Health and Safety Reform Bill

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. First, I would just like to acknowledge all the whānau and families who are here today and who have followed this bill. I really do apologise, as an MP, that this opportunity has been wasted, that their call for justice has not been heard, and that we have failed the commitment made by all those people who travelled down to the Coast to grieve with the families. They had a legitimate expectation that we would do something, and do it right.

I am not disputing that people in this House care about human life, but I am saying that the Government has watered down this legislation and has failed to meet the expectations of the families who have lost people. Instead of a revolution in health and safety, dedicated to the families of Pike River, to the people in forestry, and to all the lives lost, what we have is a watering down of the opportunity. So it is a sad day. We are very, very sorry, some of us, that people have to bear witness to this.

There is a fundamental problem, which is the Government’s belief system that this is about participation rather than power. In a small workplace or a large workplace, without good law, power will determine who is safe and who is not safe. Can anyone in this House, with their hand on their heart, tell me that Peter Whittall would have chosen a worker to represent workers who would have been able to shut down the mine? Would he have done that? Read the book and you will find out what he would have done. Can anyone tell me with their hand on their heart that in every hairdressing salon where toxic dyes are used, in every dental surgery where toxic substances are present, that every employer—and there are some great ones, whom we herald—is fit to do the job without proper, empowered worker representation, not participation?

Participation means being there. Representation means standing for something and having a voice. That is what this bill has failed to do. We had high hopes of supporting it. We are really, really sorry that at this stage we cannot, and that it is failing the needs of people. It is very, very disappointing.

I did spend time on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and I was shocked—and I thought I was beyond being shocked—when I realised how much this bill was being watered down. I really did believe that we were going to learn the lesson of history and really make a difference. Ever since the Employment Contracts Act we have had a neo-liberal undermining of the power of working people, and we have seen the cost of that. The people who pay the price have a right to expect us to do better—not to create some kind of mythical balance but to do better, and to set up the structures that the independent task force, as well as the royal commission, asked us to.

There is no shortage of advice and there is no shortage of history on these issues. There are very clear recommendations from both those bodies about what this legislation needed to do, but the Government is not doing it, because it has lost its guts in the face of lobbying by people who are protecting their vested interests rather than the needs of everybody in the workplace. It is not going to work to improve safety in the workplace.

It is very, very disappointing. We do need to test it against the current situation. For example, a young man, Mr Charanpreet Dhaliwal, was killed 3 days ago, with no training on anything, let alone on health and safety in the workplace. He was working for a small business. He had no panic button and he had no power. What was he going to do? If there was nobody in the workplace—he was someone whose life was lost. What are we going to do for the next person in that situation?

Actually, this Parliament could do better. I believe that a lot of people out there are waiting for us to do better, but please do not tell the people that this cannot happen again or say that, through these thousands of jargon-filled words in this bill, we have actually done the job that the families have asked us to do. We have not done the job. We have sold them out. We have ignored history, and we have failed to recognise that whether they are small or large businesses, the way in which we get safety is through having a proper inspectorate and through having worker representation. That is the only way we can guarantee that the tragedies such as the ones we have seen in this country in recent years—ever since the delightful Rogernomics revolution, which failed this country—and that sort of stuff will stop happening and will stop happening better.

So, at the risk of repeating myself, it is not participation that is the problem and it is not individual responsibility; it is structural power, and we have failed to address it. Kia ora tātou katoa.

I call David Seymour—5 minutes.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this bill. It was not without some hesitation, because there have been considerable concerns about the effect of this bill on people going about their daily lives with little danger at present. I refer to people who might go walking or who perhaps use recreational vehicles on farmland, or people who might have a volunteer club that occasionally employs somebody in a paid capacity. It is important that we are actually able to do those things without being stymied by excessive regulation. But I would also join all members of the House in saying that it is critical—perhaps one of the most important aspects of going to work; in fact, the only aspect of going to work that really matters—that you can come home safely, and I join members in expressing sympathy for those who, very sadly, have not done so.

I have to say that if I were to take exception to some of the sentiments expressed by other members, it would be when Catherine Delahunty, the previous speaker, said that only some of us are sad that people have, tragically, lost their lives in the workplace. I think that is very, very unfortunate, and it is an extremely unfortunate thing for a member to say. At the heart of it is the belief that “If you do not agree with my public policy remedies, then you do not agree with my intentions—QED, you are a bad person.” I reject that thinking. I agree with the member speaking prior to that, Maurice Williamson, who was truly brave and said that public policy involves difficult choices amongst realistic alternatives. Throwing one’s toys from the cot and deciding suddenly to oppose the bill on the basis that smaller businesses and low-risk businesses will not have some of the protections that the bill offers to employees of larger businesses, while all the while grandstanding on a tragedy where the workers were unionised and did have representatives, I take exception to.

I think that this bill has found a balance between the fact that no safety precaution is costless—we do have to make choices between realistic alternatives when we make public policy. We do have to find a balance. My view is that this bill has gone through a tortuous process of making those trade-offs, and I think it has got the balance right. I commend the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety and the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee members, who have done that work. Ultimately, on the basis of that work having been done, I will be pleased to support this bill through to the next stage. Thank you.

Tēnā koutou, e te Whare Pāremata. I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in the second reading of this bill. Before doing so, I want to acknowledge the leadership of the Hon Michael Woodhouse and also the other members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, from both National and the Opposition. Although we are now entering the political side of the discussion on this bill, I think it is important to note that my belief is that the select committee agreed on the vast majority of the clauses in this bill. There have been some small differences, but we have had large-scale agreement on this bill, which is a very important aspect.

I just want to focus on a couple of issues concerning the bill in relation to how we are going to go about achieving the objective, which is, obviously, to reduce death and serious injury by 25 percent by 2020. The most crucial part of this bill is that we are trying to bring about a change in culture as to how people think and execute safe work practices, and this legislation will not be regarded as being successful unless there is a fundamental shift in the way that everyone in a workplace thinks about and undertakes health and safety. That cultural change is absolutely essential. So the question is how we bring about a cultural change.

The primary focus is that we should be looking to achieve effective and pragmatic health and safety policies within the workplace, not necessarily trying to enshrine a compliance framework. This is best achieved when directors, managers, and the workers in the business all get together to work out the best way to achieve it. Given that 97 percent of New Zealand businesses employ 20 or fewer people, it is our view that they should have some flexibility to be able to work out the framework that best suits their business. This comes back to the cultural issue. The first preference is for everyone in a business—everyone in a business—to be involved in the health and safety decisions. Contrary to press reports, this bill does not stop the obligation of persons conducting a business or undertaking to engage meaningfully with their workers, nor does it obviate the need to come up with proper health and safety practices.

The other aspect that I just want to talk a little bit about is duty of care. Naturally, the previous draft of the bill had a duty of care between the person conducting a business or undertaking and the workers of the business. This bill takes that a little bit further, in the sense that it also requires workers to make sure that when they are going about their own business, whether they are working on a machine or whether they are a receptionist or whatever, they take care in the way they look after themselves in the workplace, and, secondly, and just as important, they look after their colleagues in the workplace. So what we have ended up with is an inextricably linked connection between the person conducting a business or undertaking, the worker, and the colleagues in the business. Those are two of the crucial aspects that are going to make sure that the cultural change that we want to see actually occurs. Thank you very much.

The next call is a split call. The Hon Damien O’Connor—5 minutes.

It is important to acknowledge why this bill is in this House, and it was the loss of 29 men at Pike River that brought about this bill. But we need this legislation for more than that. We need health and safety legislation to protect us from ourselves. Whether you work at the coalface, in the cowshed, on the chain, or you are sitting in the office or in the boardroom, we are all Kiwis trying to get on with our lives. That Kiwi culture mentioned by the previous speaker, Andrew Bayly, is one of innovation. It is a hard-working culture, a No. 8 fencing wire can-do attitude that ends up being a must-do attitude. The must-do attitude comes from the top and the bottom, and that is the attitude we must protect ourselves from. I have worked on the chainsaws in the bush, I have worked with animals in open yards, and I have been on motorbikes without much care. I am lucky to be alive. I am lucky to be here. But Parliament cannot depend upon luck to protect workers in this country. We cannot depend upon human nature and Kiwi culture. We cannot depend upon common sense, because it is not that common.

The previous National Party speaker said that we need leadership and we need commitment. What he did not say is that we need good law. National voted down my legislation, and this is its excuse for why it did so: because it had this bill coming. The rhetoric that we have heard in this House today would have been heard in 1992, when the mining industry was deregulated and when the occupational safety and health regime was put in place to share responsibility for health and safety in the workplace. But do you know who paid the price? It was only the workers. Hundreds and hundreds of workers paid a price for a regime where responsibility was shared by everyone. In 1994 Bill Brazil warned me of what would happen in mining. I warned officials and I warned Ministers, but we did not make the changes that were needed to protect workers in the workplace, and 29 men lost their lives at Pike River, and hundreds and hundreds of other Kiwis have lost their lives as well. They have paid the ultimate price.

What we need here is good law to protect us from ourselves. But this law is convenient; it is compromised. It may be comfortable and it may be balanced, as Mr Williamson says, but what we need is good, effective law—law that protects workers in the workplace. There was a huge amount of work done by the royal commission and by officials in this country. I acknowledge that work. A bill was brought to this House and Labour supported that bill—it was not perfect—to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I was not a member of the committee, and I trust the wisdom of my colleagues to give me their advice. But now it is a bill that has been compromised by political posturing by some National Party MPs, then by political pressure from some of the funders of the National Party to dumb it down, and now it is political pragmatism that has delivered a bill that we believe does not provide the protection that is necessary.

This bill dishonours the promises made to the families of the Pike River miners. The first promise was that everything that could be done would be done to bring the bodies out. That was a broken promise. The second one was that the huge price paid by those men and those families would result in real change, would result in real progress, and would result in real protection for New Zealand workers. We do not think that this bill does that. That is why we cannot support it.

We say it every year; we say it on Anzac Day: lest we forget. We have had hundreds and hundreds of New Zealanders killed because of compromised legislation and because of convenient legislation. It is time we put in place effective legislation and honoured those—

Order! The member’s time has expired. I am calling Phil Twyford—5 minutes.

I want to make two points. The first is that elected health and safety representatives are not some kind of optional “nice-to-have”; they are a vital part of an effective health and safety system. To see why we need them, look no further than the Pike River mine disaster. The Pike River Coal story is a story of a company that through incompetence, and the venal pursuit of profit and its own survival, put its employees at catastrophic risk because a hopeless, woeful health and safety system allowed it to do that.

Pike River Coal was a bunch of cowboys more interested in glossing up their prospectus for investors than running a safe and efficient coalmine. As Rebecca Macfie wrote, the company posed as an exemplar of modern health and safety management, when in reality it was skating at the edge of catastrophe. The failings of the company are now well documented. There were numerous warnings about high methane coal and the difficult geology of the site, which the company routinely ignored over two decades.

💬 Hon David Parker: Represented in their prospectus.

They did indeed. The mine had no way for the miners to get out, other than the way they had gone in. The only emergency exit was a ventilation shaft with a ladder, almost unusable even for strong men, and worse than useless in disaster conditions. The main ventilation fan was underground where it could not be reached when things went wrong. Fixed methane sensors in the mine were not maintained and left not working. There were inadequate methane draining systems. Numerous reports are documented of reports of excess methane being routinely ignored.

The company had an anti-union culture, and any dissenting voices were bullied into silence and in some cases driven out of the company. If ever there were an illustration of why strong, independent worker representation on health and safety is needed to provide a check on the worst, most unscrupulous employers, the Pike River mine is it. But the behaviour and the qualities shown by the management of Pike River Coal are not unique. They are not confined solely to mining. They exist wherever bad employers are found.

The second point I want to make is that workers in small businesses deserve just as much protection at work as anybody else. Carving out those who work for businesses with fewer than 20 workers will deny more than 300,000 New Zealanders the protection at work that they deserve. Charanpreet Singh Dhaliwal was 22 years old when he died. It was his first night on the job. He was a security guard on a construction site in Henderson in my electorate, in November 2013. He was bashed to death with a lump of wood after he disturbed four thugs who had entered the construction site.

The small fly-by-night security firm that sent Charanpreet to his death had given him no training and no equipment. He got a 20-minute induction from another young worker who himself had had only one night’s experience on the job. Charanpreet was sent alone to a construction site in the middle of the night. He was left unchecked until 4 in the morning. CNE Security, his employer, was charged with health and safety breaches, but it was found not guilty and the company was dissolved shortly afterwards. Charanpreet’s killers got off scot-free; our criminal justice system does that sometimes. But the fact that the company that employed him and sent him to his death was found not guilty of breaching health and safety laws is the worst indictment of the current system.

Companies like CNE Security will very likely be exempt from the requirement to allow the election of health and safety representatives under this bill. It is a travesty. As my colleagues have pointed out, the National Party, in the face of fearmongering and lobbying by a small minority of ratbag employers, has given in to the worst instincts that we see at work in workplaces around New Zealand, and has watered down what should be a decent and effective piece of legislation. As the families of the Pike River victims have said, the watering down of this bill will cost lives. New Zealand deserves better.

I have the opportunity to take only a short call in support of this bill, but before I do, I acknowledge the family members of the victims of Pike River and other workplace tragedies in other sectors across New Zealand, especially in agriculture, which plays a big part in my electorate of Invercargill.

I support this bill for a couple of reasons. I believe that it will create a step change in health and safety in New Zealand. The first, which has been covered, is in respect of worker engagement and participation. This reformed bill will make that mandatory. We have already heard speakers from this side of the House talk about a vertical integration of health and safety, from management down to the worker. It also means that a worker will be able to stop work if they see something that could create harm. I think that that step change will create a culture in which health and safety is brought to the forefront of employees’ and employers’ minds.

The other change is this new concept of a person conducting a business or undertaking—a PCBU. It is an acknowledgment that in some workplaces there are overlapping duties. It will force operators or people conducting businesses to talk and to cooperate, and insofar as they have the ability to control or influence that matter, they will need to take account of that and put in place practical measures to protect their employees.

I want to pick up on a point that the Hon Maurice Williamson made in respect of balance. We do need to maintain balance in this legislation. This is especially the case in respect of agriculture. We all realise that the agricultural sector has a high number of deaths too, and that is unacceptable, but farming is the backbone of New Zealand, especially in the Invercargill electorate. We need to preserve a family’s right to raise their children on the farm, and what has been seen in respect of that is a change in the definition of workplace, in that work must be being carried out. So the children can still go out on the farm and run and play and enjoy a rural lifestyle, but when they are in the milking shed, they will need to be taken into the care of, and basically held responsible to, the health and safety plans that that farmer should have. I believe that that is a good balance. It preserves rural life, and that will certainly feed through into other sectors. I support this bill.