Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill

Tēnā koe. E tū ahau ki te karanga o tēnei Whare. E tīmata taku kōrero mahi tuatahi o te tauhou i roto i Te Whare. E mihi ana ki ngā tāngata katoa.

[Thank you. I stand to the call of this House. I commence my first work speech of the new year in the House. Greetings to all the people.]

I take my first call in the House for 2019, and in so doing I pay homage to my colleagues here in the House but also I take the opportunity to speak in Te Reo Māori. It’s something that rather than just once a year for a week—that we make an effort to revive and speak and use the Reo, and I encourage my colleagues to make a concerted effort.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry to interrupt the member, but there’s a motion that the member needs to move first.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I move the motion, That the bill now be taken to its second reading.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Oh, we’ll get the words to her.

The correct wording? Thank you. I move, That the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Kōrero mai.

Thank you. So, Mr Assistant Speaker and members of the House, I continue in terms of acknowledgment of Te Reo Māori, and I encourage everybody around the continuation of the using of it, otherwise we lose that as we embark on the journey with this. I just hearken members also that this year, I believe, for the first time lessons will be offered to us, and I invite people to embark on that language learning journey on 20 March.

Now, I turn, importantly, as well to the bill, Mr Assistant Speaker, and with your indulgence may I seize this moment—being the first opportunity to address the House this year—to acknowledge not only the passing of 2018, going into the new year, but also the acknowledgment of loved and treasured ones. And, briefly, I turn to acknowledge a well-regarded member of my community in the Whanganui electorate, councillor Sue Westwood, who gave service for 30 years in that capacity as a councillor but also as a lifelong volunteer to our community in Whanganui. Councillor Sue Westwood—a robust, statuesque, powerful, and strong woman whose contribution over the course of her lifetime to our community, particularly our volunteer sector, was notably significant, and I pay homage to her. She added value to the health, the well-being, and the safety of our community in Whanganui and also further afield, giving immeasurable and invaluable service over the course of her lifetime.

Now I turn to the bill, and just on reflection, with the passing of a year and the passing of life, I turn, just briefly, to make mention of the bill that was before the House. I make mention of that because last weekend, as the member of Parliament for Whanganui, I joined with a number of volunteers back in Whanganui to spruce and clean up the waterways. The relevance of the bill being debated previously—before this bill before the House—is that it also engaged the service and the time of volunteers.

Now I turn, importantly, to what this amendment is about. Clause 4 is seeking to amend section 17 of the principal Act, in that the definition of “volunteer association” is changed so as to include associations which have people in paid employment for the association for not greater than 100 hours per week. The report back to the House from the Education and Workforce Committee is dated November 2018. I sat and presided with the other members of that committee, and I acknowledge them for their contribution, as well as the submitters to that bill. There were a total of 34 written submissions to the bill, eight of which were in favour, four neutral, and 22 opposed. What’s of note is that those submitters to the bill who spoke to the committee and were opposed were predominantly large organisations. The eight who spoke in favour were smaller voluntary organisations, and that was very much indicative of the strained resources and the difficulties that our smaller volunteer associations in our community have in terms of the provision of a valued service within the community.

When I first spoke to this bill at the first reading, that was 4 April 2018. We’re now some 11 months down the line. I note across the House my colleague from New Zealand First who was one of those speakers at that time who literally threw a lifeline. The member spoke about being a volunteer member of a surf lifesaving club. I made mention at that first reading that that lifeline that had been thrown enabled this bill to go before the select committee for submissions to be heard. Regrettably, this bill is going to sink because that lifeline has been withdrawn.

I also shared with the House at this time last year that, coincidentally, I had just returned from Australia, where my daughter had competed in the Australian Surf Life Saving Championships. She came away from that—and a proud Mama moment—as a champion. However, the problem that I stand confronted with, facing the House and members across the floor there, is that in my attempt to champion this bill, that lifeline has been withdrawn. This bill is sinking rapidly.

However, in saying that, I invite members across the House to heed and factor in that the debate and the argument that had been presented is very much on the basis that those submissions were from the focus of large organisations, well-resourced organisations, and referenced some of what I would consider, with respect, misrepresentations of what this bill is really about. I harken to the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway in the debate speeches referring to this as a normal part of doing business. This bill is about volunteer organisations, not in the nature of doing business, and that word was repeatedly—and that concept and construct—referenced by the member, that this is about business. This is not; this is about our small, voluntary organisations, many of which run on the smell of an oily rag and do not have those oil-rich resources in the way of funding to be able to continue in their service without the necessity of having to employ or pay persons who would otherwise give their time voluntarily.

The member from the Labour Party referenced being a volunteer service fireman, and, on reflection, in reading through the Hansard notes and speeches, the member was somewhat considerably inflammatory around the representation of what this bill is about. I seek to extinguish that by stating that the focus and the emphasis is about the survival of our smaller volunteer organisations, that many of our organisations, community-based, would not exist if not for the efforts of them. Ninety-seven thousand non-profit organisations, 1.2 million volunteers—most if not all of the members in the House have at some stage or another volunteered our time and our service, without which having done so, much of the goodwill and constructive, positive contributions in our society and community simply would not exist.

The difficulty that our society and communities are now confronted with is that that voluntary goodwill is not able to keep these organisations afloat, if not for the fact of having to pay for some of those small administrative tasks whereby the legal responsibility of any sinking or any misdemeanour that goes on is onerous under this law. My other colleagues will address the House in other aspects that were submitted before the select committee, regrettably to say this bill is to be drowned, and it does not heed the valuable contribution of our volunteers in our communities. Kia ora.

Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Labour Party to oppose the motion and to encourage other members of the House to follow the recommendation of the Education and Workforce Committee that this bill should not progress. I want to acknowledge all members of the select committee. I don’t get to participate in the select committee these days, but I want to acknowledge all the members and the chair, Parmjeet Parmar, for their work in considering this legislation and hearing the submissions. I understand that the select committee received 34 written submissions, of which eight were in favour, four were neutral, and 22 were opposed, and amongst many of those submissions in opposition to this bill were voluntary organisations and umbrella organisations that represent a large number of small, voluntary organisations across the country. The overwhelming message that submitters wanted Parliament to hear was that with the right support, with the right tools, and with the right education all workplaces, whether they be businesses for profit, whether they be large NGOs, or whether they be small, voluntary organisations, should be able to operate and can operate under the auspices of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

In fact, many submitters said they found that the rigour and the opportunity to learn more about their obligations under the Act made them more effective employers, made them more effective as voluntary organisations, and gave them an opportunity to provide a safe working environment for everybody that they were responsible for, whether they were paid employees or whether they were volunteers. So I think we as a Parliament should listen closely to those submitters, but I also think that this bill is fundamentally flawed because it is based on a flawed premise, which is that health and safety is onerous, that it is compliance-driven, and that it is about ticking boxes, when it is absolutely not that at all. It is about creating a culture that encourages people to speak up, that encourages people to identify hazards, to identify risks, and to encourage employers and people who are in charge of workplaces, whether they be profitable businesses or whether they be volunteer organisations, to take all reasonable and practicable steps to keep everybody who they are responsible for safe in the workplace. It also encourages everybody in that workplace—workers, volunteers, contractors—to take responsibility for the safety of themselves and the safety of others that they are working alongside.

So the premise of this amendment bill is flawed, but even worse than that, it suggests that the Act itself is flawed, and I would be very interested to know what the Hon Michael Woodhouse thinks about that. The Hon Michael Woodhouse was the Minister in charge of the principal Act that this bill seeks to amend, when it was passed through Parliament, and I want to acknowledge the work that he did, because this is an important piece of legislation. It’s not perfect, and I’ll possibly come to some of the imperfections later on in my contribution this evening, but it is fundamentally a good piece of legislation, and it reflects where modern thinking throughout developed nations is at on health and safety. This amendment bill suggests that it’s flawed because it suggests that it cannot apply to small, voluntary organisations. The language that I heard used in the first reading debate is that health and safety obligations are onerous and difficult for small organisations to comply with, which suggests to me that the National Party may even be wondering if they think this is applicable to small businesses. I think that’s a shame, because they did good work in Government seeing this legislation through, and now, to see them turn around the moment they get into Opposition and start playing politics with what is such an important piece of legislation, frankly, disappoints me. I know that the Hon Michael Woodhouse is better than that; I hope that his colleagues can realise that they ought to behave in a better fashion as well.

One of the concerns that I expressed during the first reading, and it continues to be a concern of mine, is that this bill sends precisely the wrong message at precisely the wrong time. We have made good progress as a nation on health and safety since the wake-up call that was the tragedy at Pike River. We made good progress because everybody suddenly returned their focus to health and safety in the workplace and realised that New Zealand needed a new approach to health and safety. However, the latest data tells us that between 2016 and 2017, we are seeing a plateauing. We are seeing the fall in injury and death rates in the workplace starting to level out—we’re not seeing the progress on those statistics that we saw in the years after Pike River—and we are seeing a change in attitudes. People are starting to lose their focus again. This is precisely the time where we as a Parliament need to show leadership and remind everybody in New Zealand that we must not lose focus. In fact, there is an awful lot more work to be done. We have made progress, but we are still a very, very long way behind other developed nations such as Australia, such as the UK, and such as many European nations. We kill and maim far too many people in our workplaces in New Zealand, and this bill sends the wrong message at the wrong time.

Now, I acknowledge that the Health and Safety at Work Act is not perfect. Every single one of the parties that are now in Government expressed reservations about it when we were in Opposition. We could, like the member in charge of this bill, perhaps try and make amendments to this Act even though it is still new, even though businesses, employers, workplaces, NGOs, and volunteer organisations are still coming to grips with it, letting it bed in. I think that’s the wrong approach. We have signalled—I have signalled as Minister—that we will undertake a review of the Act in 2020. That will be timely; the Australian Government have just completed a review of their model legislation, upon which New Zealand’s legislation is based. The report from that review is a very useful document, and it will inform our review of the legislation, but now is not the time to create more uncertainty for those employers, those persons conducting a business or undertaking, those workers, and those volunteers who are getting used to the new legislation and putting it into operation at the front line.

Likewise, the work of completing the regulations or improving the regulations that give effect to this legislation has not been completed. That work needs to be allowed to continue, and we need to see the Act in operation before we rush to judgment about what changes might need to be made to it. So I encourage the member and her party to engage positively when it comes time to review this legislation and acknowledge that New Zealand does need robust health and safety legislation that puts workers at the centre and helps to create the culture that we need.

To that effect, late last year, the Government published the Health and Safety at Work Strategy, which sets out the priorities for this Government over the next 10 years. This is something that is required in the Act, and we saw that through at the end of last year. It has two overriding priorities: one, that we have to focus on what will make the biggest impact to reduce harm. That’s not about compliance, that’s not about ticking boxes, that’s not about paperwork; that is about looking in your workplace and making relevant changes in the workplace that will reduce the risks and hazards that exist in the workplace. It has a focus on work-related health, including mental health—those workplaces with the greatest need, sectors with the highest harm, and small businesses; workers with the greatest need: Māori and other workers at greatest risk—and it also makes as a priority building everyone’s capability to do health and safety well. That, as I say, was a strong message that we heard from submitters, that we do need to encourage leaders at all levels to integrate health and safety into their work and enable workers to be represented, engaged, and to participate.

Members, this is not the time for this legislation. This is the time to redouble our efforts to ensure that more of our working people and our volunteers go home at the end of the day in the same state and health as when they started this day. I encourage members to vote this bill down.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand in this second reading debate on the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill in the name of my friend and colleague Harete Hipango. Now, I listened carefully to the speech from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, and I was somewhat surprised that he found time amongst his busy schedule and pile of papers that he needs to read as, apparently, a busy Minister to come down to the House on a members’ night to speak, effectively, about just kicking the can down the road until 2020 on an important piece of legislation. That he’s found time to do that I think is interesting in itself, particularly when we know that between first reading and this reading, the New Zealand First Party has changed their view on this, based on him kicking the can down the road until 2020. That surprises me. So here we have, yet again, another situation where a Government that was so full of promise and hope and sloganeering has actually just kicked the can in a way that means that nothing—nothing—will be done.

As they come towards the end of their term in Government, 2020 will be far too late—far too late. I would have thought that a Minister, on an evening like this, would have had maybe some more important things to be doing than coming down here to bolster the Government’s pretty feeble approach to this bill.

The Education and Workforce Committee, chaired very capably by my colleague Dr Parmjeet Parmar, received 34 submissions on this bill—eight were in favour, four neutral, and 22 opposed. Although I don’t sit as a permanent member on the committee, I do from time to time get subbed in in terms of matters that relate to workplace relations legislation. I have to say, wearing that hat as the National Party spokesperson for workplace relations but also as the MP for the Coromandel, that I actually thought that this bill had some merit. It really does trouble me that as a Parliament, we seem not to have the wit or the imagination to confront and address obvious issues such as those that are raised by this bill.

The reason I say that as the member of Parliament for the beautiful Coromandel is that throughout my very large geographical electorate, many of my local communities depend utterly upon the work and the voluntary support that comes from generous volunteers’ giving of their time, of their energy, of their enthusiasm, and of their commitment. For many of those organisations, they are small organisations. They are not organisations that are well resourced, that have enormous financial resources available to them. They inevitably are small in number and small in financial resource. So this bill seeks to carve out a practical solution to a problem, and that is where as soon as an organisation hires somebody, then that organisation becomes constrained and restricted by the provisions of this bill.

Now, increasingly those small organisations have to contract out, by way of employment, specialist expertise that can’t be obtained through their normal volunteer recruitment processes. I’m thinking here, for instance, about the many conservation groups that exist around the Coromandel Peninsula. Most of those people do trapping and pest control, and some very good tree planting and all that sort of thing, but they do have some income from money, and they have some other administrative duties, so often they have to go out and hire a financial accountant or the services of some kind of secretarial support—all those sorts of things that are not core to their day-to-day voluntary operations but are none the less pivotal to their organisation’s success and their ultimate achievement of their goals.

Now, as soon as they go out and hire a person—maybe it’s a financial consultant or an accountant or a secretary or something of that sort—the Act gets triggered, and that’s really the matter that this legislation seeks to resolve. I’m very disappointed on behalf of voluntary organisations up and down the country that New Zealand First, who often try and pitch themselves as being some kind of saint in terms of supporting regions outside urban New Zealand, in this case have, sadly, let rural and provincial New Zealand down, and particularly the volunteer organisations that operate within those organisations. So in this short contribution, I wish to support the bill, support the work and the initiative taken by my colleague Harete Hipango, and wish her well in this bill.

I’m delighted to actually take a call here in this particular bill, because I’m a bit concerned about some of the material that I’ve heard coming from the other side. I’ve had concerns about this bill from the word go, because I believe that we’ve got to be completely concerned in our country about the health and safety of all our workers—not just some but every single worker in this country—whether they are working for large organisations or whether they are working for small organisations or whether they are working in small voluntary-level clubs.

We’ve heard a lot that we’ve had 34 submissions. We’ve heard that from every single speaker so far, but we also heard that the 22 against were from mainly large organisations. Well, one of those organisations was Volunteering New Zealand. Volunteering New Zealand is an umbrella organisation which represents a number of volunteers, and a number of volunteer organisations feed into it. I know that because the fishing club that I’m a member of, which is quite a small fishing club, is actually one of those clubs that will go to Volunteering New Zealand to seek out their volunteers. Now, in our fishing club, we actually employ staff. As a member of the club, I would be horrified to think that any of those staff members were not as worthy of the health and safety regulations as any other paid staff member of any organisation in this country. It is vitally important that we protect those.

We’ve heard tonight that New Zealand does have a woeful reputation on health and safety at work, and the premise of this bill, the way that I could see the whole way through, is that this bill undermines the whole concept of health and safety at work. It creates—and we heard this in the submissions from a health and safety adviser—another tier of a second-class worker. So if you are someone that is employed by a volunteer association, this bill almost made it seem that you are a second-class worker in that situation, and I can’t see that there is any way that we can condone this in this House.

The Health and Safety at Work Act, in the first place, as we’ve heard from our Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety here this evening, was and is a very good piece of legislation. It is a piece of work that we are working on and extending all the time. That came from both sides of the House, so it surprises me that one side of the House here, with this particular bill, wants to water that piece of legislation down, wants to make it less than what it is, and wants to give people less rights than what they currently have. Now, yes, we did hear from those eight small organisations who were in favour of the bill. One of their main concerns around wanting this piece of legislation was that they felt that it was onerous and a burden on them, and they felt that that was hard when trying to get volunteers into their associations or into their organisations. I think there’s a wider conversation that needs to be held there.

I think the nature of volunteering has changed somewhat in this country, and that maybe organisations—and I know that I have gone through this in my own clubs and service clubs that I am a member of. We need to relook at what we’re meaning when we’re saying “volunteering”. We need to look at whether there are alternatives and ways that we can make things different for those people, to encourage different people to come in to help volunteer. I do not believe for a moment, hearing those organisations speak in the select committee process, that the health and safety Act is completely—or is at all, even—behind why they are not getting the number of volunteers into their organisation. I think that, as I said, a different conversation actually needs to happen there.

I think, though, for me, this is the big point that I took out of the whole of the select committee process: the advisers said to us that they considered that the bill as introduced presents a risk that it could extend the exclusion considerably wider than intended. So as it was written in that particular bill, this didn’t, or could be interpreted that it didn’t, just go towards looking at those small volunteer associations. Our advisers told us that it could be interpreted quite differently, and that’s where we could have a big risk to education.

We had some people who came in to present to us on education: people that were representing sole-charge schools, representing kōhanga reo playcentres, who do have a large volunteer base or are actually based on a volunteer base—mainly volunteers—but could actually employ someone for under the 100 hours.

Now, in those situations our advisers did say to us that there is a chance that that could be considered and interpreted under this particular bill—that they would come and this exemption would apply to them. I struggle with that when you’re working in an education setting that you wouldn’t have the same rights and health and safety rights as anyone else. I think that was the point for me where I thought that, really, this cannot progress and I know that for a lot of members on this side that that is when they felt exactly the same.

We heard from the member opposite, Harete Hipango, who put this bill forward, that in the first reading it talked about business as usual, and this wasn’t business. I think there is probably a little bit of a misinterpretation of the phrase “business as usual” there, because, for these organisations, health and safety is the business of keeping their workers safe. It is absolutely critical that they are keeping their workers safe so that we are not creating that second tier of worker. It is that business. To interpret that statement as business, as in the business realm, is a little bit—well, not quite as it was intended in that first reading. So this should be business as usual. It is really important that we see health and safety in every single organisation in this country, whether it is a paid, big organisation—as I’ve said right at the beginning—or whether it is a small volunteer organisation. It is critically important that we see health and safety as central to that business or that organisation, and it is business as usual.

We heard from organisations such as, as I’ve said, Volunteering New Zealand, who very much said the whole way through the organisation that the workers and the volunteers should not be subjected to a lower level of protection at all. We heard from the National Council of Women, who believe that the health and safety of every New Zealander is equally important, regardless of their employment status. We heard from the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, who also oppose this bill, Mr Assistant Speaker, and I ask your indulgence that I read this particular quote out, which states, “this bill undermines fundamental principles of a coherent and consistent approach to health and safety at work and would compromise the health and safety of volunteers.”

Many of our people that actually presented to the Education and Workforce Committee and presented orally to the select committee weren’t just concerned about the health and safety of the paid staff; they were concerned about the health and safety of the volunteers, as well. One last quote that I’d ask your indulgence that I read out here, Mr Assistant Speaker, is from the Cancer Society of New Zealand. They said, “Excluding certain volunteer-involving organisations goes against the principles of the [Health and Safety at Work] Act that workers have the right to go home safely after work (the pay scale is irrelevant) and the cost of compliance cannot be more important than the health and safety of the workers.” That is the crux of it. Every single New Zealander wherever they work is important to this country. We need to take it really seriously here in this House that we keep their health and safety paramount. Thank you.

Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you very much. I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on this Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. Before I start my contribution, I want to genuinely thank the member across from me, Harete Hipango, for bringing this bill to the House. We did support it in the first reading to get to select committee to hear from submitters, and, genuinely, New Zealand First supports the intent of what it is that you are trying to fix right here.

As you’ve already articulated, and as we’ve already said to you, we won’t be supporting this moving forward, and there’s good reason—

💬 Andrew Bayly: Why?

Well, if you listen, I’ll tell you, Mr Bayly. That reason is quite simply because we don’t think it goes far enough when it looks at the unintended consequences that the employment relations health and safety amendment bill originally did. Now, I can say that New Zealand First was the only party in the House, in 2016, when this bill was actually introduced, that didn’t support the bill. Now, we 100 percent support the health and well-being of every single New Zealander going to work, whether it be for volunteer or other, but there was a number of unintended consequences that this bill raised. This was one of those unintended consequences.

It was actually the select committee that I sat on with Mr Bayly where we had serious debates about some of these unintended consequences, and there was agreement even in select committee about some of these issues. But when we put our Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) forward to try and fix up some of these unintended consequences, we were actually shot down. Now, we’re not opposing your bill for that reason, and we’re not playing petty politics here, but we believe, as part of the five-year review, we need to look at a wider scope of work to tidy up some of those anomalies.

Let’s just go through this bill—what this actually does. Where you’ve got two identical volunteer, not-for-profit organisations—and there’s nearly 100,000 of these types of operations around the country—but where we’ve got two identical operations working next to each other, one which has 100 percent volunteer organisation, with no persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU), there is no legal culpability for any of the people giving their time in service to this specific industry. And there are hundreds of examples, from football clubs and rugby clubs and fishing clubs and hunting and tramping clubs, netball clubs, etc. There’s a plethora of them, but an identical organisation set up right next door with the same structure—with the exception that they’ve got a chairperson that’s got a remunerated salary, because they do all the rosters or they submit all of the council application forms; they’re having a paid position. We’ve got one organisation over here which, if there is any issue with health and safety, then nobody is legally culpable, but just because we’ve actually put somebody with a small remunerative package, or up to 2½ full-time staff, this person is legally culpable for any mishap or accident in a workplace. Now, that is an anomaly. It wasn’t designed to be that way, that you could have identical situations in a volunteer situation. So in discussions with the Minister at great length as part of this review, this specific issue will come up again, and it will be looked at seriously as to how we can best tidy it up.

The other unintended consequence, which is in alignment with this one here but comes up in section 37 of the principal Act, is around PCBUs, where a PCBU is also an employee or a worker. In this situation, where you’ve got a husband and wife, a de facto relationship, or a partnership in a farm—and I’ll use the farm as an example, because it’s a great example—where the husband and the wife in this situation are both a PCBU and a worker. Say the husband goes out on his quad bike, doesn’t put his helmet on, and has an accident where he’s seriously harmed; automatically, the wife becomes the PCBU, because he was the worker that was injured. The wife, who’s still alive, the wife that is dealing with being a grieving partner, is legally culpable for that. Now, that’s not the intention of the Health and Safety at Work Act. This was raised with Minister Michael Woodhouse when we were going through this. This was raised at great length with National. There are a number of these minor technical issues—unintended consequences—that this bill has, and to fix this up today right now leaves a whole lot of other work that still needs to be addressed.

So we’re not turning our back on this at all. In fact, we believe that more work needs to be done, and we need to see collegiality across the House when it does come up. These are real situations, not undermining the fact that every single member in this House, every single person in this country, every worker and every volunteer in this nation wants to see our workers and our volunteers come home safely every single day. We do have an abominable record for the harm that is caused in workplaces, largely in the non-voluntary sector, but in certain sectors—agriculture and forestry, etc.—we need to do as much as we can, and I go back to that point. New Zealand First did not support the bill going through the House. We were the only party that didn’t, not because we don’t want to see safety in the workplaces but because we wanted to make this bill better than what it was. We knew that the National Party agreed with our concerns. We talked about it at great length, but when an SOP was put forward, they were shut down.

Another unintended consequence of the current bill right now is that when it comes to very, very important personal protective equipment (PPE), we all understand that an employer should ensure that their employees have got their personal protective equipment in—their PPE. But under this bill, no levy or charge can be put on the employee. Now, I agree that every single employee should have protective equipment given to them free. However, with no personal responsibility being labelled on the worker, they lose their equipment, they give their equipment away, and it is an absolute cost to a business—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: How is that to do with volunteers?

—that we could tidy up. By fair wear and tear and looking at the personal protective equipment—I mean, Mr Woodhouse, you’ve got your head in the sand if you don’t understand.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: No, I just know what this bill says. It’s got nothing to do with what you’re talking about.

When you talk to the businesses, this is a problem. This is—I’m talking exactly about why our support for this bill is not going forward. It is very important for people to understand some of the other unintended consequences that the National Party didn’t pick up on when they had the opportunity to. You were playing petty politics, and we want to fix this bill up to make it a better bill, moving forward.

The submissions were exactly as we said—what we wanted to hear from was those voluntary organisations. We had a small but significant amount of submissions put forward. Going through and reading those, I heard those for and I read those against. I have to say that I think some of the intent behind some of the unintended consequences of this was a little bit lost. People were diminishing and saying that people that were working inside a voluntary organisation were somehow less protected, and that’s not true. The reality is that every single person in a workplace has got an absolute duty of care, a responsibility, to their own health and safety as well as that of other people. This bill didn’t undermine that at all, and I think that was misconstrued.

What we think is the right pathway moving forward is that at the five-year mark of this current legislation, we give it a serious review. We as a Parliament should come together to look at this objectively, to think about the well-being and welfare of people. There is a heck of a lot of bureaucratic overload put on inside this legislation and I think we can cut through some of that red tape and put genuine health and safety first. Those costs are, obviously, being put on to some of these workplaces, and some of them, dare I say it, are a little bit ridiculous. I mean, it’s great if you own a scaffolding company, but I’ve just built a house, and I had to have scaffolding all the way up around my house for about three months at some ridiculous cost because of the concerns over health and safety.

So I think there is some clarity and some tidying-up of some of that bureaucratic overload, but there are just those unintended consequences. So, again, to the member Harete Hipango: for bringing this bill to the House, we thank you. It’s not a lost cause. It’s not a lost bill. New Zealand First is still there. We haven’t changed our view on it, but we believe that more work needs to be done, because I believe this issue is larger than just this one point that has been raised. So thank you to the House for listening, and we will continue our work together.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the second reading of the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. I want to start by congratulating my colleague Harete Hipango for her bill coming to this stage, and it came to this stage because, as we have just heard from the New Zealand First member Clayton Mitchell, they supported it in the first reading. It’s quite disappointing to see that they are not supporting it any more. I was actually waiting to hear a reason from that member for not supporting it any more, and the only reason I heard was exactly what the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway said, which was that they are doing a big review. The review is going to happen in 2020—that’s what we hear—but here is an opportunity to fix this right now, because we have this bill in front of us. So why miss this opportunity and wait until 2020? I couldn’t see any reasonable argument for that in that whole speech.

This bill is not intended to undermine the health and safety of anybody—volunteers or workers—because when we passed the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, which came into effect in April 2016, at that time we decided to exclude volunteer organisations. We decided to exclude clubs and recreational bodies, and at that time we were not saying that we were undermining the health and safety of those volunteers. No, the reason was because we knew that those volunteer organisations have a special contribution that they make to our community, and we wanted to make sure that they are able to continue to make the contribution that they make. Volunteer organisations are there to help others in the community, and we have full confidence in them to look after themselves.

Health and safety rules apply to everybody—yes, everybody has to take care of health and safety rules. So to say that volunteer organisations don’t comply with health and safety is not acceptable. The reason for exclusion from the definition of a “person conducting a business or undertaking” is, this time, by allowing them to have somebody working for a maximum of 100 hours. Volunteer organisations allow people to participate in the community in the real sense to provide services that they really believe in and that they are passionate about.

During the select committee process, as we have already heard from various members, we received 34 submissions, and I heard a member saying that it was a small number of submissions. In my view, 34 submissions is a reasonable number for this very simple and pragmatic bill. Of course, we can’t compare this with the End of Life Choice Bill, but if we compare this bill with other bills and compare the numbers of submissions, I think we received a reasonable number of submissions. There was a reasonable amount of interest in this bill. Twelve submitters spoke to the Education and Workforce Committee, and, as the select committee chair, I am really thankful to them for their contribution. I also want to thank all members on the committee as well for their contribution.

The important thing to note here is that this is to allow volunteer organisations to deliver and to be able to do what they actually are intending to do. So there are various ways they can make their services efficient, and that is what we want to do through this legislation.

For example, if volunteer organisations are working in the field of providing help to victims of domestic violence, they’ll be out there, talking to clients and taking them to various places. It could be the Ministry of Social Development, for financial assistance, or it could be a safe house or it could be a lawyer. So they are really good at doing those things. Maybe they need somebody to do some work in their office—just simple admin work. Maybe they need somebody to actually come and advise them on health and safety, for argument’s sake. So the health and safety of those volunteers is important too, and maybe they are not able to find a volunteer who is able to come in and advise them on health and safety. These people are dealing with these other people that are going through some really traumatic situations and maybe they need some counselling.

So this would have allowed these volunteer organisations to have the ability to have someone come and work for a maximum of 100 hours to provide such services, or it could be just applying for funding, because these volunteer organisations do struggle with funding applications because they don’t have the expertise and they have to apply to 50 or 20 different donors or funders to be successful—to get enough money to keep going.

So I think the Government members need to reconsider their approach, and I challenge Government members. There is still time, because we are going through the second reading—we haven’t finished the second reading. So I’m asking—I’m urging—Government members to reconsider their approach, because there are 1.2 million people in our country that are contributing their time as volunteers. They’ll be really grateful—these 1.2 million people will be really grateful to Government members if they consider supporting them. But no, I don’t see any response from Government members sitting there, and it looks like they have already decided. New Zealand First, of course, supported this bill in the first reading, and now, of course, they can’t support it. We know that, because they have to vote in line with Labour and the Greens. So I think it comes down to that.

Why wait until 2020? This is the opportunity. So I’m urging Government members to reconsider their approach. There is still time; we are going through the second reading. It’s really disappointing to see that the Government is not supporting this very important bill, and I support this bill and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koe to the member Harete Hipango for bringing your first member’s bill. It’s always a great privilege to have a member’s bill before the House. We’re not supporting your bill tonight, but I commend you for the work that you’ve done on it and the work in the Education and Workforce Committee. I just wanted to talk a little bit about what the bill actually does—it actually amends section 17 of the Health and Safety at Work Act—just so that the people sitting at home listening tonight and thinking “What the hell are they talking about?” might actually get an understanding of exactly what the change is that’s being proposed.

The meaning of a PCBU—I think people may have heard that used a few times tonight: it stands for “a person conducting a business or undertaking”. It was introduced in the 2015 Act. Currently, there’s a section which includes a definition of a volunteer association. The Health and Safety at Work Act as it stands excludes volunteer organisations that are solely run by volunteers. So that’s the Act as it stands. Now, this bill before us tonight amends that section and extends that exclusion—so away from just volunteer organisations that are run by volunteers—to associations that employ staff for fewer than 100 hours a week. I haven’t heard an explanation—and I didn’t sit on the select committee for the whole time that this bill was discussed; I came in at the end—as to why 100 hours a week; where that came from. Was it plucked out of the air? Was it based on some sort of analysis? I’d be interested for any further speakers to actually expand on that, because it is a curious number.

So the bill as it stands tonight before us would exempt volunteer associations that employ staff for fewer than 100 hours a week from their person conducting a business or undertaking obligations that stand under the Health and Safety at Work Act. So what are those obligations? Those obligations include not levying workers for protective equipment or requiring them to provide their own. So that means that if you’re doing something that is not safe that you need protective equipment for, your employer or the association that you volunteer or work for actually is required to provide you with that. That means that they’d be exempt from that, so people would have to provide their own protective equipment. The obligations include a duty to engage with workers on health and safety—well, goodness, that’s kind of a bit basic—and a duty to ensure as far as reasonably practicable that workplaces are without health and safety risks. So could somebody tell me across the House tonight what is onerous about that, and why should there be an exemption for volunteer organisations that employ staff for fewer than 100 hours per week from those obligations?

I’ve got a couple of questions for the National Party tonight. Does this reflect the policy of the National Party? I think the Minister, earlier, when he spoke, raised the question: is this the direction that they’re going in, and is this going to move into other areas, such as small business? So the former Minister in this area is actually sitting in the House, and it would be great to hear whether or not it is National Party policy and what he thinks about it, because it’s not onerous. In fact, when the eight submissions that were in support of this bill—which were nearly all from smaller sports and recreation clubs and smaller special-interest groups that were actually involved in things like animal welfare, etc.—came to express their concern about the compliance burden arising from their obligations as PCBUs, which is, again, persons conducting a business or undertaking, they were asked to talk about actual compliance matters that they were struggling with or that directly impacted on their activities. Now, my understanding is—and please correct me if I’m wrong; I didn’t hear those submissions personally—that they struggled to say what those onerous compliance burdens actually were, and that the issue was more a perception issue.

The Minister mentioned this again tonight—that it was a perception issue, and that it did raise some issues around what the perceptions were, but they couldn’t say what their compliance issues actually were. I’ve just read out to the House tonight what the obligations are: protective equipment, engaging with workers, having a safe workplace. Isn’t that what we should all have in New Zealand? Isn’t that what we should all aspire to? There should be no exceptions.

So I struggle to understand what it is that is actually trying to be achieved here through this legislation, unless—and this is where I’ve got real concerns—as a couple of the submitters have suggested, there is a second tier of health and safety that is being sought here which, essentially, creates a second tier of workers or people who are working in volunteer organisations where the standards that are expected where they work are different to other workplaces. Now, is that what we want in this country? As Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said tonight, “At this time in our history as a country, surely we do not want to be going in that direction.” Not after Pike River, which should have taught all of us a fundamental lesson that we should never ever compromise on health and safety in our workplaces ever again, and that we should never ever want to dilute it in any way ever again.

The Cancer Society of New Zealand talks about the devaluing of voluntary work and voluntary associations that this bill signals, and their fear is that it signals—and I am desperately concerned that it signals this; and this is what I want to know from the National Party—a policy shift towards a two-tier system for health and safety. I can’t believe—well, I hope that I can’t believe—that the former Minister Michael Woodhouse would ever support that. Therefore, I am perplexed as to why this bill was actually brought before the House in the first place.

This is the second bill tonight that I’ve spoken on which really talks about culture. It goes to a culture change issue and the importance of a culture that is around health and safety where it becomes endemic in our country, where moving away from highest possible health and safety standards is just not tolerated. This bill moves towards a situation where it becomes tolerated for a certain sector of our workforce. We cannot tolerate that as a country. That’s why we oppose this bill.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much. I’m pleased to take a short call. I absolutely congratulate my colleague Harete Hipango on bringing a members’ bill into this House. On one level I can understand the rationale behind wanting to make it easier for volunteer organisations. The rationale put up has been that it is about making it easier, removing the heavy—and what my colleague Harete Hipango sees as an overdone—burden of compliance; for volunteer organisations to be exempt from health and safety in work law so that they can retain and recruit more staff, volunteers, and be able to pay volunteers, and still remain as a volunteer organisation for the purposes of that exemption under law.

I have some sympathy, not so much with the rationale but the intentions behind it, because we all in this House understand the importance and the backbone of volunteer work in our community and in our country. And that has always been the case, and particularly picking up on the examples that have been used of those types of volunteer organisations that might be a focus of the member’s bill, thinking of sole-charge schools, te kōhanga reo and playcentres. Even in that specific description of the types of organisations, I have alarm bells ringing. We will not be supporting a bill that removes that duty of care and that compliance, removes the importance for every worker, every volunteer to come under health and safety regulations and health and safety standards—and really what my previous colleague Clare Curran indicated, which is that culture and urgency of health and safety.

I will even concede that the member Harete Hipango does not want to see people unsafe—absolutely understand that. It is simply that this bill is not the way that we will address that perceived compliance. And I absolutely urge us all to take note of the select committee report recommendations which says instead we must provide those volunteer organisations with the training, with the knowledge, with the support to ensure compliance. What really struck me, reading through this very short bill and the report, was thinking of those volunteers who might be at risk and vulnerable with such leeway—vulnerable if it is even something as simple as not being able to speak up about some safety measure that they know—or that they might not even know—should be there and that adds a further risk of danger or of being unsafe in the workplace in any way.

I’m thinking about those volunteers who—and it may not at all come from bad malice intention from the volunteer organisation, but it simply would mean a lesser safety standard. And so I’m thinking of those particular volunteers as well and that we actually don’t end up even helping the organisation by removing, by lessening and watering down, the health and safety standards.

I think I wanted to pick up on—I was quite confused, actually, by the term “community purposes”, and then it appears that advisers also said that because that is not clearly defined, it could create uncertainty in the law. So my understanding is the term “community purposes” has been proposed in the member’s bill to be changed under the Health and Safety at Work Act, and so immediately I think I want to support the committee’s flag of the possible confusion.

Now, I think it might have been my colleague Jan Tinetti who raised the issue of the submissions and that there were 34 written submissions: eight were in favour, four neutral, and 22 opposed. I think—correct me if I’m wrong—but I think Jan Tinetti was raising that those submissions that opposed perhaps have been unfairly bagged as larger voluntary organisations who have a head start. But I think my colleague Jan Tinetti went on to highlight that that’s not strictly true and wanted to bat that back. So I did pick that up, reading through this select committee report, that submitters were clear that more targeted training is what needs to happen as opposed to using a legal avenue and removing legal requirements for health and safety.

So the Greens are very clear: we want all workers—all workers—to be protected. We want that duty of care to apply for all organisations. The bill doesn’t align with the Green Party policy on ensuring that all workers have the right to work in a safe and healthy workplace and that all paid employees should be covered by health and safety legislation, because we just start to tip it far too much in the wrong direction. So a short call from me tonight. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. We will be opposing this bill.

This is a split call—five minutes. I call the Hon Alfred Ngaro.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s an honour to take a call in the second reading for my friend and colleague Harete Hipango, as we are talking about the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. Having previously been the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector, the sector is one that is often misunderstood and underrepresented in many different ways. There are 157 million hours per annum that are gifted to this community—to this nation—every single year. That’s quite significant: 114,132 not-for-profit organisations and 27,900 registered charitable trusts. That’s really significant. The significant point that I want to focus on in this speech, in regards to this bill, is that 90 percent of those who are part of those organisations are volunteers—only 10 percent are paid staff. And the biggest challenge, and those of us who have run not-for-profit organisations know, which relates to this bill, is the challenge to get certain expertise. It could be legal, it could be accounting—financial, in fact. Those are the skill sets that have the most burden on those organisations in regards to having that support.

So why does this bill becomes significant? I want to point to three reasons why. First of all, this was a bill that came from the community. There were a number of providers who said, “Look, with this bill around the Health and Safety at Work Act, there was a need to understand the unintended consequences of that bill.” And, in particular, it was around the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU), and I know that the member the Hon Clare Curran has talked about that and the PCBU. She asked the question “So where was the burden?” First of all, I want to also declare that Marama Davidson was talking about the duty of care. This does not remove the duty of care. Where the burden lies, in regard to this bill, is in particular around the PCBU. It’s the personal liability.

Now, for someone who’s an accountant who wants to contribute maybe 10 to 15 hours to a not-for-profit organisation—it could be a refuge; it could be a welfare organisation—they know that they need that support. Back of office becomes critically important to the integrity of that organisation. So when they offer their services, they purely want to do it, come in, do the books, and leave. Under the current legislation, they are now liable for $300,000 under personal liability, and as an organisation the organisation is liable for $600,000. So what we are asking for is discretion here. It does not remove the duty of care of responsibility to supply those sorts of services, whether it be counselling, youth work, or social work. This is purely around the back of office support services that are critically important.

And that’s the submission that you would have heard. Members on the opposite side talked about small organisations. It was almost demeaning those small organisations. Well, that’s the point of the bill: a private member’s bill is all about small changes—tweaks that happen to a major piece of legislation. It’s those tweaks that actually help because they come out of unintended consequences. The message that we want to send to our communities out there, who have come to us in this regard, to my good friend and colleague Harete Hipango, is about the fact that this unintended consequence will impact the service and the generosity of support that we want to give.

I want to tell the members on the other side, and those who are listening, that we now have at the moment 157 million hours, but we have a reduction over the period of the last 10 years of those who are volunteering as far as personnel. They are reducing because they’re time poor; they don’t have the opportunity to give as much time as they used to. However, what they will do, in the time that is available to them, is they want to be able to enter into that organisation, provide their service and their support, and be able to leave. Under this legislation at the moment, what it will currently do is put the burden of responsibility—and, no, I’ll just remind the member across there who’s shouting—the personal liability of $300,000. It’s not too hard to ask that there be discretion here that would allow for those. It does not mean that they will be in situations to provide a service that could jeopardise the integrity of that organisation; it’s simply to support them. That’s what this bill was. We would hope that New Zealand First would see that. They supported it at the first reading to go to the select committee. When it came out of the select committee, yes, it did say that they didn’t want it; however, it is only a small bill. Members’ bills are only small changes—tweaks—to the biggest legislation.

I just want to reiterate, and I hope that in the few hours that we have left—well, we probably won’t, because we won’t finish the reading of this bill, but maybe this is important because it’ll be given consideration over the next week.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.