Health and Safety Reform Bill

I move, That the Health and Safety Reform Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to consider the bill. The Government is committed to improving health and safety at work. This bill represents the most significant law reform in this area for 20 years. The bill’s main purpose is to provide for a balanced framework to secure the health and safety of workers and workplaces. The new law will play a major role in helping us meet our target of reducing New Zealand’s workplace death toll by 25 percent by 2025.

The bill’s development has been prompted by a number of events, most tragically the loss of 29 lives at the Pike River coalmine. The bill addresses recommendations from the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and, of course, the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. I thank the task force for its work and I am pleased that this bill gives effect to a range of its recommendations. The bill builds on the important work already done: the establishment of WorkSafe New Zealand as the new, independent workplace health and safety regulator, and the changes to mining health and safety legislation that brought New Zealand into line with international best practice for the mining industry.

The bill is central to creating a world-class health and safety environment, but this will not happen in isolation. A shift in the way that we all view our involvement in, and responsibility for, health and safety at work is needed to make a lasting change in our safety culture. I therefore commend the forestry industry for convening the Independent Forestry Safety Review Panel to investigate the contributing factors to the high rate of serious injuries and fatalities in that industry and to recommend practical steps for change.

Most workplace health and safety legislation in developed countries follows what is commonly known as the Robens model, named after Lord Alfred Robens’ 1972 report to the British Government. The Robens model provides for performance-based general duties that ensure broad coverage of work in workplaces to be specified in the Act. These all-encompassing duties support innovation and provide flexibility for businesses. Under the Robens model, these broad duties are underpinned by industry or hazard-specific regulation, such as specific rules for mining, petroleum, exploration, or major hazard facilities, with approved codes of practice and guidance to clarify and assist people to understand what is required of them. Australia and the United Kingdom have both confirmed their Robens-based models as the best approach after recent reviews. Our own review confirmed that a properly implemented Robens model is the best way forward for New Zealand as well, and this bill, the Health and Safety Reform Bill, reflects this approach.

The Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety recommended that the core concepts in the bill should be closely modelled on the Australian Model Work Health and Safety Act. The Government has carefully considered areas in the model Act that need to be modified to reflect New Zealand’s specific context. Having said this, variations to the model Act have been kept to a minimum, and have only been made for good reason. That approach was recommended by the task force, and I would respectfully like the select committee to keep this in mind when it considers the bill.

The driver for adopting and adapting the Australian model health and safety regime in New Zealand is not harmonisation or alignment with Australia. However, simplifying workplace health and safety for trans-Tasman businesses is an important ancillary benefit of implementing a version of the Australian regime here. Being able to draw upon the significant resources, body of knowledge, and jurisprudence developed in Australia is another strong benefit. This is especially the case when it comes to the suite of regulations, codes of practice, and guidance material that has been developed to support the model Act. The royal commission and the task force both told us that the inability to develop these independently in the past was a major contributing factor to our failed implementation of the Robens model through our current legislation. In short, there is no point reinventing the wheel if an excellent one already exists.

The Health and Safety Reform Bill is an omnibus bill. The first five parts will become the Health and Safety at Work Bill, to replace the current Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 and the Machinery Act 1950. The bill will also result in amendments to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, the Accident Compensation Act, the Employment Relations Act, and the WorkSafe New Zealand Act to ensure there is a consistent and robust health and safety framework.

The current work health and safety regulatory framework places a strong emphasis on the employer and employee roles, with a fixed workplace setting. This is no longer suitable to address modern working arrangements. Modern working arrangements can contain multiple employers with diverse workforces made up of employees, contractors, and, indeed, others. Irrespective of a person’s role within a workplace, they should have the appropriate level of obligation to make sure their safety and that of others is not adversely affected.

This starts with the person conducting a business or undertaking—a PCBU. A person conducting a business or undertaking must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that no one is put at risk from the work carried out as part of their business or undertaking. Workers are afforded the same level of protection by the bill no matter what the working relationship, whether they are employees, contractors, or self-employed.

Parties in the upstream supply chain of goods and services, including designers, manufacturers, importers, and suppliers of plant substances and structures, also have obligations, depending on what is within their sphere of influence. Directors and other officers in governance roles must be proactive, ensuring that the person conducting a business or undertaking complies with its duties and obligations. The due diligence duty on officers in relation to persons conducting a business or undertaking is new and will ensure that decision makers are held accountable for the health and safety consequences of their decisions.

The task force said that our current worker participation system was not working. The bill addresses this by expanding worker engagement, participation, and representation requirements. It acts to encourage workers to get involved, ensuring a framework exists to support workers in having a say in matters of health and safety that affect them, without fear of repercussions. The bill contains a strong and effective enforcement regime, with new enforcement tools and graduated offence categories and penalties. Higher penalties for non-compliance are introduced where appropriate, and distinctions have been made between the role and nature of the offending duty holder. The penalty regime under the bill is complemented by a wide range of enforcement tools, including enforcement undertakings or training orders, which can work to improve health and safety awareness and culture in ways that monetary penalties cannot always.

The bill, although central to improving health and safety at work, is one part of a broader reform package. Introduction and consideration of the bill is occurring parallel with the development of the first phase of health and safety regulations, with public consultation on these regulations expected to begin by early April. Development of codes of practice and guidance material will also begin shortly, as these are fundamental parts of the framework, which are necessary to ensure that a robust and effective system exists and is operational on the day that the new Act comes fully into force. I anticipate that this will be 1 April 2015.

Effective health and safety at work makes good business sense. It is an investment in productivity, worker engagement, and reputation, and everyone must recognise that health and safety is something they have a part to play in, and a responsibility for. Seventy-five people each year are killed and many more are seriously injured in our workplaces. The legacy we owe to these people and their families is to ensure that we deliver robust and effective work health and safety legislation so that everyone can return home from work every day safe and unharmed. I commend this bill to the House.

Labour is supporting the Health and Safety Reform Bill. It is a very important bill and much needed, given New Zealand’s poor health and safety record and the unnecessary deaths and injuries workers are suffering on the job. The impetus for this change started with the awful tragedy at Pike River mine 3 years ago. The story of that disaster is far from over, as we saw on TV3 earlier this week. No one has yet been held to account for the loss of the lives of 29 men, whose families have had their lives changed forever. Pike River exposed the realities and consequences of the deregulation of workers’ rights, including health and safety, during the 1990s.

The Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 has been described as an object lesson in how not to implement legislation. Typical of the National Government of the time, it was light-handed regulation and left it up to employers to get things right. Unions were excluded and tripartism ignored. This coincided with a time when National’s attacks on workers’ rights left unions greatly weakened and workers exposed and unprotected. The Department of Labour’s health and safety inspectorate was run down, and to this day it struggles to keep up with the demand and problems.

New Zealand has a terrible health and safety record. Around 75 people die from workplace accidents every year in this country. There are 200,000 work-related claims made every year to ACC from people being harmed at work. In addition, there are 500 to 800 deaths from occupational diseases such as cancers, including from asbestos. We have seen pretty scary stuff around KiwiRail in the last week. In the last year safety in the forestry industry has been highlighted as another disaster. Ten men lost their lives last year. There has been one already this year. The Minister of Labour has consistently refused to launch an inquiry. To the credit of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, and to the credit of its president, Helen Kelly, the issue is now being taken seriously by the industry itself, which has set up its own independent inquiry.

That does not mean the issue will go to sleep. In a few weeks’ time on 28 April, Workers’ Memorial Day, families of forestry workers killed at work will come together to remind us all that urgent action is needed in this industry. I want to pay tribute to them, and also to the work of the seven lonely health and safety inspectors in the forestry industry, who must be run off their feet after the Minister finally gave up on his voluntary code of practice and got real inspections happening in our forestries. There were some shocking outcomes. Nearly half of the 162 forest operations visited were not operating in compliance with the industry code. Inspectors had to take 203 enforcement actions to force these operations to comply—15 of them had to be shut down completely because they were so dangerous. So, although the attention has been on mines and forestry, there are other dangerous industries in New Zealand as well that will need attention: construction, road transport, and farming, to name a few.

Labour is committed to working with the Government on this bill through the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to make it as good as it can be. It must mark a turning point in New Zealand’s health and safety for the sake of those families who have lost loved ones in dreadful accidents, and for the thousands of workers injured, maimed, or exposed to disease in our workplaces.

The bill covers new ground in many ways. Firstly, there is a definition of “worker” in clause 14 that covers all workers. It recognises the variety of working arrangements we have now—triangular relationships, contractors, self-employment—and applies the same rights to all workers, regardless of their employment status. Then there is the concept of a person conducting a business or undertaking, or PCBU, ensuring the health and safety of workers or others affected by the work. There is shared responsibility for multiple persons in control of businesses or undertakings and through supply chains, and that is designed to incentivise coordinated action rather than passing the buck. In my opinion there needs to be a lot more work done on supply chains and their impact not only on health and safety but on workers’ rights and wages generally. I am thinking of road transport as a good example. We will have the chance to talk about this in the select committee.

However, we can see some fish hooks in the details that we will want to discuss. For example, the introduction of work groups under clause 66 could lead to workers who want to elect a health and safety representative for the first time finding themselves in a cumbersome negotiation with the person conducting a business or undertaking to work out how to divide the workplace into work groups. This could easily take months and sap the will of the workers to create a safe system. Under the current New Zealand system, senior or expert health and safety representatives can collaborate with more junior ones. The proposed system would allow health and safety representatives to act only on behalf of their own work groups except in exceptional circumstances. These changes are worse than our current system and will not lead to better health and safety. Another disappointment is that despite all the recommendations of the royal commission and the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety and the requirements of ILO Convention 155, there is very little tripartism built into this system under this bill or WorkSafe New Zealand itself.

Labour has called on the Minister time and again to recognise the importance of the role of unions, of business, and of the Government coming together to improve health and safety in this country, but it seems to be being ignored. And then there is the training of health and safety representatives. The bill recognises and implements a worker participation system but is silent on their rights to training. Under the current Health and Safety in Employment Act, health and safety representatives have a right to 2 days’ training a year. The bill removes the right to any specific amount of training in clause 80 and leaves this question to the regulations. We do not think that is good enough, particularly when health and safety training has been ditched by the Minister for ACC, Judith Collins, who said—in a very insulting way, I thought—that training workers in health and safety was a waste of time, a waste of money, and a rort. There seems to be some conflict between Judith Collins and Simon Bridges about the important role of worker participation and the need to be trained. So I want to know how the obligations for worker participation can be met under this bill. Yes, it sets up a new system, but without training and without that obligation to allow training and to pay for it, there is a problem.

We support the right to take private prosecutions where the State fails to step in, but the proposal to retain the current system is too weak and needs to be fixed. There is no provision in the bill on corporate manslaughter, which we have repeatedly called for. Therefore this remains a gap in the law. The most egregious cases of workplace death caused by gross negligence will still be met with a fine, and, where the failure is a systemic one, directors and senior management will not be held to account. Employees have weaker remedies than other workers under this bill for the same adverse conduct, because they are forced to use the personal grievance framework under the Employment Relations Act 2000, and therefore, for example, are subject to a reduction in penalties for contributory behaviour and limitations on penalties.

They are some of the concerns we have. But then, of course, there are all the other things that the Government has done that have undermined effective health and safety, such as the proposed removal of rest and meal breaks, the 90-day trial period, which allows employers to dismiss workers for raising health and safety concerns, the weakening of union access rights so workers are left unprotected, and, of course, the crazy Employment Relations Amendment Bill, which the Minister of Labour seems to have given up on.

This may indeed be the greatest reform to health and safety in 20 years, and it is needed, but what is also needed is recognition by this Government that our current employment laws and its proposed changes to those will work against the good intentions of this bill. I am calling on the Minister, with the good work on this Health and Safety Reform Bill, to withdraw his Employment Relations Amendment Bill to show that he finally understands that workers’ rights go hand in hand with health and safety.

I am still quite confused as to whether the member Darien Fenton is actually supporting the Health and Safety Reform Bill or not.

💬 Grant Robertson: Oh, for goodness’ sake! It’s the first thing she said. Listen. Open your ears.

It may have been the first thing she said, Grant Robertson, but everything else she said after that was entirely critical, very negative, and hardly forward-thinking, but that is what we have come to expect from the Labour Party. I very much look forward to the member’s contribution in the select committee process that follows.

This is a very, very important piece of legislation, and it is part of a much broader area of reform in the labour and industrial relations space. I just want to acknowledge the leadership of the Minister of Labour, the Hon Simon Bridges, for his work in this area, because it has been informed—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: He’s gone past Judith Collins on IPredict.

It is amazing when David Cunliffe is away how much Trevor Mallard wants to play. I am sure other members in this House have noticed. Do not worry, Trevor. You have not got too much longer to wait before he is out on his bike and you can regain your rightful place as the centre of obstruction in this Parliament. As I said, this is part of a larger—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Talk about Simon O’Connor again. Simon—what’s his name? Simon Bridges.

If the member wants to actually quieten down for a minute and listen to what this bill is about, it is an important piece of legislation, Mr Mallard. It is an important piece of legislation. It is part of a broader suite of reforms. Its genesis lies in the report of the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety, and, of course, the tragedy of the Pike River disaster and the lessons that we are still learning from that.

This bill will give effect to an entirely different regulatory regime and approach: the relationship that must be well established in a workplace to ensure health and safety and productivity are achieved; the relationship between employees, employers, and the Government, and the legislative platform on which that operates; and the importance, I guess, of reflecting the dynamic nature of the New Zealand workplace, the ways in which this has altered over time, and the fact that there are many workplaces that operate in a manner that presents risk. There are many employers who have struggled in some ways with the challenges and the changes in the New Zealand workplace. There is a need for the requisite messages, penalties, and regime to be in place to set up the platform upon which they must operate.

On the other side of the coin there is the importance of the employee being engaged in health and safety in their workplace. It is not solely the responsibility of the employer or the Government. It is certainly an area in which, when all of the parties come to the table, I think we can expect far greater outcomes in terms of safety and, indeed, in terms of productivity. There is a reciprocal relationship between the two. There cannot be productivity without safety. When safety is jeopardised, not only are the life and health and safety of the individual compromised but, ultimately, so is productivity. Everyone wins when we get the balance right and when we set the appropriate framework. This is what the bill is essentially looking to do: to marry these together and learn from the lessons of the royal commission and Independent Taskforce on Workforce Health and Safety reports to ensure that the modern working environment and those who are participating in that working environment—be they employees or be they contractors—meet with employers’ and the Government’s expectations around health and safety.

I think it is important to point out that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee took a very collegial approach and learnt a lot in considering the legislation that resulted from the Pike River tragedy. I think it is going to be very important through this process that the committee gets to hear from stakeholders from right across the spectrum in terms of the role that this legislation will play in their workplaces moving forward. I certainly want to encourage those stakeholders to come forward and make submissions and engage in this process. This is really a landmark piece of legislation. Although part of a broader reform, this really is the nuts and bolts; it is the glue that is going to bring it all together. I recommend stakeholders out there engage in the process. Although I talk with my colleague Darien Fenton and we do jest, I know that this committee will work in a collegial fashion to ensure that the very best legislation is afforded to the New Zealand workplace. I very much commend this bill to the House, and thank the Minister for his work on it.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on this bill, the Health and Safety Reform Bill. To be fair, I have not had the opportunity to study in detail what is a very substantive piece of legislation. I acknowledge the Minister of Labour because it is a very substantive area of Government responsibility that we are talking about here. I would like to acknowledge the families of the Pike River miners, who have, of course, battled ever since that terrible tragedy to get some good to come from that terrible, terrible set of circumstances, and then got an outcome that to anyone who reads through the royal commission report was almost unbelievable. There will be many who say: “We told you so.” This piece of legislation has been needed since 1992, when the previous National Government brought in a philosophical, laissez-faire, idiotic piece of legislation that believed that market forces, individual responsibility, and commercial pressures would protect workers in the workplace. They have not and they do not, and we do need to change that legislation.

There are some very good provisions in this bill, and I am sure that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee will properly scrutinise each and every word of it, as it should. It will be done with new enlightenment, I guess, particularly by members of the National Party and ACT, who have for a long time thought that the market will deliver, as I said, protection for everyone, nirvana for all, and huge wealth for those who have the ability to get it.

Too many people in New Zealand are killed every year when they go to work. From the situation of farmers who are their own boss, out doing their own thing and making their own decisions, to someone who is in a factory working at a machine where the protection has not been properly built in and whose job is somewhat monotonous but they are simply working in an unsafe situation the whole time—most of it is OK, but one incident occurs or something happens and they might lose an arm or, worse still, lose their life. We have these situations occurring all too often across the country where the farmer makes the wrong decision and goes into a place that is too steep for the four-wheeler, or you have got, as I say, other judgments on risk that simply end up being fatal and disastrous.

There will always be judgments made by individuals in any activity, so I do not think we can kid ourselves that everything can be regulated to be safe. But placing the right pressure on individuals to make the right decision is what we should be encouraging. Firstly, ensuring that at a workplace they are allowed the time to stop and think and make the right decision is really important. The one thing occurring across all of industry today in New Zealand is that people are under more pressure. In spite of what the Government says about our rock star economy and about having this wonderful economic growth, the reality is that many, many people across our economy are under more pressure. The dairy farmers and the agricultural sector might be doing OK, but, dare I say it, their poor workers are not under much less pressure, even though the payout has gone up. So with pressure comes stress, and sometimes with stress comes inappropriate decision making. That is what we are trying to prevent here.

It does not matter how good WorkSafe New Zealand is and it does not matter what regulations we put in place. If we do not have a culture and an environment that encourage people to stop and think and make the right decision to be—

💬 Dr David Clark: The Cabinet Manual.

Not the Cabinet Manual. I do not think they stop and think about that too much—perhaps they should. Can I say that risk management has not been part of the Cabinet Manual or of mainstream thinking in the workplace. If we have regulations that remove the individual’s responsibility and the opportunity, that is not good either. So I do not think we in any way believe or think that we can regulate our way to safety, but we must put in place provisions, and we hope that this bill, when passed—with, no doubt, the necessary amendments—will enable people to work in places where their input and their judgment are valued and they have the opportunity to stop and think and make the right decisions around health and safety.

There are a number of things in the bill that my colleagues referred to, and I say on behalf of Andrew Little, who is not here, that the absence of corporate manslaughter provisions from this legislation is probably a major omission. There are bigger fines on corporates and there are other responsibilities that—I am just trying to get the right words here. Directors and officers must exercise “due diligence”, which is a bit better than “oversight” but no guarantee. Ultimately, until people in every part of a business, at every level of a business—be that vertical or lateral, in terms of its operation—think about work safety and think about protecting the people who work in and around them, then we will not have the culture that we are trying to create through this bill. I acknowledge that the Minister is trying to do the right thing, but he is in a straitjacket of ideological right-wing thinking that the market forces will ultimately protect workers.

I hope the select committee, as I say, extends and challenges some of the assumptions made in the bill. There is a definition of “worker” that might be better but may not be, and there is an obligation on workers. I know that when the Minister first announced this legislation, he clearly indicated that there would be responsibility on workers to uphold safe practices, and that is fine, to a point, but the workers do not have the same level of negotiating power when it comes to raising a point in the workplace. There is a culture of fear in too many workplaces around this country, where workers are afraid to raise issues.

The Pike River tragedy identifies what human nature can do if allowed to. That is, where bonuses or incentives are placed in the workplace, people will cut corners, ignore warnings, do things that should never occur, and create unsafe situations. We are not saying that we should remove bonuses, but wherever they will exist, there must be proper safeguards to ensure that those bonuses are not earned through the shortcuts that can and do occur every day up and down this country, resulting in a workplace safety record that is absolutely outrageous.

I go to another point here about definitions of notifiable injury or illnesses—“notifiable” being the point here. In the Government’s previous philosophical determination to privatise ACC—and I do not believe for a moment it has shifted off that. If it gets voted back in, God help us at the next election; it will move down that path of privatisation. The notifiable part of this is really important because people will not notify if they think that their private insurance premiums are going to go up. There are all sorts of abhorrent behaviours that occur under a private system, and that too will drive bad behaviour in the workplace.

So, although the bill is moving forward in some areas, there are some dangers in here. I hope that the select committee has the time and the freedom to think laterally, and that it does take input from all parties, in order to indeed deliver the kind of health and safety legislation that this country desperately needs and that was thrown out the door in 1992. Now the National Government, in guilt—and so it should be—is reintroducing, finally, legislation that goes, in large part, down the track to a better, safer working environment for New Zealanders.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take a call for the Greens on the first reading of the Health and Safety Reform Bill. We will be supporting it. This bill, as you know, is an omnibus bill that signals the most comprehensive changes to our health and safety laws for about 22 years, when the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 took effect. Others have critiqued it before me, so I will not bother to go into that. This bill follows on from the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety and also the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy, and the recommendations from both of those. The Government has already enacted some of the recommendations from the Pike River royal commission when it passed the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Act last year—some of the recommendations, not all of them.

The Government has very clearly said that it wants to reduce workplace deaths and injuries by 25 percent by 2020. We agree. No family should experience having a loved one killed on the job—having a loved one who never comes home from work, like the families of the 10 forestry workers who lost their lives last year. According to the regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that accompanies this bill, it estimates that between 600 and 900 workers lose their lives to workplace illness or disease every year—that is between 600 and 900 people—and that between one to two people die in traumatic incidents at work every week. That is 52 to 104 people killed at work every year. On top of that, about one in 10 workers is harmed at work.

We will be supporting this bill. Of course we will. We will support any bill that attempts to reduce the incidence of harm to our citizens. We are, however, concerned that although the reforms in the bill are good, they do not go far enough. I think we have heard from this side of the House about that. I note that this bill still takes a bit of a soft approach. That has been carried over from the 1992 Act. In the explanatory note of this bill it says: “Clause 22 relates to the key principle of managing risks. It provides that a duty imposed on a person under the Bill to ensure health and safety requires the person to eliminate risks to health and safety, so far as is reasonably practicable; and if it is not practicable to eliminate risks to health and safety, to minimise those risks so far as is reasonably practicable.”

How does that play out in a forest, I wonder? “Reasonably practicable” is significantly different for someone working alone in a forest, miles from anywhere, with a desperate urge to make his quota. That is very different from an office worker, a flight attendant, or a warehouse worker. Today I was visited by two of the panel members of the Independent Review of Health and Safety in the New Zealand Forest Industry to talk about the terms of reference for that inquiry. We were slightly disappointed that this Government did not see fit to undertake that inquiry itself, but it is clear from whatever evidence you look at that voluntary codes of practice are not enough to keep workers safe in the forests.

Much has been made of the fact that this bill is similar to the Australian Model Work Health and Safety Act. It sort of is, but not quite. One of the crucial elements missing is the voice of workers. I think this is alluded to in the bit in the agency disclosure statement of the regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, in the second to last line, which says: “Modifications to the Australian Model Law are proposed where they are considered necessary to fit with New Zealand circumstances.” So what are those New Zealand circumstances?

I would suggest that it is union membership. If you have a look at the regulatory impact statement, on page 14, there is a fairly telling graph that shows the difference between the rate of accidents, excluding road accidents, for workers in Australia and workers in Aotearoa New Zealand. If we are introducing the same laws, we are failing if we are going to be ignoring the voice of workers and the role of unions in making sure workers’ voices are heard. In Australia in 2012 there were 1.8 million Australians who were members of a trade union. Unions have a place at the table. They are part of the tripartite system of monitoring, evaluating, and keeping track of health and safety on worksites. We know that in Aotearoa New Zealand a unionised workplace is a safer workplace. I note that the regulatory impact statement does not have a comparative graph in here that compares the health and safety track records of unionised versus non-unionised worksites, or worksites that have collective agreements versus those with individual agreements.

Unions play a significant part in maintaining a culture of health and safety in the workplace. I guess one of the tragic comparisons we can make is between Pike River Coal and Huntly East Underground Mine. The Pike River mine was, as we know, un-unionised frequently and workers were basically in a culture where they did not see health and safety as a priority. Compare that mine with the Huntly mine, which is highly unionised. Workers are members of the Amalgamated Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, and they certainly stand up for health and safety on a daily basis, and do not let the standards slip.

In Aotearoa New Zealand we particularly need that voice heard on behalf of workers, because workers frequently are in a position where they cannot speak for themselves. We are currently in a position where we have reasonably high unemployment, job insecurity, and increased casualisation. We have the Minister of Labour, who has introduced legislation that will make it worse for workers. The 90-day trials have been introduced over the last term. The latest Employment Relations Amendment Bill removes the capacity for union bargaining and the offer of collective employment agreements in the first 30 days to workers who start. Basically, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill counteracts some of the benefits that the Government is trying to put forward in this Health and Safety Reform Bill, because the Employment Relations Amendment Bill undermines the ability for workers to have a voice.

We are also concerned that it is not just employees who will have a problem with this. Unless we fully resource our Government agencies to ensure that employers are trained up, we also risk their ability to participate in creating healthy and safe workplaces. We will be supporting the bill, but we are interested to see where we can improve it during the select committee process. I particularly look forward to hearing from the forestry sector about what it will be doing to improve the health and safety of workers in its sector.

The Health and Safety Reform Bill is about New Zealand workplace health and safety. I, like others, would like to congratulate the Minister of Labour, the Hon Simon Bridges, on bringing it forward. This is a very important bill, and our voices, in speaking to it, echo back in time to reflect the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. Specifically, a 25 percent reduction in workplace fatalities and serious injuries by 2020 is called for in this bill. And it will not end there, for New Zealand is competing internationally, not just for workers and not just for markets but at a time when ethical resource management is noted by potential purchasers; at a time when workplace safety is a concern not just for those working but also for trading partners, for corporates, for potential customers, and for the population at large; and at a time when workplace fatalities and serious injuries are not just distressing for family members and communities but also impact on Brand New Zealand and our international standing.

This bill builds on the important work already done in establishing WorkSafe New Zealand as the new, independent workplace health and safety regulator, which was called for in the Pike River implementation plan. In New Zealand, families want to send their family members, their relations, into workplaces where they can do work that is challenging, difficult, rewarding, and enjoyable, sure in the knowledge that they will use the best of Kiwi values—resilience, adaptability, problem-solving, curiosity, generosity, and reliability—matched with a safety-conscious environment. That is why this bill is about improving workplace health and safety—so we can get on with living the good life, so we can all expect to achieve the full span of our natural lives, without people being lost to industrial accidents, injuries, and avoidable fatalities. I look forward to working on this bill with my parliamentary colleagues. Thank you.

I am very pleased to take a call on the Health and Safety Reform Bill on behalf of New Zealand First. New Zealand First will be supporting the bill. It is a very important bill. It is a substantive piece of legislation and a positive step forward. We understand that it is part of a wider range of reforms. We support the general focus of the bill—all improvements to health and safety in New Zealand workplaces are always welcome. It is timely to replace the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992. After all, it is over 10 years old and a lot has happened in the intervening years, particularly when we review that legislation after the Pike River tragedy.

Employees—and their families, of course—need to be as sure as they possibly can be that their workplaces are safe and that they are going to return home safely each day. This is not something that legislation can achieve by itself. Business has a large role to play. So it is welcoming to see that there is a strong theme of consultation right throughout this legislation. Employers must consult with workers, and workers are encouraged to be active in all aspects of health and safety in their workplaces. Of course, this is particularly important in risky areas like forestry and mining.

The bill does appear to contain a number of potential challenges for employers. At the select committee consideration it is to be hoped that these challenges are talked through so that there is a better outcome for both parties. One example relates to workgroups and the PCBU, the person conducting a business or undertaking. What is to happen when work groups are scattered as they are in the forest industry?

We are also pleased to see the focus again on health and safety reps. Health and safety representatives have been around for a number of years, and I know personally that a lot of effort went into setting up that system in our workplaces. More of the same is not going to improve health and safety in workplaces. Training too is an essential element. It is vital that companies include all employees, middle and senior managers as well, in workplace safety—something that has not had the emphasis that it could have had previously.

The bill also includes a new concept: a person conducting a business or undertaking. This means that the company’s officers and directors must step up their individual and corporate activities to ensure that the safety of workers and all others in the workplace is a focus. In New Zealand First we are delighted to see the role of inspectors returning to the workplace. They have a very important role, they always have, and we welcome their return. It is vitally important that inspectors achieve the health and safety rules and regulations that are vital in the workplace and ensure there is compliance with the industry code. Workplace inspectors have always helped with safety in the workplace.

So, overall, we are very pleased to see a far more inclusive bill, and it appears that there will be far more consultation and some oversight of the workplace by our inspectors. This bill is important and deserves to be treated as such. In New Zealand First we would support this bill being passed through the House prior to the election so that in the intervening period work can begin on drawing up the regulations that are specified in the bill. We are seeing an increase—not an improvement—in forestry worker accidents, so we know that our health and safety regulations do need to be improved. The bill will incorporate all aspects of the workforce more, but we believe that some emphasis does need to be taken off the health and safety reps and actually put on to individual managers. We welcome the fact that when an offence is committed, there will be a harsher penalty. We need to do this. We agree with the requirements for WorkSafe New Zealand and ACC to consult on injury prevention initiatives. New Zealand First welcomes this bill and hopes that it has a speedy passage through the House. A safe workplace is good for everyone.

When the circus of question time is viewed across the nation, it is quite wonderful to have an opportunity like this to note that the House is in agreement with a piece of legislation. There is actually a lot of cooperation behind the scenes, and this Health and Safety Reform Bill is a very worthy indication of that collegiality and cooperation. National is committed to delivering Better Public Services, and this Government’s reform package, namely the Working Safer package, is part of that body of work. We have a firm target of reducing injuries and fatalities in the workplace by 25 percent by 2020, and this new law will play a major role in achieving that target. We value the cooperation of the other parties. I commend this bill to the House.

I have to say it is a little bit disappointing that National members are not prepared to engage a little bit more in this debate. I do not really think a 1-minute contribution is worthy of the level of debate and the level of seriousness that ought to be applied to this legislation. The reason that this Health and Safety Reform Bill has been introduced to Parliament, the reason why we are having this debate today, is the Pike River disaster. Had that disaster not occurred, there is no way this Government would have been inspired to introduce legislation to improve health and safety regulations in the workplace. It is a shame that it took a tragedy like that to reverse the ideological adherence to deregulation and stepping back from a legislative role in health and safety. It is absolutely a fact that a blind, unthinking adherence to deregulation is what led to the Pike River disaster and, frankly, it is what is causing the Government to fail to respond truly adequately to the appalling situation in the forestry industry right now.

Mercifully, as I think Darien Fenton pointed out earlier on in this debate, the forestry industry itself is taking the situation seriously and is working with unions and others. But the system that has always worked—in terms of getting the regulatory environment correct, the employment relations environment correct, and the health and safety environment correct—has been the tripartite approach, where the employer, the workers, and the Government work together and each take responsibility. Frankly, for too long, I think, the Government has not been taking responsibility. The good aspect of this legislation is that there is recognition in here that the Government does have a considerable responsibility to ensure the health and safety of workers.

It should be an absolute right of every single person living in this country that they are able to expect to go to work, be safe, and come home again at the end of the day. It should be the right of their families to expect that the breadwinner can go to work, be safe, and come back home to them at the end of the day, and that they are not going to lose that person and go through the heartache and the trauma of not only losing a loved one but also losing the source of income for that family. Unfortunately, in too many instances that right has not been something that people in New Zealand have been able to rely on.

Although events like the Pike River disaster, when, in a single blow, a large number of people were lost, do focus the mind, we do need to be aware that every year when Workers’ Memorial Day rolls round, there is a list of names of people who have been lost in the previous 12 months. Those lists are not getting any shorter from one year to the next, and that is a shame. I do acknowledge that this legislation is part of an effort to actually reduce the incidents of workplace fatalities and workplace injuries.

However, it does have to be part of a package, and all the different aspects of the package have to be working together. There are areas where I think the Government does need to lift its game. One of those is certainly in employment relations. The appalling amendments to the Employment Relations Act, which are being pushed through—although the pace seems to have gone off those lately, and maybe those are being parked until after the election. That would be a good thing because that would mean that a Labour Government could just scrap that legislation before it is even enacted.

What that legislation demonstrates is that perhaps, in terms of workplace health and safety, in the National Government the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. On the one hand it has introduced this very good legislation, which, although there are aspects we would like to see improved—and we will work hard at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to ensure that those improvements are put in place—we broadly support. You then look at the open and blatant attacks on collectivism, the attacks on unionism, the attacks on workplace rights, the efforts to make work more precarious, and the efforts to keep wages down to encourage people to work longer hours and put their health and safety at risk, which seem absolutely at odds with what this legislation is trying to achieve.

Likewise, decisions made in ACC appear to be absolutely at odds with it. The Minister for ACC, Judith Collins, described health and safety training carried out by both the Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand as nothing more than a rort. She ultimately had to go to Business New Zealand, and I do not know the exact words she used, but it was something along the lines of she did not mean to impugn its integrity. Heaven forbid that Judith Collins should apologise for something, but she did not mean to impugn its integrity. There was no apology for, or back-down from, what she had to say about the Council of Trade Unions, which, I think, again simply portrays the anti-union mood and ideology—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Anti-worker.

—and anti-worker—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: They just hate people who work.

That is right, actually. I think people who earn a salary or a wage are sort of public enemy No. 1 as far as the National Government is concerned. Certainly those who represent them and attempt to further the interests of people who rely on wages and salaries are treated with equal disdain by the National Government. They were certainly treated with that kind of disdain by Judith Collins. The interesting thing is that those programmes that were the result of recent announcements and the astroturfing with the Taxpayers’ Union, which somehow magically managed to discover the expenditure on these programmes at around about the same time—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: What have they said about Judith’s trip to China?

Well, indeed, what has the Taxpayers’ Union said about Judith’s trip to China? I am still waiting for that press release—waiting to see what Jordan Williams has to say about that. What that revealed was the fact that a number of programmes designed to prevent injuries both in the workplace and for other accounts of ACC have been cut over the last 5 years. In fact, for the last 3 or 4 years of the last Labour Government, the expenditure on programmes focused on preventing injury in the workplace and in other settings was around $40 million a year. In the last financial year that has been cut to $22 million. So in the time that National has been in Government, it has halved the budget for injury prevention.

That would be fine if there was really good evidence to say that those programmes were not doing anything, but the evidence from ACC itself demonstrates that for every dollar invested in those programmes, at least $1.12 in treatment was saved, and in some cases it was as high as $1.23. So that is between a 12 percent and 23 percent return on that investment. It was stopping injuries. Most important, people were safer. They could go to work and assume they were going to come home in one piece without any injury or, heaven forbid, suffering a fatality. It even saved ACC money. Surely the National Party should understand the value of saving money. But, no, it took the short-term approach and cut the programmes so that it could cut expenditure and improve the surplus that ACC could record, to help get the Government books back into surplus, because it had failed so demonstrably in actually improving economic growth in order to get the Government books back into surplus.

We absolutely support this legislation, but what we do demand of the Government is that it demonstrates a true focus on health and safety in the workplace by ensuring that, in all its actions, it improves the safety of workers. It is not that much to ask, but we are still waiting.

I want to just briefly respond to the last speaker, Iain Lees-Galloway. This Government is committed to health and safety. That is why we are putting these reforms through. Like my colleagues, I want to acknowledge Minister Bridges for the work that he is doing and continues to do in this space in bringing this legislation, the Health and Safety Reform Bill, to the House. As a member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I am very much looking forward to having it in front of us. I think—if it is not being presumptuous of me to speak for my colleagues—that is the reason we are speaking briefly on this bill. We want this to go to the select committee as quickly as possible and pass into law. So I commend this bill to the House.

I recognise the honourable member Raymond Huo. Ni hao ma, Mr Huo.

Very good. I rise to take a call to support this Health and Safety Reform Bill. It is very important that we have a robust health and safety system to protect New Zealanders. It is equally important that this new law is supported by stronger enforcement and education. We must work together to meet our target of reducing the New Zealand workplace injury and fatality toll by 25 percent by 2020. The Minister of Labour said in his earlier contribution that this bill seeks to put more onus and legal requirements on managers and company directors to manage risks and keep their workers safe. This bill will require greater worker participation, so workers are more involved in health and safety in their workplaces. This bill will establish stronger penalties, enforcement tools, graduated offence categories, and court powers, and it will, of course, seek to amend a number of other pieces of legislation, including the WorkSafe New Zealand Act 2013.

The proposals in this bill are well intentioned but there are at least four issues that I wish to bring to the attention of this House. The first one is that WorkSafe New Zealand must be properly resourced to enforce all obligations under this bill, including the worker participation requirements. This cannot be seen as an afterthought by inspectors, as it has been under the present law, and as we saw, with fatal results, at the Pike River mine disaster. Secondly, it will be vital for inspectors to deal with workers and health and safety representatives independently of their employers, to ensure the workplace systems have integrity. Thirdly, it was incredibly disappointing to see in the case of the Pike River mine disaster that, in spite of the royal commission finding clear fault by a number of parties, no one—no one—has been held fully to account to date. This brings me to the fourth issue, which is that there is no provision in this bill on corporate manslaughter. Therefore, there remains a gap in the law.

The most egregious cases of workplace death caused by gross negligence will still be met with a fine. If we look closely at the proposals under this bill, new orders available to the court—such as a restoration order, an adverse publicity order, an injunction, or health and safety project order—will not apply, at least in any practical sense, in the case of a workplace fatality. Where the failure is a systemic one, directors and senior management should be held to account. Under this bill the limitation period for mounting a prosecution will be extended. It will be extended from 6 months, under the Criminal Procedure Act, and that is welcomed, because it allows time for a lengthy investigation where that is required or follows a coroner’s inquest, so that the possibility of a prosecution is not closed off if a coroner draws a different conclusion from an inspector. To wrap up, it is very important for us to have a robust health and safety system to protect all New Zealanders.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koe e te Whare. I want to begin by echoing Denise Roche’s words that the Green Party will be supporting this bill, the Health and Safety Reform Bill, and by expressing, I guess, my personal thanks to the Hon Simon Bridges and his predecessor, the Hon Kate Wilkinson, for actually progressing this legislative reform.

I attended most of the hearings of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. I was one of the submitters, in fact, to that royal commission. There was a particularly dramatic moment when Dr Kathleen Callaghan took the stand to give her evidence about human factors. Dr Callaghan is an expert in what goes wrong in disasters. She has specialised previously in air crash disaster investigations, for example. She began with a list of factors: inexperienced workers, under-trained workers, fatigued workers, pressure to increase production, inadequate breaks, low unionisation, missing equipment, faulty equipment, poorly maintained equipment, and poor oversight by the regulator. There were other matters in her list, and she said that all of those factors were present in the Pike River mine—all of them.

I come from the health sector, and in the health sector we talk about risk environments—environmental factors that lead to health or illness. All of those factors that I have mentioned are not individual factors; they are environmental factors, which lead to error and to disaster. What that highlights is that there was no individual worker inside that mine who could have dealt with any of those things. It required a systems approach. Yet, as others have said, in 1992 the Health and Safety in Employment Act was brought into legislation, placing an onus on employers to take “all practicable steps”. That was based on an ideology that was wrong. It was based on ignoring something that most of economic theory and most of the actions of the Government are based on, which is that the firm will seek to maximise profit and that it will do that by minimising its costs. That is what it is supposed to do. So the weasel words of “all practicable steps” and the weak oversight from the Department of Labour gave employers an out. It gave them the opportunity to take a short cut, if they wished to, in order to minimise their costs and maximise their profit. Deregulation, hands-off Government, and weasel-worded legislation caused the Pike River mine disaster. They killed those 29 men. That disaster was not an isolated accident or incident. It was just a low-frequency but entirely predictable consequence of that 1992 Act.

In forestry we see an inexperienced and under-trained workforce. We see an industry forced into more marginal and steeper land. We see production pressure—pressure to increase production—because right now the price is a bit higher. We see long supply chains, long contractual chains, with weak oversight and controls, and until very recently we saw almost no oversight. No wonder that when decent inspection began again, an unprecedented number of serious problems were found.

So we welcome this legislation. We believe that it should be stronger. We note, as Denise Roche said, that it still contains that practicability test that I have spoken of many times in this House. We believe that the Government could resume the National Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Committee, to actually have some systematic review of what is going on in occupational safety and health. But we welcome the legislation, we look forward to the submissions, and we look forward to the opportunity to work with the Government to make this a stronger bill. Thank you.

I proudly commend the Health and Safety Reform Bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.