a tradition that actually deregulated health and safety in the first place, as my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor has spoken about just now in the debate. I believe that this Government is allergic to the idea of regulating more in order to achieve ends in the workplace. It is allergic to the idea of greater union involvement, it is allergic to the idea of sharing power, and that is why I believe the Government has chosen this reflexive model.

I want to talk also about clause 10 of the bill, which sets out the functions of WorkSafe New Zealand. In my view and in the Green Party’s view this clause still does not go far enough. I appreciate that the clause now does pretty well reflect the recommendations from the task force. But my point is that when we now compare this list of functions, which include the verbs “advise”, “make recommendations”, “monitor”, “develop”—but not “enforce”—“provide guidance”, and “promote and support”, these are all words that describe the way that the Department of Labour was going about its business at the time of the Pike River disaster. If we had gone to the Department of Labour on the day before the Pike River disaster and asked its staff: “Please describe the functions that you believe your organisation has in respect of workplace health and safety.”, they would have given us a list pretty much like this.

The fact is that when the royal commission examined the adequacy of the Department of Labour’s role in respect of Pike River, it delivered a damning verdict. It said that the model of work, the approach that the Department of Labour took to that work, was inadequate to actually ensure compliance with the legislation and with the regulations that existed at that time. The department’s working-alongside way of working, which is pretty much the model that is outlined here in clause 10, was inimical to the achievement of workplace health and safety.

The basic problem that is created by deregulation is this: employers actually want to minimise cost. You maximise profit by either minimising cost or maximising sales. That is how to run a business. So when it comes to health and safety, if the employer is given the option of taking a short cut and if they are given the option of not being forced to do something, bad employers very often will take that option.

I fear that the weasel words that are set out in clause 10—these functions in the bill that is before us now—continue to provide bad employers with the carte blanche that they need to take those short cuts, and I believe that they are doing a disservice to those men lying dead in the Pike River mine and to their families, and to the submissions that were made by so many New Zealanders, including employers, unions, and workers, about health and safety. I believe that we ought, as a House, to actually ensure that the way that WorkSafe is established in the first place is on a sound basis—on the kind of basis that can and will require employers to comply with their obligations to keep workers safe—and I do not believe that this bill achieves that.

My colleague Andrew Little has also spoken about advisory boards—

I believe the spirit of tripartism certainly is in this bill, the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. I disagree with members of Labour and the Greens when they say that it is not. Indeed, in clauses 7 and 8 of this bill, it is very clear that the Minister must have regard to the perspectives of workers and of employers. I do not agree with the member Sue Moroney that there is anything at all unclear about that. Of course, we also see enshrined in clause 8 the ability to establish advisory groups that are specifically in relation to tripartism—a forum for dialogue and cooperation between the Government, employers, and workers.

As I have said, at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and as the member Darien Fenton made clear—Ross Wilson is on the board right now. Frankly, I cannot envisage a situation when there would not be someone of his calibre there. He is, of course, a former president of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, like the member Andrew Little. Ross Wilson is one of the few New Zealand Council of Trade Unions presidents who has had the good sense not to try to come to this place, but that is another matter. I think what is also true is that we—

💬 Sue Moroney: What other New Zealand Council of Trade Unions presidents have come here?

Well, we have heard very recently that the current one would not mind coming here. Indeed, there have been some tweets on that.

💬 Sue Moroney: What other ones have come here?

Well, as I just said, the current one. But what is also true is that in selecting a board, I believe—and I think actually the members around this House, on reflection, would believe as well—that we want the best possible board. We want a board that is not just some tick-box exercise, but that has the very best skills, expertise, and experience to drive health and safety advancement in this country.

Very soon, I am sure, once I have gone through the appropriate process, I will be announcing the final board for WorkSafe New Zealand, which this bill establishes on 16 December. I think the members of this Committee will see it is a board of exceptionally high quality, which does have perspectives of workers, perspectives of business, and perspectives of the public sector, and which will do an excellent job at the end of this year and next year driving advancement and, frankly, a step change in health and safety in this country.

When I was last speaking I had just touched on clause 9 of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill, about WorkSafe New Zealand’s main objective. I want to explore that and then look at clause 10, “WorkSafe New Zealand’s functions”. The main objective, just to reiterate, I think is quite a strong one: “WorkSafe New Zealand’s main objective is to promote and contribute to securing the health and safety of workers and workplaces.” That is an absolutely critical goal, which every person in this Committee could agree upon, I am absolutely sure.

Then it goes on in this bill to talk about the functions of WorkSafe New Zealand. They are quite broad-reaching. It is a little unclear to a number of us why these provisions are similar but not as recommended by the royal commission itself. In clause 10, from paragraph (a) to paragraph (m), they go through a range of different elements that WorkSafe New Zealand would have to do to deliver on that objective. It includes a range of research, for example, and in paragraph (g) it states: “promote and support research, education, and training on or in workplace health and safety”. I think that is vitally important.

One of the things I know from my own experience is that it is quite difficult sometimes to align the statistics that we collect at the moment to be really clear on what the trends are and to be able to break things down appropriately by different demographic groups. Are there differences between men and women in particular industries in terms of their health and safety outcomes, etc, etc.? I think that is quite an important provision there.

There are also, I think, a number of interesting things. In paragraph (k) we have got “promote and co-ordinate the implementation of workplace health and safety initiatives by establishing partnerships or collaborating with other agencies or interested persons in a coherent, efficient, and effective way:”. I think that, again, makes a great deal of sense—that there is a range of people and agencies operating in this space, rather than saying that WorkSafe New Zealand will necessarily do these things all by itself, that it will collaborate with others that already have expertise, and so on.

Again, I do really want to reiterate, especially having just listened to the Minister and his explanation of clauses 7 and 8, that this broad range of functions to deliver on what is a good main objective would be so much stronger if this was driven by a board that was truly tripartite. It is such an easy thing to say that a board will have the perspective of employers or the perspective of workers. I think Sue Moroney, perhaps pushing the parcel out a little in her explanation of that, about who might be able to say they have perspectives of this or that—that is not the same as saying that these people will be representatives of bodies like the Council of Trade Unions, which is the peak organisation for workers in this country and for trade union members. It does have expertise, institutional knowledge, and respect, which have been obtained over many years of operation. So not only do those representatives then have that background, but they also have a whole structure in which to seek feedback and ideas and information that is relevant to the work of the board of WorkSafe New Zealand.

I do think that the Minister still has the opportunity to do something about this, and my colleague Andrew Little has a Supplementary Order Paper that would deal with this issue. If the Minister is as clear and as committed as he says he is to ensuring that there is strong representation with people like Ross Wilson, and nobody would have any question about the ability of somebody like Ross Wilson to be there as the Council of Trade Unions representative—[Interruption] Actually that is a very good point. I had forgotten that momentarily, Ms Fenton. That is true. How could that have happened—someone with that degree of knowledge and expertise and commitment? So that is good, anyway. Obviously the Minister, on the other hand, does understand. But he could easily represent the voice of workers, through an institutional arrangement with representative organisations like the Council of Trade Unions.

I move, That the question be now put.