Health and Safety Reform Bill

Part 6 of the Health and Safety Reform Bill is the part that contains amendments to other Acts. As I am sure people would appreciate, health and safety legislation does interact significantly with other pieces of legislation. It does not act in isolation. Therefore, in developing a new health and safety regime, there have been included in the legislation amendments to some other pieces of legislation—in particular, the Accident Compensation Act 2001 and the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act.

I will begin this first contribution by discussing some of the changes to the Accident Compensation Act. Clause 244 inserts new sections 174A to 174F into the Accident Compensation Act. This deals with the development and establishment of workplace incentive programmes. New section 174A(1) talks about the corporation developing “… 1 or more workplace incentive programmes to provide incentives for employers and self-employed persons to reduce the incidence, severity, and impact of work-related personal injuries.”, and states that “(2) A Work Account levy determined … may be adjusted up or down for a particular employer or a particular self-employed person in accordance with the terms and conditions of a workplace incentive programme.”

In other words, the levy that you may pay to the work account as an employer, or as a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU), which is the term that we are using in this legislation, may be determined by the safety record that you have. This is to be done increasingly, under this legislation, in conjunction with WorkSafe. The changes contained in this legislation prescribe the process to develop a workplace incentive programme, which has to have regard to, as new section 174B(1)(a)(i) states: “the extent to which the programme is likely to lead to reductions in the incidence, severity, and impact of work-related personal injuries and to improvements in rehabilitation and durable return to work; and (ii) the extent to which the programme may affect the Work Account levies payable by levy payers who are not participating in the programme;”. This is the bit where there has been a little bit of concern.

My colleague Sue Moroney has raised this, and I am sure she will go into this in some depth. This was the area that she looked at most closely during the deliberations of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—the question of whether reducing levies is the best indicator that an injury and prevention programme is working appropriately. The one rather perverse example that did come up during the select committee process was that it is actually more costly for ACC to deal with the ongoing compensation and rehabilitation of a person who is injured than it is, obviously, for someone who is killed in a workplace accident.

So you could have the outcome where the worst result—someone being killed in an incident rather than injured—actually results in lower costs for ACC. So you have got to be very careful when you focus solely on cost as a measure of whether or not a programme to prevent injuries and deaths at work is actually working. We sought some assurances at the select committee. Initially, we thought we were getting those assurances, but the more advice we took and the more we examined this, we realised that, actually, it is possible that these perverse outcomes could happen, because the focus is very much on getting the cost of those levies down.

The new sections on the changes to the Accident Compensation Act also go on under clause 249, which inserts new sections 264A and 264B. These provisions deal with a Workplace Injury Prevention Action Plan. This is where ACC—the Accident Compensation Corporation—and WorkSafe must at all times have a Workplace Injury Prevention Action Plan, something that I hope ACC has certainly been working on for a long time and would expect to have been in place in the past.

New section 264A(2) states that “The Corporation and WorkSafe—(a) may amend the workplace injury prevention action plan at any time; and (b) must review the workplace injury prevention action plan at least once every 3 years.” It has to “(3)(a) outline all workplace injury prevention programmes that will be undertaken by WorkSafe and the Corporation (jointly or separately) in the period to which the plan relates;”. The corporation and WorkSafe have to lay out their priorities for injury prevention, but, again, one of the priorities that is restated is this priority of getting the levies down. Again, we warn that it is important that we take care not to confuse reducing levies with effective measures to prevent injury and death at work.

Subpart 2 of Part 6 makes amendments to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. There are a range of amendments to that Act dealing with matters that have to do with potential injury caused by various chemicals and substances, as well as the impact of ongoing occupational disease caused by various substances that people may find that they come into contact with in their working life. It is actually difficult but important that our health and safety legislation addresses the issue of occupational disease. It may not be immediately obvious that an action—the use of a particular chemical, or the use of personal protective equipment or the lack of use of it—is causing danger to the worker, because you may not immediately receive an injury like a burn or inhale a substance that has an immediate effect. It may be that ongoing exposure to that particular substance over time has a long-term effect.

Obviously, this is something that we are far more mindful of today than we have been in the past, but often we can discover this a long way down the track. You do not realise at the time that it is causing damage, but further down the track it turns out that it has been causing damage. So it is important that we are mindful of these matters, and the bill goes some way to attempting to address the ways in which that can be done. For instance, clause 271 replaces section 74 of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act with—and this is with regard to the establishment of hazard classification system—provision whereby the Environmental Protection Authority has the ability to prescribe “… for each intrinsic hazardous substance property, a number of degrees or types of hazard, which may be done either by reference to an international system or by incorporation of material under section 141A:”—a system of classifying different substances and therefore indicating the types of precautions that need to be taken in the use of those substances. You would like a little bit more entertainment, Mr Chairperson? Do not worry; we will get to the preliminary clauses soon. This is—

💬 Sue Moroney: Well, not too soon.

No, not too soon. There are some very technical aspects to this legislation. I can see by the clock in front of you, Mr Chairperson, that my time for this particular call is coming to an end. I am sure I will get an opportunity to speak again. We will come back to some of the other matters in this part shortly.

I would like to speak specifically about new section 264A, “Workplace injury prevention action plan” in clause 249, in reference to a recommendation that is made at the beginning of the report in relation to domestic violence. Although, sadly, we have been expressing disappointment all the way through this debate, on this point I would like to express some hope and gratitude for the clarification and the fact that it is set down in writing in this legislation that domestic violence is a workplace hazard in this country. I expect that the Workplace Injury Prevention Action Plan, as referenced in new section 264A, will take that into account and that, hopefully, we will see action by ACC and support through ACC-funded activities for a roll-out across the country of support for businesses to develop appropriate policies to enable workplaces to put systems in place to ensure that domestic violence is not acting as a hazard in the workplace.

We know that a safety survey of New Zealand women that was done in 1996 found that 17 percent of studied participants had experienced stalking by their ex-partner outside their workplace. We know that women are most likely to be killed 6 months after leaving a relationship. The Family Violence Death Review Committee does not have the power to go into a workplace to investigate after a death. But it has found out informally, from people it has spoken with, that the only people who knew were the women’s workmates—and we have had a survey showing that 17 percent of women were stalked by ex-partners outside their workplace. So that is a very large problem, and it is impacting on productivity in this country, as well as safety.

There was research done by Suzanne Snively, commissioned by the New Zealand Public Service Association, that found that, on a very conservative estimate, $368 million was being lost through productivity losses in our workplaces every year as a result of domestic violence—and that is the most conservative estimation of that. That would add up to around $3.7 billion being lost from our economy through loss of productivity and staff turnover because of domestic violence over a 10-year period.

If policies were put in place, we would have the potential to save lives, increase productivity, and improve the bottom line for our businesses. To me, that is ultimately what we want our health and safety legislation to be about. It is about protecting everyone in the workplace. It is also about raising that bottom level of expectation for employers so that we support our employers to be doing the best by everyone in the workplace, so that employees can be as happy and productive as possible.

We know that we are losing a lot from our economy through domestic violence, and we are losing lives as well, and we have an opportunity for intervention that would also save us money in terms of the increased welfare benefits. Overseas evidence has shown that 70 percent of women on sole parent benefits are likely to be leaving violent relationships. This is an absolute possibility for a win-win-win intervention, where we can help the Government’s lines, we can save lives, and we can improve business productivity. So I am advocating very strongly for the ACC Workplace Injury Prevention Action Plan to be negotiated with WorkSafe to include a plan for training for businesses around the country.

I have had the discussion with Business New Zealand about this and it has said that businesses are really keen to intervene and support staff around domestic violence. It recognises domestic violence as a workplace hazard. Unfortunately, it is not supporting my bill in relation to putting in those workplace protections. It saw that as being a bit nanny State, but it was not averse to the Government providing, through ACC, support for businesses to help them to intervene and do what is right. Many employers overestimate the risk. They underestimate the prevalence of violence and the impact on their staff, but if somebody is experiencing domestic violence, they overestimate what the risk of that may be in the workplace. Some people—mostly women, but possibly men as well—are losing their jobs because of that lack of knowledge and the lack of clear policies and supports for that.

I know that the Ministry of Social Development has developed a range of resources, including mock-ups of policies and posters to go in workplaces, so a lot of work has been done. But it is not happening; it is not being rolled out through the country. Most employers would not have a clue that, actually, under existing legislation, domestic violence is a hazard. I do not know whether anyone in this Committee has experienced a workplace where, when you did your hazard identification, domestic violence was mentioned within that. I have never experienced it, even though I have been in a workplace where colleagues have been experiencing domestic violence, and I have certainly seen how much of my time—as well as the time of other colleagues and the time of the colleague who was experiencing the violence—was taken up in dealing with it.

We did put accommodations in place, but that was based on only our knowledge, and that was luck. In many other places people have not had the experiences that we had to be able to intervene and provide those supports. So it is absolutely vital and of huge benefit for us to be able to get those plans in place and to roll out that training, because businesses have pretty much said that they are not going to do it themselves and that information is not getting out there. So that clearly indicates to me the need for a Government plan. It is here in the legislation, but if nobody knows about it, then what good is it? Very little, I would suggest. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to rise and speak to Part 6 now of the Health and Safety Reform Bill. This is the part of the legislation that deals with the very many amendments that need to be made to other Acts. I guess we can probably say at the outset, then, of Part 6 that this does show the widespread effect of the legislation that the Government is enacting, because there are so many amendments to so many other Acts. The parts that I really want to focus on are the amendments that have been made to the Accident Compensation Act 2001. As Labour’s ACC spokesperson, it was obviously an area that I was paying particular attention to when the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee was dealing with these issues.

It is interesting to think about health and safety in the workplace, our very precious ACC system that we have—which is unique in the world, actually—and how ACC and workplace health and safety interact and intersect with each other. Because Part 6 makes so many amendments to the Accident Compensation Act, it is clear to see how closely related they are, and I guess it causes us to question whether, in fact, there ought to be an even closer assimilation between the work of ACC and the work of WorkSafe. If you think about it, when levies are collected by ACC from employers and employees and through our motor vehicle levies for the purpose of ACC dealing with the outcomes of accidents and injuries, ACC is also charged with using some proportion of that levy to deal with workplace prevention strategies because, of course, many of the accidents and injuries that it is funding treatment and compensation for happen in the workplace—not all of them, but many of them do. So it is right and it is proper that ACC should be funding workplace prevention strategies that not only include things like road safety but also include the subject of this bill: health and safety in the workplace.

However, there are some concerning parts of it. As we have just debated in Part 5, there is a little bit of smoke and mirrors going on with this Government. It is reducing ACC levies on one hand, but now introducing a funding levy to fund the operations of WorkSafe. We have just agreed to that and passed that in Part 5. There is a bit of a sleight of hand going on there. I wondered whether, in fact, the very many amendments that are made in Part 6 indicate that the Government considered—and I would be interested in hearing the Minister’s views on this—actually keeping ACC levies where they were, albeit that they have been getting overcharged for a number of years now under this Government, and actually ensuring that ACC used its levies to fund the activities of WorkSafe as a workplace injury prevention measure. That is one way the Government could have gone about doing that, I believe, without spending pages and pages here in Part 6 describing how ACC and WorkSafe are kind of going to work together but are kind of going to work separately.

I think that is always going to be our dilemma about ACC and its function and WorkSafe and its function. How do we make sure of the function of both of those entities, which actually are charged with pretty similar functions? Are they are going to duplicate and replicate and fall over the top of each other, or are they going to make sure that everything is covered and there are no gaps between their functions? That is why there are so many amendments to the Accident Compensation Act.

I want to focus on one amendment in particular for the purposes of this call. I am hoping that I will get the opportunity to peruse other parts in another call on Part 6 later on, but for the purposes of what I am discussing now I draw the Committee’s attention to clause 244 in Part 6. This actually amends section 174 of the Accident Compensation Act, and it attempts to make sure that when WorkSafe and the Accident Compensation Corporation are establishing workplace incentive programmes they are working for the same aims. So it amends the Accident Compensation Act to say that when the corporation is establishing workplace incentive programmes, among other things it has to have regard to the following matters set out in new section 174B(1)(a)(i), inserted by clause 244, which I am going to draw the Committee’s attention to. [Interruption] Well, yes, I know it is confusing. Just to be clear, I am now referring to the section in the Accident Compensation Act that needs amending.

New section 174B(1)(a)(i) says that the corporation has to have regard to the following matters: “the extent to which the programme is likely to lead to reductions in the incidence, severity, and impact of work-related personal injuries and to improvements in rehabilitation and durable return to work;”. So why would I be concerned about that? It sounds like a really laudable aim, and it is. But sometimes we get perverse incentives from that type of focus on just reducing the incidence and severity of the work-related personal injuries. What we want to do is make sure that workplace incentive programmes do not incentivise employers, or persons conducting a business or undertaking, as I think they are now called in this legislation, to not report accidents and injuries.

I have certainly come across, in my time, workplaces where people are encouraged, if they hurt themselves at work, to maybe not report it as being a workplace accident or injury because it would then affect the ACC levy that the employer will pay in the future. They are encouraged to report it as something that happened off duty, maybe on the sports field or what have you. Not only is that fraudulent—and I am going to put it right out there that that is a fraudulent practice, so that no one thinks this is something that I am talking about in Parliament and that therefore makes it acceptable—but it also means that we have lost an opportunity to find out about what went wrong in the workplace, because a report is not put forward that actually tells us about what happened with that accident or that injury. Therefore, the opportunity to learn from that has been lost. This part of the bill, this change to the Accident Compensation Act that puts this focus on the workplace incentive programme being designed to reduce the number of injuries and accidents and therefore reduce the levy that is payable, does provide an incentive to do that.

As a former health and safety practitioner, I would say that those sorts of practices actually mean that we have got a more dangerous workplace, because they can lead to a perverse incentive for people to not report their injuries. Therefore, the opportunity to learn is lost, and we know that the most serious work injuries that happen, happen when a number of things go wrong. It is not just one thing that goes wrong; it is the perfect storm from a number of things that line up together and cause a big bad ugly thing. The opportunity to learn from an injury that happened to someone else and fix that problem stops that from lining up with a range of other things to cause the really big ugly serious issue. So I think that new section 174B and the way that we are changing the Accident Compensation Act may, in fact, be causing us an even greater problem in this regard.

I want to go on briefly to look at clause 249 of Part 6 of this bill, which inserts new section 264B into the Accident Compensation Act. Again, I just relay my concerns and ask, because we have got the responsible Minister now in the chair, for his confirmation that WorkSafe will not be subjected to the same thing that we are doing here with ACC, because new section 246B(2)(a)(i) states that before an injury prevention measure is agreed to, ACC and WorkSafe have to say how the measures “are likely to result in a cost-effective reduction in actual or projected levy rates in the Work Account;”. That, Minister, could actually have the effect of a very good injury prevention measure.

In going through the Health and Safety Reform Bill here, we have got to the point where there is a clear philosophical difference between the National Government and what would be a Labour Government. It comes to a head when we are talking about incentives. At the top of the scale National has always believed that if you are earning a million dollars, then you are incentivised to behave better by being offered a bonus of half a million dollars. “That’s only fair.”, it says. But if you are a worker, then you are incentivised by hearing: “Well, you won’t lose your job, or you won’t be injured, and be satisfied with your incentive.”, and that is effectively what we are doing here.

I am going through the amendments to the Accident Compensation Act under clause 244 in Part 6. New section 174A in clause 244 says: “The Corporation may develop and establish … workplace incentive programmes …”, which I guess will ultimately mean a possible reduction in the levies for employers and self-employed persons for the work account. So I ask: where is the incentive for the earners account?

If we are to have workplace health and safety across the board, if we are to change the culture, and if we are to incentivise every New Zealander, regardless of where they work or participate in the economy, then everyone should be incentivised in the same way. So when the Minister, as in new section 174C, approves a certain workplace incentive programme, does the Minister consider the fairness of the incentives and where they will fall? What is in it for the worker, and the earners account, to behave better by way of a fiscal initiative, when we have got clear provisions and quite detailed incentives here and specifications around what can happen for the employers and self-employed persons?

I am not saying that we should not have incentives, and I am not denying the reality that fiscal incentives—a lower cost, for example—do indeed drive better behaviour. That is the economic theory, anyway. Always the economic theory run by this Tory Government is that if you offer money, things will be better; take money away, and things will be worse. But for the poor old worker the incentive is: “Well, if you don’t work harder, we’ll take all your money away.”

If we are passing this legislation, it is really important, as I have said in almost every speech, that every New Zealander, regardless of their place in the system—whether they be a PCBU or a “b-o-s-s”, or whether they be a worker, who is someone who works for the PCBU or the “b-o-s-s”, they both need the same incentives if we are to change the culture. So where is the incentive for the earners account? Where is the incentive for the workers, so that they get more money if there is a better safety regime in their business or in their industry? Nowhere.

I call on the Minister to offer an answer to that question, because the specifications are not there. It is a reasonable explanation to say: “Well, the worker will be safe. They won’t be killed. Isn’t that incentive enough?”. Well, I tend to try to take a fairer, more equitable, more egalitarian approach to it and I say that I would like to have both the person conducting a business or undertaking—the PCBU, or the “b-o-s-s”—and the worker incentivised by the same methods, so that when the Minister approves the incentive programmes, the benefits accrue to everyone in that business or that sector or that industry. So, where are they? I leave that question with the Minister.

I guess that if we go back to another point, in new section 174B, “Process to develop workplace incentive programme”, there are a number of specifications here. It says “the extent to which the programme is likely to lead to reductions in the incidence, severity, and impact of work-related personal injuries”, which is very sensible, and “the extent to which the programme may affect the Work Account levies”, and that is the fiscal incentive. Then it says “the expected administration costs of the programme;”—fair enough. Here is the other one. It is new section 174B(a)(iv), which says “the impact of the programme on the administration of the accident compensation scheme as a whole and on claims management processes;”.

The question I have here is about ACC, and I know that the most recent statements by the Government have been that it will not sell or dismantle ACC, but I do not trust it. I think it has sold anything it could get its hands on, and even the things it could not. So my question—long term—is what could be the possible implications of this if the Government were to sell ACC? Because when you go down to new section 174C—no, no, Mr Chair. Please let me explain—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): We are not debating asset sales or potential.

The Minister’s approval of certain workplace incentive programmes depends upon a number of things. In new section 174C(2), it says “… the Minister may consider any relevant factors, including—(a) the public interest;”. I think we understand what that is: a safer New Zealand. New section 174C(2)(b) adds “how the proposed workplace incentive programme aligns with the Government’s broader objectives;”. Well, I do not agree with the Government’s broader objectives. I do not know what you think, Mr Chairman. You are probably not allowed—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Don’t bring me into it.

—to talk too much along those lines. I think people on this side of the Chamber—and I am keeping very strictly to the bill—do not agree with the Government’s broader objectives. So when the Minister has to consider that, when he or she approves an incentive programme, I cannot trust that it is being done for the right reasons.

Can I go on to new section 174C(2)(c). It says that one of the factors that the Minister must consider is “the impact of the proposed workplace incentive programme on levy payers generally or on particular groups of levy payers;”, which brings me right back around to the argument about the workers and the employers. If you were, as I would say to you, to have more consideration for the employer than the employee—and I know this Government has been very quick to beat up on the unions, as though they are running a campaign against the Government. Well, they are not. They are just simply running a campaign to defend the rights of their workers. The fact that the Government is at war with the unions is beside the point. The unions are just trying to defend the rights of workers and, indeed, in this case, their safety. So when the Minister considers relevant factors, if he or she was to consider the rights of the employers over the employees, you know, I do not think that would be right. I do not think we have got the balance right.

So if we come back to the points I am raising here, I have a couple of questions for the Minister. Can the Minister give an absolute assurance that the incentive programmes will deliver benefits to all in the same fiscal way—that is, to the employer and the employee; to the PCBU or the “b-o-s-s”, and to their worker—and then, in considering the programmes, will the Minister give us an assurance that the programmes will deliver equal benefits to both the PCBUs and to the employees?

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: This is not your best work, Damien.

Well, the Minister may laugh, but I have to say that I have been in this House long enough to dig a little deeper and to actually understand what National Governments do. If you would like me to read out some of the quotations from the 1992 passage—I was not quite here in 1992—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Keep it relevant.

—but the point is that we have an obligation to look ahead and take a longer-term projection of what every word in this legislation might mean for people, because the cold, hard reality is that we have got health and safety wrong. We kill too many people in this country. We injure too many.

Although the Government committed post - Pike River to improvements, we say that they have been watered down, and this provision here talks of the incentives being driven by the fiscal incentives of the employers—we know that. We know that this is what it is aiming for, but, actually, the underlying objective of the legislation should be effective—not balanced, but effective—health and safety programmes. That is all I ask of the Minister, and I am sure that he will be happy to get up and take a call and answer those things and try to give us a reassurance that the benefits to the PCBUs and the benefits—

I too have been looking through Part 6 of this bill in relation to the amendments to the Accident Compensation Act 2001. First of all, I want to echo the concerns of the three colleagues who have spoken before me on the concerns particularly around the reduction in levies and the impact of ACC levies on the one hand and the ability to charge fees for participation in workplace incentive programmes on the other, and whether or not this is a “robbing Peter to pay Paul” approach. So I want to address that. Also, just to follow on from what my colleague Damien O’Connor has said, I want to address section 174C in clause 244, particularly subsection (2) around the powers of the Minister to determine what should and should not be a workplace incentive programme and to try to unpick that a little bit or to ask questions and hope that the Minister can actually provide some explanations or even examples of how those powers actually might work.

Turning to the commentary in this bill around workplace incentive programmes, there was the recommendation around amending clause 244, which inserts that very big section 174A into the Accident Compensation Act. The new section allows the ACC to charge fees for participation in workplace incentive programmes. But it said that incentive programmes would be optional for businesses. In this, of course, it uses the word “flexibility”, which always raises a bit of a red flag: “Increasing the flexibility of funding would allow more flexible programme design.” Then, going to the Minister’s powers on that, presumably the Minister would be able to determine what was and was not an appropriate programme according to the broader objectives of the Government, whatever that means.

Around the injury prevention side of things, there is another concerning sentence there, which I would not mind the Minister, if he does get up and talk to any of the questions raised on Part 6, addressing the commentary where it says that “We were assured that WorkSafe’s injury prevention programmes can continue to be funded by WorkSafe and that such funding would not be dependent on a need to achieve a reduction to ACC levies as a criteria.” Well, I think that that is sort of a really key part of Part 6 of this bill—what lies behind that assurance and what are the Minister’s views on that? I think that, just going to the “robbing Peter to pay Paul” side of things, if WorkSafe does not have that guarantee of funding, are there any fish-hooks attached to that so that funding then becomes dependent on a need to achieve a reduction in ACC levies? So it is sort of taking away with one hand in order to give with another. I think that is a really critical part of Part 6 of the bill and I hope that the Minister will actually address it.

Going to the Minister’s powers, in section 174C(2), inserted by clause 244, which says: “the Minister may consider any relevant factors,”. Just looking at this, and not having anything much to do with this bill—I was not on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, etc.—they look like very wide powers to be given to the Minister. I am a bit concerned about particularly paragraph (b), which is: “how the proposed workplace incentive programme aligns with the Government’s broader objectives;”. What does that mean? I think it is a valid question to ask the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: what does that actually mean? And how does that fit, for instance, with agriculture, to give an example, as to where the workplace incentive programmes may be developed around the reduction of accidents in agriculture, particularly in the sheep, beef, and dairying parts of the industry?

Just to put that into a little bit of context of relevance to this particular Minister, I attended a Rural Business Network meeting last night in my electorate at which there was, obviously, quite a lot of the farming community there. The topic was around compliance and compliance issues. Of course, there were lots of issues raised around water and waterways, etc., but, of course, the top-of-mind issue for everyone in that room last night was health and safety and the implications for their particular industry, their sector, and the confusion that was being expressed around how they were going to be supported to reduce injuries, accidents, and deaths in their industry.

Just going to this clause around establishing workplace incentive programmes, it appears that the Government’s broad objectives—because it does not see this part of farming as high risk; therefore, will there be incentives in this industry, under this legislation, to actually reduce risk? There were 20 deaths in the last 3 years in Otago and Southland; 13 of them were from agriculture. That is pretty significant. Many of them were from quad bike accidents, but also from other agricultural issues. So for those, mainly, men—not all were men—in that room last night, what is the Government’s response to this sector around the workplace incentive programmes, around how they are going to be funded, the guarantees, and around just whether or not they do fit in with the Government’s broader objectives? Is this a priority; if not, why not, and how will this actually play out? I think that those are pretty important questions for the Minister to answer tonight.

I certainly think that the issue raised around the funding—whether or not WorkSafe injury prevention programmes can continue to be funded by WorkSafe, and that that funding will not be dependent on a need to achieve a reduction in ACC levies as a criterion—is really critical. I hope that the Minister will get to his feet tonight and actually answer those questions.

It is a pleasure to speak to Part 6 of the Health and Safety Reform Bill. Like a number of my colleagues, I am going to ask a few questions around clause 244, and that is the insertion of sections 174A to 174F. A number of my colleagues have spoken to sections 174A, 174B, 174C, and 174E. But I would like to ask the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety a couple of questions around sections 174D and 174F, and that is that I think, in principle, the setting up of an incentive programme could be a good thing. A number of my colleagues have asked questions about who it will financially benefit the most. They are set up to try to make workplaces safer places, and I do note that under section 174D(3) there is the ability for an audit of the incentive schemes and whether or not they have been successful.

I do also note that in section 174F there is an onus on ACC within its annual report to report on the effectiveness of any incentive schemes. I pose a hypothetical question to the Minister, and that is: if an incentive programme has been set up, and an employer or a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) is essentially getting a discount on its levy because it has an incentive programme, if after 2 or 3 years of auditing and of any results published in annual reports the safety or the record on workplaces is not any better or is, in fact, worse, what kind of redress would there be to effectively say, well, OK, you have not performed as well as you should have under this incentive programme, and therefore can we have the money back?

If there is a financial incentive there for a company and in the initial stages it does put something in place but it is not effective, the taxpayers are essentially giving that company a discount on its ACC levies payable. Its duty should be to pay the appropriate ACC levy. But nothing has changed; in fact, things get worse. What possibility do we have of getting back that money that the company should have and could have paid, if it was not part of an incentive programme? Just looking at, as a first cast, sections 174D(3) and 174F, they certainly set out the ability to audit and for an annual report, but I do not see anywhere here—maybe the Minister could clarify it for me—any redress on behalf of ACC via the taxpayer to get that money back.

As I said at the beginning of my contribution, an incentive programme should be and could be a good thing, and it obviously is going to be of financial benefit if the company does put something in place and it does improve its workplace record. But what if it does not? The onus of this bill is to make workplaces safer, so that is what that does. If we do not achieve that and this company has got a discount off its ACC levies, well, can we go back to that company or that PCBU and say “Well, give the money back.”? It could be a substantial amount of money that has been discounted over the period of time, which was meant to be, under the incentive programme, to make the workplace better. If they do not do that, then I guess the question has to be asked: what kind of redress is there for the taxpayer, for the State, to say “You haven’t held your part of the deal. This workplace isn’t any safer under the incentive programme that you signed up to. We gave you a discount.”? But under new sections 174A to 174F in clause 244, I do not see anything that shows any type of redress for the taxpayer, for the Accident Compensation Corporation, to get that money back.

So we are all for encouraging in this bill, but I think we should have a framework within this bill that shows that if you sign up to this thing, and you cannot pull your weight and your workplace is not any safer—in fact, in some cases, your workplace may be even more dangerous through more incidents—then I think the question needs to be asked, because there does not seem to be anything within this legislation that suggests that there is any redress under these incentive programmes. So although there is a carrot, I do not see any stick in this piece of legislation. If you are going to give someone a carrot, then there needs to be a stick. I would put that to the Minister—whether or not there is a stick within Part 6 of this piece of legislation.

I would like to put it in the context of someone local—Mark Samoa, whom I have mentioned many times and used as a frame for a lot of my speeches in this debate. Mr Samoa was a worker at the ports here in Wellington. He was killed on the waterfront—he was crushed between some bales of pulp. When the High Court brought down its decision, it ruled that there were no processes in place, no safeguards in place, that were there to keep Mr Samoa safe in his workplace. I do not want to go into too much more detail of his particular case, but if his workplace was part of an incentive programme—and I add that it changed things post his death and post the High Court ruling on his death—and if it had not made changes, and maybe it will, and if it did not make it effectively any safer for the colleagues of Mr Samoa since he has passed away, and if it was looking for an incentive, i.e., a discount on its ACC levies, then why should we let it get away with it if it is not meeting its obligations?

I guess that goes to what this whole piece of legislation is about: obligations of health and safety under this new piece of legislation. I do not know, but I am assuming that Mr Samoa’s workplace did have more than 20 people, but if it did not—and here is the stinger for this side of the Committee. A lot of these things we are debating in Part 6—some of which are worthy of us supporting. But because of something in Part 3, I think it is, of the bill, we cannot support this legislation.

So we do question the Government’s motives around this—a lot of good in this piece of legislation we cannot support—and why it changed its mind at the last minute. We know it did. We know that in terms of the agricultural industry, which does have a long track record of being very unsafe, it will not be captured under there, but there are a multitude of other industries that will. I think that it is, from my perspective anyway, far too serious an issue to make light of here, because there are people like Mark Samoa’s family who wanted this piece of legislation to be much better than it actually is.

So, from my perspective, in terms of Part 6, I ask the Minister: where is the stick? There is plenty of carrot. We want to see whether there is going to be an audit and a reporting duty on ACC, because the Government is giving some of these PCBUs a discount. There should be an onus on them, if they do not meet their obligations to keep their workers safe, to make sure that we can get that money back. Because if they are going to get a discount and they are not pulling their weight, we do not think that they should keep that discount. The taxpayer should get that money back.

I move, That the question be now put.

I really do thank you for giving me this call, Mr Chair, because in my first call on this part, Part 6, I was about to put a question to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety that I really would like an answer to. I raised a similar question around a different clause that had the same effect, in Part 5, but the responsible Minister was not in the chair at the time, and I really do feel that if he had been, he would have given us an answer. There was a serious discussion that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee had in quite a lot of detail around the injury prevention programmes that are funded or jointly undertaken by ACC and WorkSafe. I am referring now to clause 249 of Part 6, which amends the Accident Compensation Act. I was kind of in mid-flight asking the Minister this question when my last call finished, so I really appreciate the opportunity to put this question directly to the Minister.

Where the select committee came to was that we were so concerned to make our views known about this that we included it in the commentary. We got some advice from the officials about what it would mean, and the reason for that is that I had raised a concern that where currently ACC injury prevention programmes do have a requirement on them to reduce the overall impact of ACC levies on the work account—and that, some would say, is right and proper for ACC; I have got a question mark in my mind about that—what this bill does is that it actually applies that same thinking to WorkSafe injury prevention programmes. Why should I be worried about that? Well, actually, sometimes a good workplace injury prevention programme will actually increase the impact of ACC levies on the work account.

How does it do this? Well, it does this in two instances, in the main. The first is the perverse and strange impact on the ACC work account levy—the fact that some injuries are so expensive that if we are paying to support the person with the injury for the rest of their life, it can be more expensive than if the injury that they incurred had killed them at their workplace. As harsh as it is to discuss that in the debating chamber, it is just a reality that sometimes if someone dies in the workplace, which is what we are trying to prevent, that is less expensive for the work account of ACC than if they were seriously injured. If they are injured when they are a young person, it could have a lifetime effect on the work account of the ACC levies that is much larger than the payment that would be made, in fact, to their family if they had died. We do not want that. We do not want that perverse incentive.

We want to make sure that these workplace incentive programmes are saving people from dying, that they are bringing down that dreadful workplace fatality record that we have here in New Zealand, and that we are seeing that the deaths in agriculture, which we know have totalled 104 over the last 5 years, are reduced. So we do not want a workplace injury prevention programme that somehow does not pass muster because it cannot necessarily prove that it is going to actually lead to a reduction in the impact of the levy rates on the work account. That is example one.

Example two is with regard to occupational disease. These are things that people may not even know about at the time. A good workplace injury prevention measure might actually increase the education, and should actually increase people’s knowledge and education about occupational disease and the impacts on that, and it might lead to, therefore, more claims being made against the ACC levy work account. People understand that the symptoms that they are displaying some years down the track from the exposure—it might have been a chemical exposure. It might have been an exposure to asbestos. There are many kinds of hidden things in our workplaces that can cause people occupational disease, and that is often a long way down the track.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak once again on the Health and Safety Reform Bill. I have gone through to what I suppose is a very, very important part of this bill, and it relates to changes to the hazardous substances and new organisms legislation. Again, not having the full background of it, I am skipping through this, trying to bring myself up to speed. Clause 140—no, it is not clause 140; it is clause 289, replacing section 140, as set out in Supplementary Order Paper 108, and it is in regard to regulations. There will be some, probably in the Green Party, who might want to prick their ears up on this. Section 140(1) states: “Subject to section 141, the Governor-General may, from time to time, by Order in Council, make regulations for 1 or more of the following purposes: (a) prescribing organisms as genetically modified organisms for the purposes of this Act: (b) prescribing organisms as organisms that are not genetically modified organisms for the purpose of this Act:”. The point is that in dealing with health and safety, this legislation deals with the Environmental Protection Authority and the hazardous substances and new organisms legislation—some of which I am quite familiar with.

As a boysenberry grower, I deal with quite a few chemicals that, I have to say, I do not like touching. I use gloves and all the methods advised to make sure that I do not come into contact with them, and nor would anyone who would be working with me or for me. That is a high-risk situation, because although there are warnings on the packages—which you cannot see, I have to say, unless you have got a microscope—for the most part, most of them are known as eco-toxic and are things that you want to avoid all contact with. Whether or not we like it, they are part of the horticultural system, and if used correctly they are fine. But there is a risk in working with them. This piece of the legislation deals with that by trying to minimise the potential harm from that contact. But in clause 289, which amends section 140, the replaced regulations—these are the regulations that refer directly to GMOs. I have to say that there is a move afoot across the country, across the economy, down that pathway, and the new National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forestry includes reference to GM trees—presuming they are trees, anyway—and certainly imposes restrictions on local councils, many of which are up in arms about it. The point is that there is a move to push down that pathway. In the absence of any comprehensive discussion, I think it is irresponsible, absolutely.

What we have got here is the passage of legislation, under health and safety—and we know the connection with Pike River—but very quietly we have got reference here to another significant area of importance for our economy, and that is GMOs. The fact that our economy relies on a biological production system means that if we do move into this area, then there are significant implications for companies, for sectors, and for the country in terms of our branding. I want to ask the Minister in the chair, Simon Bridges, whether he can give an assurance that we are not moving one step further down the path to easing access for GMOs. Alongside that open exposure, through the National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forestry, there is a lot of subversive and not so subversive activity from the likes of Federated Farmers and others that are saying that, actually, genetic engineering is quite a complex science, which I agree with and can partly understand. Actually, GM is not GM in many cases. The point is that there are those who think that is going to be the salvation of the primary production sector and they are pushing more down that path, without any consideration for the branding issues—

💬 Hon Member: Replace Steffan.

That person over there should know, as a farmer. He should know better. We do not want to end up in a cul-de-sac where our high-quality, safe, high-value production systems are undermined by what may be a perception of us changing to a new production system. The point is that the regulations as amended, as referred to, and as prescribed here in this legislation may be—I do not know—opening the door to GM and GMOs.

I move, That the question be now put.