Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. This is the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. It’s in the name of the member my colleague Harete Hipango. Again, I want to acknowledge her, as she’s only been here for five minutes and she’s got a bill drawn out. For many in the House, they’ve been here for quite a while longer and they have not had that opportunity and that privilege as well.

The particular essence of this bill—and I think we were talking about this last time—was in regard to the impacts on the voluntary sector. I think it was Kieran McAnulty who was making some comments across the House. I then was giving him information about the sector. I think I might just do it again, just to refresh his memory about, I suppose, the importance of the sector as well. I call it the backbone of our civil society.

We have 114,132 not-for-profit organisations and 27,900 registered charitable trusts. When they have calculated the amount of contribution made in monetary terms, it equates, both in labour and expertise in kind, to around about $9.4 billion. That’s about 4.4 percent of the GDP. Now, I know that’s a lot of figures and a lot of numbers; what it really is trying to say is that our voluntary sector is such an important part of our society and of all our communities. It’s anything from our fire service, where, of over 30,000 fire persons, 80 percent are volunteers. You can go through to over 20,000 in our St John paramedics—over 65 percent are volunteers. So they play a significant role, right down to our NGOs, our community organisations that are serving our communities.

So the purpose and the reason for this bill is to ensure that we don’t punish them. Now, the Health and Safety at Work Act—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Punish—so health and safety practice is a punishment, is it?

Let’s think about this—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Punishment? Really?

You might just want to listen a bit instead of sort of chipping across. OK?

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: I am listening to you. It horrifies me.

You shouldn’t be horrified, because this does not remove their duty of care. If you think about it, in 2013, when the independent task force was actually put in place—and let’s remember the history; this goes back to Pike River. The independent task force clearly said that our health and safety work conditions, right the way through from paid organisations to voluntary, needed to ensure that there was health and safety well-being—a duty of care that should have been considered along the way, for a long time. So, in the first time in 20 years, we had the most significant change in our health and safety. And I have to say, that was under a National-led Government.

However, in saying that, like all things, sometimes all the big changes we make can also have small, unintended consequences. One of those, in particular, is around NGOs, voluntary organisations, that have people who want to contribute some expertise. In particular, for instance, when we think about the accounts and the compliance that often has to take place, many NGOs will contract for a short period of time, in hours, the expertise of someone, like an accountant, who has the ability to be able to offer their skill sets. [Bell rung]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): It’s 30 seconds now.

Four minutes—my time has gone so quickly. What I wanted to say very clearly is that we don’t want to impose upon them the role of being a PCBU—that’s a person conducting a business or undertaking—and all the regulations that sit inside that. So what the bill is simply saying is that we should take consideration—it’s a small amendment—that will allow for those organisations to employ a person or persons conducting up to and no more than 100 hours of service in kind, which can add so much experience and wealth and ability to help those NGOs. That’s what we’re asking for from this bill.

What we’d like to ask is that this bill would actually go into select committee. The fine details can be worked through. It’s not a bill that we think would create the great concern that maybe those in opposition to it have talked about. It’s a small amendment that will help NGOs to be efficient, to be effective, in the role of serving their communities. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Well, the House heard it directly from Alfred Ngaro. I’ll make as direct a quote as I can: we should not punish volunteer organisations by making them adhere to the Health and Safety at Work Act. He sees having good health and safety practices in the workplace as a punishment—a punishment. Well, Mr Ngaro, go and tell that to the families of the Pike River 29. Go and tell that to any family member of the tens of people who are killed in workplaces in New Zealand every year, or the thousands of people who are injured in workplaces every year in this country.

New Zealand has a woeful record on health and safety, and, thankfully, because we were woken up out of our complacency by the tragedy at Pike River, we are starting to improve things. But we are still a long way behind the other nations that we compare ourselves with. We’re a long way behind Australia, we’re a long way behind the UK, and we’re a long way behind Europe—and why are we a long way behind those countries? Because we kill too many people in our workplaces every year and we maim too many people in our workplaces every year. And just when we were starting to get businesses to understand that good health and safety practice is just a normal part of doing a business—just when we had the changes that were brought in by a Government led by the National Party, who, when they were in Government and were receiving official advice and weren’t just acting on their visceral, most base instincts, did the right thing—now we have this piece of legislation come along and undermine the whole concept of health and safety at work.

💬 Hon Alfred Ngaro: You voted against the Act, Iain.

Yes, we voted against the Act because it was too weak—because it was too weak. It was a good piece of legislation, but it did not go far enough, and I can assure you, Mr Ngaro, as Minister, I will be fixing up the mistakes made by that previous Government.

But here’s what Harete Hipango said about the Health and Safety at Work Act for volunteer associations, in her first reading speech. She said it creates too much compliance, it creates too much burden—it creates too much administration for organisations. That is exactly the message that we need to move—

💬 Hon Alfred Ngaro: That’s right. Burden, eh? Is that what you want to do?

“That’s right.” Burden—burden. Alfred Ngaro sees health and safety as a burden. That is the problem with the National Party. It is not a burden; it is a normal part of doing business. It is an absolutely normal part of doing business.

Actually, having good health and safety practices makes businesses more productive, it makes them more profitable, but people fear what health and safety regulation will do to their business because of the nonsense that we hear from people like Alfred Ngaro, and, I’m afraid, the sponsor of this bill, who I believe to be a good person with a good heart, but is completely misguided by bringing this piece of legislation to the House.

Health and safety is not onerous. It is not a burden. It is not compliance. It is not administration. It is doing good business.

And I do not understand why being a volunteer worker means you have fewer rights in the workplace than being a paid worker. Why should you not—why, because you’re a volunteer, should your employer not have a duty to engage with you as a volunteer worker on health and safety? Why? Why? I have not heard an explanation why a volunteer worker should not be engaged on health and safety in their workplace.

I do not understand, and I have not heard one credible reason, why a volunteer worker should not work in a workplace where there is a duty to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, that the workplace is without health and safety risks. Why should someone, just because their workers are volunteers, not have a duty to ensure that their workplace is without health and safety risks—and, just to make sure it’s not too burdensome, that it’s not too onerous, those important words: “as far as reasonably practicable”.

This bill is about nothing more than fearmongering about health and safety, and it undermines the good work that this Parliament has done, and it’s even undermined the good work that the National Party did when they were in Government. I would love to know what Michael Woodhouse says about this bill, because he led a good piece of legislation through, and it’s been undermined by his own members.

I was sitting there chuckling away to myself watching the two sides go head to head on this bill, and it does create some amusement, although the topic’s not an amusing one—it is very serious.

Look, when I first came into Parliament in the 51st Parliament, one of the biggest bills that we had in front of us to go through—and I mean to really go through—was the Health and Safety at Work Act. And it was actually a very good, very sobering process. The number of submissions that we had—and I was actually with Iain Lees-Galloway, and Alastair, and many others that actually listened to those submissions, and heard the backwards and forwards. There wasn’t anybody in those submissions that was opposed to a change in ideology—the way we are dealing with health and safety in our workplaces. As it’s been already articulated on a number of occasions, we do have a serious problem in this country with the number of people that don’t come home at the end of a day at work, and that’s a serious issue.

And I have to also say New Zealand First didn’t support National in that Act, although we 100 percent supported the intent, which was to reduce serious injuries and fatalities in workplaces by 25 percent in 2020. And, sadly—and I mean this—the rates of serious harm and death have actually gone up in the last two years. I don’t believe it’s because of that Act, and I’m not even for a second trying to suggest that it has. There is a definite culture shift.

However, what we opposed that Act on was some of the unintended consequences that the bill possessed, and I believe that this is one of those unintended consequences that we were talking about—that we made reference to during the select committee process, and even here in the House, as we put a number of Supplementary Order Papers through to amend the bill to tidy up some of these potential issues.

If I look around the House, and I see the number of volunteers that are here in this House alone, let alone the 115,000 other Kiwis that give their time, put the shoulder to the wheel, for their churches, for their organisations—I myself am heavily involved in sports and recreation and give a lot of time in that field, including surf lifesaving. So I can use examples that relate to my world, and I believe that this bill should be going through to select committee, which is why we are supporting it through that process. We are concerned about some of the potential unintended consequences of this bill that we’d like to have addressed at that select committee process.

But I can see, when I go down to my surf club—and we’ve got nearly 500 members there at Ōmanu. Most of them are active in some way or another, and we have two part-time, paid casually, semi - full-time workers that come through into this organisation. Now, because I’m a volunteer and the plethora of others are volunteers, we have that duty of care that Minister Lees-Galloway has just spoken about, and we absolutely make sure that we do our best to make sure that the workers that we work alongside are safe, as well as patrolling our beach and ensuring that the swimmers are safe. But because we’ve got two workers that work in our office to ensure that everything is in order and the paperwork’s done, those two people are captured—albeit in a voluntary organisation, albeit in a not-for-profit—as persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) under this current legislation.

And I don’t think it was ever the intention of this legislation to capture those people, but there are hundreds and thousands of examples where people are inadvertently captured as a PCBU when they’re actually working right alongside people that are volunteering their time—wholly, solely—but they, because they are being remunerated for that job, are being treated differently. And that gives them a higher duty of care in the fact that—no more in the duty, but more on the legal culpability, if there is an issue on their watch.

And so I believe that this bill is a well-intentioned bill. I believe that through the select committee process we’ll be able to see and hear from submitters that may be able to give some light on it. Some of the questions raised are to do with health and safety equipment in the workplace, and should those part-time or casual employees—under 100 hours per week in a not-for-profit organisation—have to supply their own health and safety equipment. I, for one, don’t believe that should be the case. And so we need to look at the simplicity of the bill and, perhaps, without complicating it too much, look at how we can ensure that if you are a worker on limited hours inside a workplace in a not-for-profit organisation, you do get, for example, health and safety equipment supplied to you so it’s not coming out of your small salary that you may be taking.

I do have to say, as I said, we have raised this on numerous occasions and spoken about it. It’s great that the bill is now in front of us. It’s fantastic that it was drawn out of the ballot—potentially divine intervention—but I also say that, you know, it is—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. And, yes, we were all taken up with that previous speech—could’ve gone on for ever.

I stand to take a call on the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill, and I want to congratulate my colleague Harete Hipango, the MP for Whanganui, for having this bill drawn out of the biscuit tin, and very quickly too, as I believe. So well done, Harete.

I think this is quite an interesting bill in that I’m in a volunteer organisation. We run, actually, a shearing show—and, yeah, there are a lot of hazards there. None of us get paid to do it, obviously. Nobody, actually, gets paid for it, yet we all seem to look after each other. I’ve also managed an organisation that’s had volunteers work for us, and we have included them in our health and safety policies.

But I also look at it when we have volunteer organisations that are only small—they have maybe one volunteer person or person that is on a payroll, who’s only working for about five to 10 hours a week, and yet they are expected to have a big, cumbersome piece of policy just for them.

I think that what this bill is trying to do—it’s a sensible bill. It’s a practical bill. It does actually exclude those organisations—those volunteer organisations—with workers doing less than 100 hours a week from actually having to go through the cost of actually administrating the whole process around safety at work policies. I want to say that, because there are people who say that the administration costs may not be a problem—but they are. They take a lot of time and a lot of people’s time just doing all of this work, and when you’re only limited to 10 hours a week or 20 hours a week—if that—we don’t want to have our volunteer paid people sitting there just working through compliance policy.

Iain Lees-Galloway talked about volunteers volunteering in a registered workplace. Well, those people actually do come in under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Therefore, I start to look at what exactly was Lees-Galloway actually trying to say here. I thought there was a lot of yelling and posturing on that side when he was trying to say something—which totally absolutely confused me—and I thought it was this side of the House that actually brought in the Health and Safety at Work Act. We did that in recognition of all of those people that work in this sector to protect them. I know that working in a farming district we went through a number of iterations on our property and on neighbours’ property to make sure that we were compliant to the Health and Safety at Work Act. It took a while for that to bed in, but we’ve come through it, and everybody’s where they should be.

I want to acknowledge the work of volunteers and the many hours that they put in just to make sure that our whole community runs smoothly. Without the volunteer sector, we wouldn’t really have a very strong community development sector at all. I’ve seen it, I’ve witnessed it, and I’ve watched it. That is why I stand here today and I applaud this bill. I applaud what Harete Hipango has put forward. I’m saying thank you to New Zealand First for supporting the bill to the select committee process. I think there is where you’ll have your debates about the ins and outs and where the bill will go. I think it’s a great start, and I say to Harete, congratulations again. I wish the select committee all the best. I look forward to this bill coming back out for its final reading and for assent. So without any further ado, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

💬 Marja Lubeck: Mr Assistant Speaker.

OK. Are you seeking the call?

💬 Jan Logie: Yes, Mr Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Jan Logie.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a short call on behalf of the Green Party on Harete Hipango’s member’s bill for the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill and, firstly, to congratulate the member for her good luck in getting this drawn. It’s not something that happens for everyone in this House, and you’ve got to relish those moments. I understand that it will be going through to select committee, so congratulations on that as well.

Unfortunately, with that said, the Green Party will not be voting in support of this legislation. For people listening, what this legislation is doing is it will make an amendment to the Health and Safety at Work Act, that was just passed in 2015, so actually not that long ago. It was a very robust select committee process and debate to get to that conclusion. The Green Party—we weren’t happy on where it landed finally. We thought too many of the vitally important protections for working people in New Zealand had been eroded at the end, though it was a step forward. But it was a shame to see some of the really important things lost in the process. So it’s not as if we haven’t had the opportunity to do this, or that the previous Government hadn’t had the opportunity to consider whether this policy amendment would be beneficial. That opportunity has been there. It’s happened, and it did not get put into legislation.

So what it’s wanting to do is so that volunteer associations that employ a person or people for less than 100 hours a week are able to be exempt from the definition of a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU). The consequence of that—because not everyone’s familiar with the health and safety language—is that it will mean employers won’t have to cover the costs of protective equipment, as an example, because the health and safety legislation as it stands at the moment is if you are included in the definition of a PCBU, then you cannot pass on the cost of protective equipment to employees or ask them to provide it themselves.

So this will mean those agencies can do that, and it will also mean that they don’t have a duty to engage working people in the health and safety plans in their workplace, and that they won’t have the same duty to ensure, as far as reasonably possible, a safe work environment, free of health and safety risks. So they won’t have to go through those things. We’ve heard from previous speakers saying this is about administration and burden and getting rid of that from organisations, but, actually, if you unpack those three examples, it’s not about administration; it’s about ensuring and creating a good health and safety culture in all organisations in our country and including our volunteer associations in that.

There was a hot debate on the legislation in 2015 about the erosion of the initial attempts to ensure the voice of working people in the health and safety plans, because all of the best evidence around what makes a safe workplace is that the engagement of everyone and the knowledge that they have from the different places in the workplace is essential to getting rid of risks and ensuring everyone is safe. So we cannot support legislation that lessens or removes that requirement for any organisation in this country. If it’s about cost pressures, then I think the Government should look at their loss and lack of funding for our voluntary associations for the last nine years. I think you’re seeking to solve a problem that was created by another policy of the previous Government.

Thank you. This time it is my turn. Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am rising to take this call on this member’s bill, the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. I too believe, as has been said previously, that this bill is well intentioned, and I would have liked to support the bill drawn in the name of the member Harete Hipango, but I won’t be able to do so. Like I said on a previous occasion—I spoke on a bill from Denise Lee, in fact—I too believe Harete is a good sort, and I would have liked to have supported the bill, but, unfortunately, the bill drawn in her name is not, so I won’t be supporting it.

The bill, of course, proposes to amend a section of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015—section 17(2), in fact—and it does so by a change of five sentences. Now, the member Alfred Ngaro previously said it’s a very small amendment, and I agree—five sentences, or four and a half, in fact, doesn’t seem like much of a change. But this small change could have very wide-ranging consequences, and I will come back to that.

Just to give a little bit more context to it, the bill proposes that the volunteer association which employs a person for not greater than 100 hours is excluded from the current legal definition of a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU). The PCBU is a very broad concept used all through the health and safety at work legislation, and it describes all sorts of working arrangements, and we refer to those as businesses. So most New Zealand businesses are in fact classed as PCBUs, and, therefore, they are bound by the obligations they have and their primary duties of care under the Act. However, volunteer associations currently are excluded from PCBUs if they are solely run by volunteers. So as long as they don’t employ anyone, as long as they don’t pay anyone, they are excluded from those primary duties of care and responsibilities that PCBUs have.

Now, what does the current legislation actually say that those responsibilities are—and it has been mentioned by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, Iain Lees-Galloway, previously as well. Section 36(2) actually states that “A PCBU must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the health and safety of other persons is not put at risk from work carried out as part of the conduct of the business or undertaking.” So, very clearly, the sentence includes “so far as is reasonably practicable.” These duties of care, these responsibilities, are not so onerous that they would put some kind of an unreasonable burden on the PCBU. These responsibilities include things like providing workers with protective equipment, engaging with workers on health and safety matters, and providing—as reasonably practicable—workplaces without health and safety risks.

Now, we haven’t seen any evidence put forward that would suggest that there is any particular problem that needs to be addressed, that warrants a change of legislation, but, despite that lack of evidence, what this bill seeks to do is it seeks to extend the exemption of volunteer associations to associations which have people in paid employment. So it proposes an exemption from New Zealand’s main health and safety law for workplaces. So that is very clearly a weakening of workers’ rights and it’s a very slippery slope to removing workers’ rights from other groups. And all this comes at a time when this Government, actually, is doing a whole lot of work to strengthen those rights again.

But then again, it’s no surprise, in a way, because weakening workers’ rights is what we have seen from the National Government over the previous nine years. We’ve seen a constant undermining of employment legislation, and it has eroded working conditions. So, really, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we now see a proposal to weaken health and safety protections for working people. Now, it’s important to consider that this is actually legislation that was put in by the previous Government, so it seems rather odd that they don’t seem to believe that that was the right thing to do.

So all workers deserve the same protections at work, and no worker should be injured at work. No workplaces should be exempted, and therefore I don’t support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be speaking on this bill, for two reasons. The first is it’s a great bill by my colleague Harete Hipango, a fellow rookie MP. There are now five new National MPs who’ve had the privilege of getting their members’ bills drawn from the biscuit tin—five of us. So the odds are definitely in our favour, and we look forward to the ballot on Thursday where we’ll add—Andrew Falloon is crossing his fingers. I’ll look forward to Thursday, and maybe we’ll get that number up to six or even more.

The other reason I’m happy to speak to this bill is that in my past life I ran a charitable trust. I know first-hand how important community groups are, and their volunteers, and their well-being, and how they contribute to this country, how they contribute to communities, to family lives, to the lives of everyone. What I’m missing on hearing in this debate is how the other side of the House isn’t acknowledging how to attract and retain volunteers. It is a seriously important and impactful issue here.

💬 Hon Member: That’s a very good point.

Thank you for the backup I’m getting from my team on this side; not much from the other side, but we’ll carry on anyway.

💬 Hon Member: That’s right.

That’s right. I happen to have very recently met with a number of charities both big and small, and there’s one common theme emerging, and that common theme that is emerging is that it is incredibly hard in today’s day and age to attract volunteers. And that’s the theme that I want to touch on, with the remaining time that I have here this afternoon. Volunteer organisations across the entire sector are struggling to find the finances and the actual volunteers to do the work that they’re doing, to continue the amazing work that they do on behalf of our country. The traditional model of being mostly reliant on actual volunteers is shrinking by the day.

These groups are being forced to change their model and look at more paid staff to do the same work, where they had copious amounts of volunteers to do the same thing. It’s not working so much any more, which, of course, is a great shame. Now, this is not the issue in itself. Many charities and NGOs are large enough to accommodate paid staff, but this isn’t actually what this bill is addressing. This bill is addressing those that are under a certain limit, those who are only looking at 100 hours per week. So that may be, for instance, five staff for a couple of days of work a week.

So what I’d like to suggest is that we don’t focus on how—and this is the accusation coming from the other side of the House—this particular bill is undermining health and safety, because this law change actually does not exempt voluntary associations from a legal standard and a duty of care. It does not, I repeat, exempt them from that. The usual laws under ACC and tort or civil law still apply. So if that’s the case, why are we not focusing on retention, attraction of volunteers, and backing that? I would just simply say if we send this bill to select committee, then we’ll be sending a signal to our most incredibly important volunteer organisations—the smaller ones, of which mine was one—that we are going to be exploring and looking at ways to help them. It doesn’t create barriers for health and safety and making sure that there are rights protected. It’s about helping them attract more volunteers, diminishing the barriers that often exist. The particular push that we’re presenting from this side of the House is the Government should show that they care about attracting volunteers.

I commend this bill. Thank you, Harete, for bringing it to the House, and may you draw another bill out of the ballot on Thursday.

Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to stand and speak on this bill, the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. I’d also like to acknowledge the member opposite, Harete Hipango, for having this bill drawn. Yes, we do have another ballot coming up soon, and I’ve got my fingers crossed as well, so we’ll see how we go.

Look, I’d like to begin by acknowledging the many volunteer groups that we have across our country. I know it has been mentioned earlier in this debate, but I’d like to add my thanks to those many groups, because many of the wonderful things that are happening in our society could not happen without these volunteer groups, who contribute thousands and thousands of hours each year. We’re talking about community groups, churches, and groups in the area of health. One in particular is St John Ambulance, who I collected for recently. So I’d like to acknowledge those groups.

Now, if we have a look at this bill, I think one of the issues here is around—this is, as I like to say, a solution looking for a problem, because as I engage with many of these volunteer groups, I haven’t had any of them raise this issue with me, so I’m not really sure how much of a big issue it is. But I think the key point here is around valuing and protecting our volunteers. The agencies rely on their volunteers for the work, and the volunteers must be valued, they must be kept safe, and they must be protected. Actually, we’re going to have an example of this coming up soon with the by-election in Northcote, when many volunteers will be heading out, and I wish both candidates all the very best for that.

But it is about protecting these volunteers, because, you see, when someone’s running a business, they have got protections in place for their employees. So why should a community group, a church group, not have the same aspects in place for their volunteers? Article 7 of the UN human rights declaration says, “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.” I do worry here that our volunteers will be treated differently to employees and not have that protection of the law.

By the very definition of “volunteer”, they are doing work without payment. Volunteers provide a valuable service to the communities in which they operate, and I’m worried that this bill will potentially lead to the degradation of the quality of the services that these organisations provide. So, essentially, if the volunteers are not protected, if they’re not given clear understanding and clear protection around health and safety, we might lose a number of the wonderful volunteers who are currently volunteering in this sector. If this bill passes, many volunteer organisations could levy their workers for their own safety equipment. At the moment, the volunteers are exempt from that, but I do worry that these volunteers will then have to pay for all their own safety equipment and, like I said before, it could lessen the amount of people who are willing to volunteer.

Another issue is that if this bill passes, it could provide workers with an unnecessarily unsafe workplace. In fact, under this legislation those running the community organisations would not even have to talk to their volunteers about health and safety at work. I think that will be a big issue, and I do worry that if this bill comes in, then we’re going to have a lot of volunteers who are not kept safe and we could have a few issues that could arise from that. The biggest one is that we could potentially lose many of these volunteers, because, like I said before, the thousands of volunteers who are currently volunteering in our sector, we absolutely rely on them. The Government can only do so much. We need Government, we need volunteer agencies, we need churches, community groups, and sports groups all working together, all on the same page, and the volunteers are a key aspect of this.

Now, I myself have employed staff. At one point, I employed eight staff, and it was absolutely vital that they were kept safe in that workplace. It was absolutely vital that they were kept safe in that workplace, and I worry that this bill would degrade the safety aspects of volunteers. So, unfortunately, this party will not be supporting this bill in its current form. Thank you.

I call Harete Hipango—five minutes in reply.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker, and to all members in the House this afternoon. I acknowledge those who have worked previously on the legislation, the Health and Safety at Work Act, and my colleagues here who have been hands-on, and also members across the House and across the floor. I also acknowledge everybody who’s spoken both in support and in opposition, because what it does highlight is that those who have expressed an opposing view—you’re certainly entitled to this. But I do share with you that they are flawed to hold such concerns.

I’ve cast a legal eye over this, although it’s a cursory one, and the words that have been spoken in support from my colleagues this afternoon are highlighting that this is not an amendment that is seeking to diminish in any way whatsoever the legal protections around health and safety for volunteers. The emphasis and focus in this bill is very much around those volunteer associations who are no longer able to sustain continued service premised on volunteer work and are required to have to pay for that service. This is about the payment of those persons who would otherwise volunteer their time, up to no more than 100 hours per week. So this amendment is a pragmatic one.

May I just go through and summarise the speakers in the House, both earlier when this was called before the recess and continued today. Mr McAnulty—regrettably he’s left the Chamber.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Members shouldn’t mention the absence of other members.

I apologise to the House—an oversight of a rookie MP. It won’t happen again. May I just indicate that the previous speaker from the Labour Party around this Jamie Strange, has made assertions and aspersions that are very much flawed, based on the law. The member has spoken about concerns associated with workers’ rights. This amendment is about volunteers who happen to be under the situation of giving service—a volunteer association being defined, because having to pay a volunteer person who falls within the definition of being a worker is classified as a person conducting a business or undertaking. This amendment is about ensuring that those who do give service are no longer required, as recognised by the amendment, to fall within the ambit of this Act. That certainly doesn’t dispense or dismiss, in any way whatsoever, the legal protections that have been highlighted in my friend Ms Lee’s comment, in submissions to the House, around the protection and ACC laws and also civil and tort laws.

In summary, I go through and canvass that—Mr McAnulty talked about his time and experience as a volunteer serviceman. I just share with the House that his view has very much ignited an unsustainable and unnecessary fire, in so far as the concerns that have been expressed. He’s simply fanning something that just does not exist, and I seek to extinguish any such concern that he’s misrepresented to the House.

Further, in relation to that, we’ve heard from the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway, who has loudly expressed his view in the House this afternoon, scaremongering that workers’ rights must be upheld. This amendment has nothing to do with diminishing workers’ rights or volunteers’ rights in so far as health and safety protections are concerned. May I acknowledge the Greens’ speaker for a gracious manner in conveying an opposing view to this. However, again, just to reiterate, there is misunderstanding and misrepresentation around what this bill is about.

In conclusion, I acknowledge New Zealand First for the support that’s been given to this bill. The speaker Clayton Mitchell has spoken about his experience as a volunteer surf lifesaver. Literally, a lifeline’s been thrown for this bill to be sustained, for it to advance to the select committee. In conclusion, I just share and acknowledge that, having spent some time over in Australia, the surf lifeboat racing championships—coming back to speak on this, being thrown a lifeline literally for this to proceed further. At select committee those concerns will be expressed and canvassed. I simply say and reiterate to all members in the House and the public—acknowledging all the fine work from our volunteer sector that this recognises and will continue to sustain, with the passage of this bill into law. The health and safety standards and protections that have been highlighted under the Act will not be diminished in any way whatsoever with the amendment.