Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill

The last time we were considering this bill, Jonathan Young was speaking. He has 1 minute left, if he so wishes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Yes, absolutely, I do want to take up my 1 minute.

I want to acknowledge the honourable member Damien O’Connor, who put this bill in. Everything in politics is a matter of timing, and perhaps when the bill was lodged in the ballot the timing was right, but it is not right now because legislation has overtaken the intent of this bill. The legislation has overtaken the intent of this bill, and, in fact, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment produced this document in 2013, which says Safe mines: safe workers—New laws—new laws—on mining health and safety: A quick guide for mine operators.

Can I just mention a couple of things it says in the introduction? It says: “The Government has recently made changes to the laws concerning health and safety in the mining industry. This is in response to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and will bring New Zealand’s approach to mining health and safety into line with international best practice.”

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I regret to inform the member his time has expired.

I want to acknowledge my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor for introducing the Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill as a response to the tragedy that occurred within his own electorate, which so deeply affected his electorate and which, to this day, still so deeply affects his electorate. I want to just comment on the final comment made by Jonathan Young there. He said that timing is everything, and that there once was a time when this bill might have had a place but that that time has gone and has been overtaken by events and been overtaken by all the actions that the Government has taken. Oh, if only that were the case. If only the Government actually maintained the focus on health and safety that it had in the days and weeks after the Pike River disaster.

It was a wake-up call for all of us. Years and years of reliance on the ideological view that deregulation was the answer to everything led us, ultimately, to that tragedy occurring. In the days and weeks after it the Prime Minister said and did all the right things. The Government members said and did all the right things. They knew that they had no choice. It was politically untenable for the Government not to address health and safety not only in the mining sector but in all other industries in New Zealand. Our health and safety record in this country is woeful. We have twice the rate of death and injury that they have in the United Kingdom, and in Australia their rate of injury at work is around just two-thirds what ours is here in New Zealand. We have to act. We have known that for a long time, but it took this tragedy to get the Government to actually take action. And yes, it did some things, but as time has gone on, as Pike River has become more and more of a distant memory, and, as we get close to the 5-year anniversary of that tragic day, it has become something that has slipped slowly off the National Party’s political radar.

It is out of frustration for the fact that that has happened that my colleague Damien O’Connor has introduced this legislation and left it on the Order Paper, even though it has been sitting on the Order Paper for some time because of the National Party’s filibustering of a range of members’ bills on members’ day. It has remained on the Order Paper because it is still relevant. In fact, it is more relevant now, with the National Party divided over health and safety, than it was a month ago. The National Party now is not sure if it wants to water down the health and safety reforms that it is introducing or beef them up with corporate manslaughter. It has no idea what it is doing on this. It is getting pulled in all directions by all its different corporate interests—by Talley’s, which want there to be no health and safety legislation at all in New Zealand.

💬 Hon Annette King: And they’ve got the money.

And they have got the money, too. That is why: out of frustration that the Government has failed to actually finish the job and make sure that not only our underground coal mines are safe, but our quarries are safe, our forests are safe, our farms are safe, and our fishing vessels are safe—all those industries that are killing and maiming New Zealanders. We should still be focused like a laser on addressing those issues. But it is no longer a focus for this Government.

We are still waiting to see what it is that the Government wants to do, since it has delayed the health and safety legislation. We have no idea what it is that the Government actually plans to do with that legislation. I think it has no idea what it plans to do with that legislation. All it knows is it is not in its DNA to make workplaces safer. So I say to the Government members: demonstrate to the people of New Zealand that it is in your DNA, that it is something that you are committed to, and that it is something you are focused on by supporting this legislation in the name of the Hon Damien O’Connor. Do not forget Pike River—do not forget Pike River. Finish the job and make not only our mines safer but every workplace in New Zealand safer.

Thank you for the opportunity. First of all, I would like to commend Mr O’Connor for his initiative in bringing this bill to the House, his motivation for bringing this bill to the House, and, last but not least, his obvious action, because actions are what matter.

This bill was brought to the House as a result of the Pike River disaster, but I would like to also acknowledge that it is part of a concerted effort that is going on in health and safety, not just in this House but in industries across the country. The Government is aiming to reduce deaths by 25 percent by 2020. Some of those initiatives include the maritime operator safety system, the “MOSS” regulations, which have been in for about 12 months. The forestry sector is collaborating together to increase the health and safety of its workers. FarmSafe is working with Federated Farmers, who are working with WorkSafe and are engaged in a whole lot of initiatives to make sure that their workers are safe. The previous speaker suggested that this party is not concerned about the safety of workers in this country. That is just totally rejected. That is why we have introduced the Health and Safety Reform Bill, which has, as has already been mentioned, superseded this member’s bill.

I agree with Mr Lees-Galloway. The statistics in this country are not good—75 deaths per year is not a good record. About 40 percent or, let us just put it another way, about 29 people die in the agriculture sector alone every year—the same number of people who died in the Pike River disaster. That is every year. That is just every year, and that has got to be considered. There are going to be thousands of injuries, let alone the deaths, and thousands of families who are affected by slack, poor health and safety regulations and practices that have been in this country for too long.

As a result of the Pike River inquiry there are 16 recommendations. I can tell the House that they have all been considered and implemented, including consideration of the Australian mining regulations, which are the basis of this member’s bill. As I say, because the Health and Safety Reform Bill has superseded the member’s bill, I cannot support Mr O’Connor’s bill. But it is not just about the paperwork. It is not just about the bill; it is about attitude and culture, which are the key drivers to having a safe environment. “She’ll be right” when it comes to health and safety is not right. A bit of No. 8 wire is not good enough when it comes to the health and safety of our colleagues and workmates. This cultural change that will take place will take time.

I would like to acknowledge at this point the previous chief executive officer of Transpower from 2007 to 2014, Dr Patrick Strange, who, at the top of his agenda at every board meeting, had as an agenda item not the financials and the number of kilometres of cable that had been strung up but the health and safety record of the Transpower board over the previous month. He has led the way since before I was on that board, and he is an example of leadership in the field of health and safety.

We need to continue to lead from the front. Just think about 20 years ago when we talked about drink-driving culture. The laws were put in place, but we know my parents and my grandparents continued to drink and drive. How long did seatbelts take to get in place? That took years. I recall my parents not putting their seatbelt on, despite the law, and my old man was a cop. So it is about a change in culture and attitude that must take place; it is not just going to be about the legislation. But we will persist and we must persist in developing the health and safety legal framework, and we must get it right. To Mr Lees-Galloway’s point—we must get it right and a couple of weeks will not hurt. It is important for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

I attended most days of the hearings of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. It was unusual for the commissioners themselves to ask many questions, but one of the ones that really sticks in my mind was a question asked by Stewart Bell, one of the commissioners. In his day job he is the Commissioner for Mine Safety and Health Queensland. He asked Doug White, who is one of the managers from Pike River and an extremely experienced coalminer, whether in his experience he had ever encountered a situation where the regulator had made no notices to the mining company for any changes or improvements in health and safety. Doug White answered no. Commissioner Bell was clearly aghast at the gulf that existed between Queensland mine safety regulations and those that pertained in New Zealand.

That gulf came from decades of Governments that either had actively shrunk the State and the role of the State, or had not done enough to pull that role back and reverse those changes. The two particular axe blows to mine-worker safety came in the 1990s at the hands, particularly, of Bill Birch and Max Bradford when they gutted mine safety regulations and then eliminated the role of check inspectors and largely dismantled the Government’s mine inspection service as well.

I live close to the Pike River coalmine site. Many of those affected directly by the tragedy were my friends and neighbours. I am proud of the role I played in forcing the Government from its initial position of stonewalling and a Bart Simpson “Nothing to see here” attitude into, instead, first creating the High Hazards Unit and then Worksafe New Zealand, and overhauling mine safety regulations, and then overhauling workplace health and safety legislation. Those have all been good developments.

The question is whether or not enough has been done. The picture I certainly have is of a Government that is very much in two minds. I think Iain Lees-Galloway is right that one of those minds was forced by the circumstances that immediately followed the Pike River disaster. I do not believe that any of those changes that the Government has made have gone as far as I would take them. On the next day after the publication of the royal commission’s report, I asked the Prime Minister whether he accepted that deregulation had been a primary cause of the disaster. He did not. He did not accept it. When we considered the first of the Government’s health and safety bills, we had the quarrying industry submitting that it should be exempted from some of the measures that pertained to mining and quarrying, and it won. The Government allowed the industry to be exempted from those provisions, with tragic consequences.

I am certainly reminded of a question that I asked a former Minister, Kate Wilkinson, on a number of occasions. I asked her whether on the day before the Pike River disaster she would have said that the Government had done all it could to ensure the safety of miners going to work that day. It was a very difficult question for her to answer because there is always something we can do. So what I ask in relation to this bill is what can possibly be wrong with our allowing this bill to go forward to a select committee to enable members of the public, mine workers, and the companies themselves to tell us whether enough has been done? What can be more important for us in this House than to ensure that mine workers go to work each day and then come home?

No one can doubt the genuine intention behind this Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill that is before us today. Each of us clearly remembers the tragedy at Pike River, the enormous national wave of feeling and reaction, and, later on, the deliberations and the debate of the royal commission.

This Government has acted on all of the recommendations of the royal commission. One of these recommendations specified or requested the urgent establishment of an “effective regulatory framework for underground coal mining”. At that time reference was made to the Queensland and also the New South Wales mining industries as demonstrating best practice. As a result, this Government has worked with those areas and the experts from those areas and also with our own coalmining industry in order to improve and develop our own safety regulations to ensure that a disaster like Pike River cannot or should not happen again.

Following on from this, in late 2013 Parliament passed legislation to significantly improve work safety in this country and included specific new regulations to address the coalmining industry. There were six principle provisions that were put forward through that legislation. The first one was about putting in place health and safety management systems. The second one was about appointing people to the newly created High Hazards Unit, part of WorkSafe New Zealand. I note that 17 of those High Hazards Unit inspectors have already been appointed and are in place. The third one was about ensuring workers meet new competency requirements; the fourth about complying with strengthened emergency standards and, related to that, making sure that we had the right emergency preparedness; and, finally, the fifth was about having notification and reporting requirements that were suitable and appropriate. WorkSafe New Zealand has been established and its funding has been recently boosted by $30 million. The High Hazards Unit, as I mentioned before, is already in operation.

I also note that the Government has made changes to the Electricity (Safety) Regulations 2010 to complement the new mining regulations. Three new changes were made. The first one was about ensuring the competency of those carrying out electrical work in mining operations is appropriate, the second was about improving the design requirements, assessments, and verification of safety for mining equipment, and the last was about regulating and endorsing the technical requirements and maintenance of equipment used in mines. Other changes have been made to the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992. They have been specifically tailored to this industry. These came into force in December 2013.

As a result of the Government’s wide-ranging reforms, New Zealand’s current approach towards health and safety is nearing best practice. The Government has clearly demonstrated its determination to continue the process towards making sure all workers operating in the coalmining industry are safe and that we have in place the appropriate safety practices. The reforms aim to reduce injury and death by 25 percent by the year 2020. WorkSafe New Zealand is one of the most significant overall reforms. It currently carries out about 12,500 operational inspections each year.

The new Health and Safety Reform Bill is currently before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and has been subject to long and lengthy debate. We have had the opportunity to hear many submissions. We are committed to getting it right. It is a collaborative effort with all parties in Parliament. I do note that in schedule 2 of the original draft of the bill there is specific mention of an area dealing with the mining industry. All these important initiatives have consequently pre-empted the proposals of this bill and rendered its introduction redundant in view of the wide scope of changes and the overarching regulations that have already come into place.

Although commending the purpose of the Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill, this National Government considers it to be a duplication of all the good work that has gone on and is currently going on. As such, we do not support its introduction.

I rise to take a short call for New Zealand First on this very important matter, the Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill, introduced by the honourable member Damien O’Connor. I, unlike Jonathan Young, will not hold out until the end of my speech to let you know where we stand as a party. In fact, it was at the very last minute, in extra time, that he told us where National was going to go with it, and it was no surprise to us that, of course, National members do not support it. New Zealand First wants to come out strongly, in the strongest of terms, to say that we support this initiative by the honourable member Damien O’Connor.

I stand with pride, because if my grandfather was alive today he would be very much appreciative that we have got the likes of the Labour Party and the Greens and New Zealand First supporting this bill, because it is looking after the welfare of our workers. My grandfather was the head of the miners’ union for some 20 years and was actually present in 1967 when they had the Strongman Mine disaster where 19 men lost their lives. Now we are coming up to 5 years this year since the death toll of 29 workers who lost their lives at Pike River. This is the largest issue that we have got around the country. This is a bigger issue than how much we are paying as a minimum wage for our workers. Every single worker in this country has the right to absolutely be guaranteed that they are going to go home after work. We as a country have got an appalling record in terms of health and safety when we compare ourselves to the likes of Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the USA.

I asked to be on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, which many of my friends across the House are a part of as well. We are right in the middle of deliberations on the Health and Safety Reform Bill, and yet again time has been extended even further. What we are trying to say here is that we have got a bill in place that could be implemented rather quickly and under some sort of urgency to look after the lives of those mine workers. It was only 10 days ago that another quarry worker was killed. I know it was not an underground mining situation, but it just goes to show the lackadaisical legislation we have got around health and safety in this country. Yes, after Pike River the Government came out and said it wanted to do something about it. It said it would act quickly and put some regulations in place and make sure that the death toll comes down in this sector. What it did not do was actually fund health and safety adequately to ensure that those regulations were actually managed and policed adequately to ensure that those deaths stopped happening, and, of course, we are still finding the same old story. We are going over and over it again.

I urge this Government to change its position of not supporting this bill. I would like to say also that Damien O’Connor has been in Parliament for some 22 years, and for all but 3 of those years he has held the seat of West Coast - Tasman. He has held that seat and he stands up and speaks for those people because he actually gets to see them and speak to them on a regular basis. When he has to go and talk to his constituents from his area and explain to them that he is doing everything he can, it is frustrating for him to actually not be able to go back with something solid that is supported—not for any political reasons but for good reasons—in this House.

I would just like to finish by saying that the coal mining industry makes up about 2.5 percent of our country’s GDP and about 6.2 percent of our total exports. But it actually does more than that. For our regions, particularly in the West Coast - Tasman area, it makes up about 40 percent of our GDP. It has high-quality workers who are well and truly getting paid over and above the New Zealand average wage, and, of course, down there the average wage is about $105,000 a year. The industry provides about 8,000 jobs. If we do not do something to keep our workers safe, if we do not do something to look after this industry for our regional and rural parts of the country, we are going to be in a very dire situation in the future.

We are waiting with bated breath for the current legislation, the Health and Safety Reform Bill, to go through, and we urge the members of the Government on the benches opposite to support the Underground Coal Mining and Safety Bill in the name of the Hon Damien O’Connor. We commend this bill to the select committee. We hope it gets support. It makes good sense for it to get support, and we wish it all the best in its endeavours. We will never forget the tragedy of Pike River. We will never forget the tragedies of the Strongman Mine, Ralph’s Mine, and other disasters around the country. Those memories will be etched in the minds of all those family members and New Zealanders who were there and know people who lost their lives on those very sad days. Thank you.

I rise in opposition to the Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill, but, as my colleagues have done, I will not move any further without acknowledging the intention behind this bill. It is extremely admirable that the member Damien O’Connor has brought this to the floor in response to a tragedy that should not have happened, and that, of course, is the Pike River mine tragedy. We are shortly coming up to the anniversary of that disaster where 29 men on the West Coast lost their lives. I can certainly say as someone who comes from a tight-knit community that when a tragedy such as that occurs, everybody would have known one, if not many, of those men, and my sympathies are with those families in that community, where such a huge and significant tragedy has occurred. It was a tragedy that should never have happened, but now we need to move forward and certainly learn from it. But as my other colleagues have mentioned, time has moved on and events have superseded this bill. Following on from Pike River, there was, of course, the royal commission into the tragedy and there were 16 recommendations from its report. It should be noted that the Government has adopted those recommendations, and one of those, of course, is to reform our law in respect of health and safety, acknowledging that New Zealanders as a culture require a step change in health and safety—a step change in how we view it, and a step change in how we deal with health and safety in the workplace—and that is certainly something that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has been looking at over the past months.

I just want to pick up on a point raised by the member opposite—Mr Lees-Galloway. He suggested that this side of the House is deliberately slowing down the legislation. Well, yes, we are, because we want to get health and safety legislation right. This is the biggest reform in 25 years, and we need to make sure that the law is fit for purpose. We have a new concept coming into play, a PCBU, or person conducting a business or undertaking, and we must make sure that that is fit for purpose not only for our large, high-risk industries but also for the businesses that are low risk. But in acknowledging that in respect of Pike River, in 2013 new regulations were introduced in respect of mining administration, and what they did was require mining operators to “put in place new health and safety management systems; appoint people to new safety critical roles; make sure their workers meet new competency requirements; comply with strengthened minimum standards; meet new requirements for emergency preparedness … and; meet notification and reporting requirements.” So that in itself is a step change, but this new Government bill coming into play, a bill that will again raise the bar, means that New Zealanders have to take health and safety seriously and look at it as an integral part of their business. As part of that the Government has established WorkSafe New Zealand, and the challenge will lie with it to get the balance between carrot and stick to encourage businesses to look at their safety culture, but also to take a hard line on those operators who are not compliant with health and safety laws and are not putting their people first in respect of health and safety.

I just want to touch on some statistics. Obviously, it is part of the Government’s programme to reduce deaths and injuries at work by 20 percent by 2020. If we look across some of those high-risk sectors we can see that we definitely need a reduction—for example, in the rural agriculture sector there were 20 deaths last year. So this legislation is timely. I am not apologetic for slowing it down. We need to take a look at it. We need to take this law reform seriously. It is the biggest law reform in health and safety in 25 years. But in respect of this bill from Damien O’Connor, it has been superseded by events, and despite the intention we oppose the first reading.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of this bill put forward by my colleague the Hon Damien O’Conner. If only what the last speaker, Sarah Dowie, said was true. If only events actually had made this an irrelevant debate for this Parliament—I would be fine with that. I would be ecstatic about that, because that would mean that workers in workplaces, particularly the most dangerous workplace of New Zealand—mines—would be safe. But, sadly, that is not the case, and that is why we are debating this very important bill. That Government opposite has not seen fit to make this issue a priority, as it should be.

I recall speaking on one of the readings of the bill that the Government has passed with regard to mines safety, and I remember imploring this Government to never forget what we have learnt from the Pike River mine and the tragedy that unfolded there. I remember also saying to those members: “Please don’t do what I think this Parliament is guilty of doing in forgetting the Cave Creek tragedy and all the lessons that we learnt from that particular series of tragic events.” It appears to me that the National Government is going to go down that same path again. It forgot about what it learnt from the tragedy of not having strong enough regulations when it came to Cave Creek, and it is about to do it again with regard to what the royal commission has told us about the outcomes of the Pike River mine tragedy, and it is not even that very long ago.

As many speakers in this debate have said, on the West Coast, where my good colleague Damien O’Connor is the MP and represents that area particularly well, it is just as though it happened yesterday. It is just as though that tragic event happened yesterday for the people of the West Coast, and the Government is already forgetting the lessons. We know that it is forgetting the lessons, because it is holding up the Health and Safety Reform Bill at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—it is really clear that that is what is occurring. There is disagreement in the ranks of the National Government. Members cannot seem to get their act together around this. The Government is falling apart around this issue. Meanwhile the people of the West Coast wait. Meanwhile the people in workplaces up and down the land wait for the National Party to try to get its act together so that we can ensure that workers return home safely after they have been to work.

I agree with the person who spoke from New Zealand First, because, actually, this issue does surpass what one gets paid at work. There is no point getting a great wage at work if you cannot actually perform the function safely. If you are not going to make it home to your family, there is no point in what the size of the pay cheque is. This issue of health and safety should be paramount, and it should be at the forefront of that Government’s thinking. It should be a priority for Government members, but what are they doing? Instead, they are voting against this legislation, and they also watered down the legislation that came from the royal commission where the commission said that the legislation should have also have covered quarry workers. National watered that down, and we saw the sorry consequences of that just a few weeks ago, and it is doing the same thing with the Health and Safety Reform bill. It is attempting to water that piece of legislation down.

💬 Chris Bishop: How would you know?

Well, I would know because I am on the select committee, actually, Mr Bishop. That is how I would know. That Government is attempting to water down the legislation, and that member will know this because he is in the National Party caucus where they have been debating how they are going to water down the recommendations from the royal commission. That is right. The recommendations of the royal commission have become an item for debate in the National Party caucus because those members cannot agree on whether they think workers’ health and safety, particularly in the dangerous workplace of mines, should be paramount or not.

I just recently learnt that my husband’s great-grandfather, who was an MP for the Ōhinemuri area, did several good pieces of legislation to ensure that the miners in that community were made safe many, many decades ago. To me, it is an absolute travesty that I am standing here debating the same issues that are still not addressed and, thanks to that National Government, will continue not to be addressed.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill, which is in the name of Damien O’Connor. The purpose of this bill is to, on an interim basis, bring in better protection and safety for underground coalminers here in New Zealand by adopting Queensland’s regulatory framework until we have a better process in place. I can see that this bill is inspired by the Pike River mine tragedy, so before I get into this bill I would like to say that my heart and thoughts go out to the Pike River miners and their families. The whole country—yes, the whole country—was mourning after those explosions. Everyone expects to return home safely after their day at work. Health and safety is critical. Health and safety at work is important. Employees and employers both know that health and safety is important. Employers know that if they have a safe workplace, their employees are happy, they feel safe, and they are more productive. There are fewer interruptions, which leads to less cost to business, because all such interruptions always lead to some kind of cost. Cost aside, in serious cases, it can lead to injury or even the death of workers. No one can deny that workplace health and safety is important, but things get overlooked and accidents do happen.

According to the type of industry, there may be sometimes some specific requirements, measures, and practices that are required to be in place, and these measures and practices should be able to address physical, psychological, environmental, and other health and safety issues. Coalmining is a worldwide industry and the way of mining depends on the geology of the coal deposit. Open-cast mining—yes, it is economical but the coal seam should be close to the surface. Underground coalmining is comparatively a very complex process. It is not as simple as just adopting another country or region’s regulatory framework because it requires a good understanding of local coal deposits and technical and operational requirements. It requires good strategic planning. It requires good risk management. Also we need people who bring the right kind of expertise, because it is a very complex and hazardous industry.

I can see the reason for this bill but this National Government has already done a lot in that direction. This National Government has already fulfilled that commitment that it made after that Pike River tragedy. This was in November 2010 when this National Government initiated a royal commission of inquiry and then it was November 2012 when the royal commission made its report public. Then in December 2012 this National Government released its plan to implement the key recommendations that were made by the royal commission. For that, the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety was given the task of advising the Government on workplace health and safety and also on the structure and form of a new independent regulator for workplace health and safety. So this National Government has already developed an effective framework for mining—all kinds of mining, not just underground coalmining.

I would like to actually list a few things that are already done. Legislation arising from the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill established a new workplace health and safety agency—that is, WorkSafe New Zealand—and implemented key recommendations of the royal commission. Three Acts were created by the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill: The WorkSafe New Zealand Act 2013, the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Act 2013, and the Mines Rescue Act. So we can see that this National Government has already fulfilled its commitment to the royal commission’s recommendations. I can see the reason behind this bill, but this bill is unnecessary because this National Government is already investing significantly in health and safety. We know that working safer reforms in the Health and Safety Reform Bill before the House are to reduce injuries and the death toll by 25 percent by 2020. WorkSafe New Zealand is assessing 12,500 businesses every year. We do not support this bill because this bill is completely unnecessary. This National Government has already done a lot in that direction. Thank you.

In reply, thank you for the opportunity, and I appreciate those members who have contributed to this bill, the Underground Coal Mining Safety Bill. This was my best attempt to react and to take action from the report of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. It said, as one of its first things to do: “Major change required and fast”. I drafted a bill. The only avenue available to me was through the member’s bill process, and I put this bill in there. Unfortunately, it took some time to be pulled out. In the meantime, I acknowledge that the Government took the recommendations and developed changes to mining regulations and legislation, and then promised to move on health and safety. There are 29 families who will remind each and every one of us of the failings of Parliament and the failings of legislation to put in place proper protection for their loved ones in underground coalmining.

About 2 months prior to the Pike River disaster, having written to the Minister of Labour at the time warning her about conditions in the coalmining industry, I received a reply: “I am advised by the Department of Labour that there is no recent change in the pattern of mining serious harm notifications that might give cause for concern.” That Minister has long gone, but what I have heard from the Government in this debate is the same naive approach to health and safety and to mining regulations that that Minister had swallowed also. In the process of development of the legislation that has been passed now for underground mine safety, the quarrying industry lobbied to be excluded, even though it is acknowledged as being a high-risk industry, and now this Parliament will be reminded by three other families who have lost loved ones in the short space of time—in fact, in this year alone—in the quarrying sector that they wanted their loved ones to return home from work as well, and the legislation and the absence of regulation for quarrying meant that those workers were not protected. Scott Baldwin, Tane Hill-Ormsby, and Murray Taylor have been killed in their workplaces because the National Government was lobbied to make changes to the proposals from the Pike River disaster and the recommendations from the royal commission, and it dumbed down that legislation.

What I say in the House here is that the Government has made changes to underground mining regulations and safety, and made some improvements, but it has also made compromises as well. What I ask through this legislation is that the Government would support the bill going to a select committee to enable us to review the progress that has been made and to ask the question of whether we need to make further changes. At the moment, the wider body of health and safety legislation has been parked up because the Government is subject to lobbying. In the same way, there may be families in the future who have every right to come to this House and say “You failed my partner. You failed my husband.”—not you, Mr Assistant Speaker, but this House—because we ignored the wisdom before us and, through lobbying, dumbed down legislation and did not have in place the proper protection for people at work. This bill is a legitimate way of having a comprehensive review.

I acknowledge the Green Party and New Zealand First for their support—they too see the wisdom—and I would like to acknowledge my West Coast colleague Kevin Hague, who has always stood beside me in trying to force the Government into a better space on health and safety legislation. The 1992 legislation and the regime were based on a flawed philosophy, but this Government’s oversight is based on flawed information, and so we face a situation where, because of lobbying and because of bad information, this National Government is going to vote down this piece of legislation. This is a lost opportunity that would have allowed us to review the progress that we should be making in mining, quarrying, and workplace health and safety.