Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill, which I hope reaches its legislative conclusion this evening, is another small step towards making New Zealand workplaces safer and reducing the unacceptable burden of harm that falls on many New Zealand workers. I think that every member of this House would wish to see that New Zealand workplaces were places that are safe and that keep New Zealand workers healthy. Yet for anyone who is engaged with this issue, we know that we have a great deal more work to do if we want to reach that ambition.

To take just one measure, that is the measure of fatalities across New Zealand workplaces, twice as many people in New Zealand workplaces die on average per capita as in Australia, and four times as many as in the United Kingdom. That increased burden of harm replicates across different levels of harm, whether it is serious accidents in the workplace or some of the horrific long-term illnesses that afflict many people, often many years after they have finished at workplaces. There are many things that we have to do across our workplace health and safety system if we want to continue making improvements in the space, but there is absolutely no doubt—based on all of the evidence in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world—that one of the most important things that we can do is to improve worker participation, including through the ability of workers to have health and safety representatives to put forward their concerns in the workplace.

That is why this was a Labour Party manifesto commitment, and one that we are proud to complete tonight as this bill makes its way through the House. I do want to, at this juncture, thank all members who have participated in this bill’s passage. Those members on the Education and Workforce Committee and members in the House have contributed to the debate from all sides. The select committee, in particular those members of the public and organisations who submitted on the bill, and, of course, the Government officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment who helped to prepare and support this bill through the House.

I’ve been relatively clear, in my speeches on this bill, that this isn’t the biggest move that we’ve ever made on workplace health and safety. It’s a modest, additional measure that we believe will make a positive impact. And, actually, one of the things I want to say at the outset is something that I hope is positive and collegial, which is that this bill builds off the work of the Health and Safety at Work Act that was, in fact, passed by the previous Government. Now, the Health and Safety at Work Act was a response to the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy, which itself was obviously set up to deal with the tragedy of the 29 men who lost their lives at Pike River. The royal commission absolutely affirmed the importance of worker participation and health and safety representatives within the system. The law was based on the model legislation from Australia and, when it was introduced to this House, gave the ability for all workers—at whatever size of workplace it is—to be able to request a health and safety representative or a health and safety committee. It was only during the passage of the bill through the House that the previous Government made a change to exempt those workplaces with fewer than 20 employees from those workers having that right to be able to request a representative or a health and safety committee.

Andrew Bayly: How many worked in the mine, Minister?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The member asked how many were working in a mine, as if a mine is the only kind of workplace that the Health and Safety at Work Act covers. This really goes to the very point about the fact that our Government does not believe that there is a well-founded justification for the exemption that was brought in. That’s because we know that the burden of harm applies across workplaces both large and small. It is possible for people to develop occupational illness. It is possible for people to be injured. It is possible for people to be exposed to risks, whether they are in a workplace of 18 people or 22 people. In our view, therefore, there is no justification for saying to one workplace of 22 people that those workers have a right to request a health and safety representative to bring forward their views and make them safer, but not to the workplace next door of 18 people. It is about the risks that workers face and it is about the moral burden; the moral case here that it is workers who face the burden of that harm. It is workers who are carrying out the work in workplaces, who are the ones who face the risk of becoming unwell, of being injured, or of being killed.

They are also the ones who have the knowledge—this is the point about worker participation and health and safety representative participation. Those workers are the ones who have the knowledge of what is happening within their workplaces, who understand the nature of the risks, and often have the ideas and the direct front-line experience to be able to participate and put forward the positive solutions that can make that workplace safer and, in fact, generally more productive for everyone when they are given the opportunity to do that.

So the small, proportionate change that the bill does make—it’s two things. Firstly, just to remove that exemption so that those workers can request a health and safety representative or a health and safety committee. The words I use there are important in terms of understanding what the bill does or doesn’t do, because at times in the debate, it has been presented that it is a compulsion for every workplace to have a health and safety representative or a health and safety committee, and that is simply not the case. It gives workers the ability to make that request.

It is my expectation—based on the experience of Australia and based on what we see happen in New Zealand—that all small workplaces will not request the health and safety representative. In fact, I even doubt that most will. But I think that in those cases where those workers believe it would make a difference and would make them safer, that they should have the right and the ability to do that and then to work constructively with their employer through those mechanisms to build a safer workplace.

The second thing that the bill does, as an associated change, is to remove the current provisions within the legislation for the designation of high-risk industries. In the committee stage of the debate, the Hon Michael Woodhouse—who, of course, was associated with the passage of the first bill; was the sponsoring Minister, in fact—reminded the House of some of the absurdities that were created by that situation when he reopened the debate we had at the time of the Health and Safety at Work Act passage of the risks of worm farms, which were classified as a high-risk industry over and above certain other agricultural industries where it was known that there were these high levels of harm that occurred.

Effectively, what the member was inadvertently pointing out there is that by saying that only small workplaces where there is a high-risk industry that has been identified by officials or the Government, you automatically draw an arbitrary line that isn’t actually always borne out in practice. The previous Government found itself in that position, where it had to explain during the passage of the bill why the workers at a small business that had worm farms would be able to have a health and safety representative but workers in other kinds of businesses where there were real and extant risks would not have that same right.

We don’t think that the case is there to draw that artificial distinction. So by removing the exemption of small workplaces where workers cannot currently request a health and safety representative or a committee, we do away with the need to have the additional bureaucracy and the additional arbitrary limitation of only high-risk industries being able to request a health and safety representative.

We have heard as well, during the course of the debate, from the Opposition, some concern about the level of cost that might apply where a health and safety representative or a committee is established. It is true that in some of those cases, there will be some additional cost which comes into effect as a result of that. Generally speaking, providing those sort of representative functions will take a little bit of time and might take a little bit of money.

What we never hear from the other side of the House is a recognition that there is a cost on the other side as well; there is a cost in terms of human harm. There is actually an enormous economic burden that occurs across New Zealand workplaces because of the levels of harm and illness that occur in our workplaces that, by many, many multiples—many, many multiples—outdo the level of investment that is required to give workers in the workplace the ability to have their say and participate in healthier workplaces through representative structures like health and safety representatives or committees.

So I come back to where I started: by noting that this is a modest change to the Health and Safety at Work Act, but it is an important one that follows through on a Labour Party manifesto commitment. It is one that is founded in the principle that workers who face the burden of harm in their workplaces—regardless of the size of that business—should have the ability to request and be represented in their workplace, and have their health and safety concerns heard and be able to work constructively for workplaces that are fair and safe and decent for everyone within them. That is the vision that we have, and that is why I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There he is, bold as brass—the Minister Michael Wood, who has, amazingly, been stood down as the Minister for one portfolio, but carries on as if nothing has changed and he continues on as Minister of employment, delivering his speeches. It doesn’t matter if you have a clear conflict of interest that hasn’t been managed properly—no worries! Under Chris Hipkins, it just carries on. Maybe he might get round eventually to selling his shares, and then maybe he might be reinstated—who knows? Anything is possible in this Government.

So here we have the health and safety bill that we’re dealing with, the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if just once this Minister and this Government came along to the House and wouldn’t this just be amazing if they came along to the House one day with a bill that was to reduce the costs that small businesses were facing? If they just once—just once—came along and said, “Look, we’re just conscious of the fact that business is tough and that there are enormous costs being applied in order for these small businesses”—mum and dad - owned operations—“who are struggling to survive against rising costs and overwhelming pressures in terms of the interest rates, the rates that they have to pay, and everything that they have to deal with. Competition is tough, and they’re struggling to get by.”

Just once—once—could you imagine if this Labour Government would come along with a piece of legislation that said, “We recognise that it’s difficult out there, and we want to take a little bit of the pressure off you and reduce the costs that you have to face in your business.”—just once. Never—never—will you see that from this Government. All you ever see is legislation that comes along and says, “Here’s a problem that we’re going to fix by putting some more costs on to your business.”

Now, of course, everybody in this House is desirous of improving the record of this country and the people in this country in terms of workplace accidents. Since the previous National Government introduced the health and safety at work legislation, there have been hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on WorkSafe, on extra regulations, and on everything that every New Zealander can see in terms of the huge effort made around health and safety. All the cones on our roads, all the scaffolding on our buildings—everywhere you look, there has been hundreds of millions of dollars poured in to try to improve our health and safety outcomes in our workplaces, and the sad reality is that we’ve made only modest improvements.

So I would have thought the one question that a Minister of health and safety would be asking himself is: have we got the measures right, and what are we doing that’s working and what isn’t working?

Instead of doing that, when we look at the regulatory impact statement on this bill, it basically just says—and this is part of the problem with this Government. You’re meant to have a Treasury that’s meant to be looking carefully at regulations and doing a cost-benefit analysis. What it says, basically, is that “this is in the Labour Party manifesto in 2020 and it’s going to happen”. There’s actually no real evidence either way, and this is it, and the option is just this, basically, and that’s what we’re going to do. So that’s about the depth and sophistication of the analysis that’s been applied here.

So all I’m conscious of is the fact that what we’ve got here from Michael Wood—six times he was asked and six times he didn’t deal with one particular issue. On this matter, he has brought a piece of legislation into the House, which nowhere have they indicated that there is an immediate problem with small businesses around health and safety that will be solved by insisting that if one worker—if you have a business with three employees, for example, it only takes one worker to say, “I want to be the health and safety rep.”, and that means two days off work every year, going off to a training, and all the costs associated with that. That’s fine. But the point is, it’s no big deal. It’s just another couple of thousand; what does it matter? It’s just a bit of extra cost; it doesn’t matter.

But unfortunately, when it comes on top of very rapid increase in the minimum wages, an extra week of sick leave, an extra public holiday, and all the other things that the Government has added on, that’s fine—that’s fine. Then they look around and then they wonder why everything is more expensive for New Zealanders and they wonder why small businesses are struggling. And they wonder why, if we were to take the example of the mental health of small business owners being—all the surveys indicate massive issues. Massive issues there. When we look at health and safety at work, does anybody consider that as an issue, and the pressure that has been added on to those small business owners by this? Has that been factored into the considerations and thought? No; not at all.

So the only thing the Government can do is come along each week with a new piece of legislation that adds an extra layer of cost on to those small businesses, which, many of them—some of them are doing fantastically well, and good luck to them, but most of them are struggling under a barrage of extra costs, under a time of rapid inflation and poorly managed economy.

So my plea to the Government is to actually take a wider look at this and just once consider that maybe there is something they could do to take some pressure off those businesses in terms of the regular costs that they face. And then ask the basic question: of all the hundreds of millions that have been invested into WorkSafe and into health and safety, are we getting the best results for that investment? Have we got the settings right? That’s a reasonable question to ask, but I don’t see any real introspection and consideration on that. All we’ve got is an ill thought through manifesto promise in 2020 that is being rammed through the House with little consultation with the small business sector, and little real effort to understand the reality of the situation on the ground, whereby if you’re a small operation, three or four employees, and one person decides they want to be the health and safety rep, and if there are five employees and they want to have a health and safety committee, that’s all well and good.

But it’s just one thing after another, after another, after another, for those small businesses. And we on this side of the House are conscious of that. We’re concerned about that. We do want to do the best we can for all New Zealand workers, and one of the best things we can do is encourage those businesses to be strong and profitable and continue to provide opportunities. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. This is an excellent piece of legislation, and I’ll tell you why: because it makes New Zealand workplaces safer. Be they big workplaces or small workplaces, you will be able to have a health and safety rep after this piece of legislation is passed tonight.

We’ve heard a few comments from the other side about the value of this legislation, about the cost of this legislation to businesses. I would ask, I proffer the question: what is the cost of going to work and coming home safely? What is the cost to an individual of being safe at work? I would say that that’s worth a lot.

When you survey small businesses, they constantly say that the most valuable thing in their entire business is there workforce. This is what this bill protects: it protects their workforce.

Why would a health and safety representative be requested in a workforce? The reason that one person would request it is because they have a concern about health and safety. I say to them: good on you. Thank you for putting your hand up to be a health and safety representative. Thank you for taking that step to making our workplaces safer. The National Party doesn’t care about your individual concern, but we in the Labour Party do. That’s why we’re passing this excellent piece of legislation, in order to look after you and your health and safety.

Just a point on Pike River: the National Party will know, because they passed the primary piece of legislation, that the Health and Safety at Work Act is based on a fundamental principle of a PCBU—or a person conducting a business or undertaking. At Pike River, there were many, many PCBUs. Different contractors, big ones, small ones, lots of different ones. I don’t know if all of those would have been over 20 people, and I can guarantee you that those on the other side wouldn’t know either. This means that every single business or person undertaking work at a place like Pike River could have a health and safety representative.

I think that’s worth something. This Government will stand up for every single worker, whether they’re a big workplace or a small workplace, to make sure that they stay safe.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I love talking about workplace accidents, because I think people on the other side there are actually showing a few workplace accidents lately. I just wish someone in their caucus might have put up their hand and said, “We’ve got some things going wrong here.” But do we have anyone in the Labour caucus stand up and say that? No, I don’t think so. Oh, no.

But anyway, coming back to this bill. This is a classic, tick the box to the 2020 election manifesto. “When’s the next election? Oh, it’s getting a bit close, isn’t it? Oh, we’d better ram this through.” And guess who’s ramming it through! Well, the latest casualty of workplace accidents: the Hon Michael Wood. I was just thinking of extending that, but I thought, no, I’ll just localise that to him.

But the issue is this is a poor piece of legislation. And no wonder Michael Wood is pushing it through, because, of course, he is known to have very strong ties to certain organisations that will want to bring about these sorts of changes, and, personally, I don’t think for the better. Just for the record, Pike River employed 174 people. So even under the so-called National proposals of 20 or more, there would have been multiple chances, multiple opportunities, and an absolute requirement for a health and safety committee to be set up under the proposed and current Act. So the proposition—and I think the Minister was actually showing poor form talking about Pike River in the context that this would have helped this situation. I am not sure that is the situation, because if you have 20 or more employees, then there is an automatic right to establish a representative or a committee.

So just talking about this bill. The Minister, when we were questioning him at the committee of the whole House—and I’ve got to say, I wasn’t on the select committee, but I was on the original committee that passed the original Act. I put to him the situation that this bill will lead to. You have an owner of the business, mum and dad, been working and grafting for 20 years, got a printing firm or something—I don’t know—and they happen to have one employee. And the one employee suddenly one day wakes up and goes, “Hey, Mr and Mrs, I think we should have a health and safety representative.” So that one person could form a health and safety representative. And, of course, they’d go away and do all the training. There is no need for that situation. The underlying premise that Labour keep assuming is that there’s this confrontational issue between owners of businesses and their staff.

As the member quite rightly pointed out before, owners of businesses know that the important part of their business is always their staff. This assumption that they’re so contentious, it’s such an ugly relationship that people can’t start talking about health and safety and feel unsafe for bringing it up with either the manager or the owners—that proposition is wrong. You could have the absurd—and this is what the Minister said wasn’t absurd—situation where a company with one employee ends up having a health and safety representative comprising that one employee. That is ridiculous.

The issue I kept asking the Minister in the committee of the whole House is why do you not believe that a majority should rule? After all, we act in this House here on majority rules. The Labour Party control Parliament and they will ram through this piece of legislation. It doesn’t matter what I say or what Mr Goldsmith says, and that is the normal course of events. So the way we dealt with it is that in the Act we said 20 or more could require it, and the issue is that you end up with a piece of legislation which is absurd and it is wrong. Of course we want to see safer health practices in workplaces. There shouldn’t be an issue with that. People should be able to request to go away on a course, and it costs what? It costs $1,300 to $1,800. I don’t think any businesses would have a problem with that.

But the one thing that the Act has, which is done away with now in this bill, is that it did highlight those industries of particular risk, and it is wrong to remove that. Those businesses acting in higher-risk categories, like our farming and our building and construction sectors, should be subject to much higher rigorous enforcement around health and safety. But this has been done away with in this bill, and that is wrong, and the concept that you could have one—what about if you have four employees or five employees? Why shouldn’t the majority decide? Why should only one person, even though 99 percent of other people in that same business disagree with that one person? Why should that one person, who may be a zealot or may have other ulterior motives, be the one that is the sole determinant of what goes on in that business? It should be by agreement of the employees. And if their employers agree with it, fine. But under this rule, one person—and it could be a recalcitrant person, and I’m not saying it may not be for the right reasons, but it could be for other ulterior motives—can shape the future and the arrangements of that business. That is wrong.

And the other thing I’d like to highlight, which came out during the committee of the whole House is that there was meant to be a formal review of the health and safety Act in 2018, and the Minister admitted that that had not taken place, even though that was a legislative requirement. I put it to you, and I put it to the Labour members of this House, that they have not complied with the Act. And luckily for the Government, I do not understand why it has not met the requirements of the Act. They want to push through a new piece of legislation, but they haven’t even met the requirements of the existing legislation. That is fundamentally wrong—fundamentally wrong. And if it was a private enterprise and health and safety came in here and said to Labour, “Why didn’t you review this?”, can you imagine saying, if you’re a company, “I haven’t reviewed my policies since 2018, because I chose not to.”—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Could the member be very careful not to bring the Speaker into the debate.

ANDREW BAYLY: Yup. So if health and safety came in and said to a private enterprise that they hadn’t reviewed their health and safety frameworks, their hazard risks, all those sorts of things, because they’ve chosen not to, that would be a case for being sued by the health and safety committee. So this is wrong, this is a huge point in this legislation, and this bill, in my view, is not going to add significantly to improving health and safety. People should be able to have those conversations. There are already well-intentioned, well-provisioned provisions in the Act, and there is no case that has been demonstrated and no case in the RIS—the regulatory impact statement—that says that this is going to lead to better outcomes. All it’s going to end up with is funny little arrangements that will not necessarily improve the health and safety of New Zealanders. We should be focused on those high-risk industries and making sure they particularly get it right. And, of course, this does away with that in this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. This is yet another commitment, another delivery from the Labour Government in protecting New Zealand workers. It’s not a secret that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of workplace harm—every day we see in the media workers dying, workers being severely injured. This is something that can be easily avoided by putting legislation like this in place, but unfortunately the Opposition over there keep failing to see the simple things, because all it takes is to just go out and talk to these workers and they will tell you everything you need to know. Since bringing in WorkSafe as a regulator, things have improved, but we still have the high rate of workplace injuries compared to other like-minded countries. And this could, again, easily be avoided by just legislating and putting something like this in place. We are a world-class country, we are a First World country effectively, but some of the legislation that we have is not fit for purpose, and this is one of them. Whether you work in a workplace that employs less than 20 or more than 20, it doesn’t matter—it’s all human life, and they all matter equally, and they all have a right to go to work and come back their whānau, to their families, safe. This legislation is just going to help to do that. It’s good legislation; it’s a good bill. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT for the final reading of yet another inane and unnecessary bill from a Government bereft of any business understanding, the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. The idea that businesses of under 20 staff need the Government to make them be responsible is an insult to all employers and shows a patronising contempt for employees. The metaphor of flogging a dead horse is very appropriate: a waste of energy on a lost cause or a situation that cannot be changed, because I know this is going to go through very shortly. The more we talk about the bill—the sheer ridiculousness of it, of why we’re bothering with it, why this Government thought it so important in a time where businesses are struggling to survive, pay wages, and all the other costs that this Government has imposed on them—it’s mind boggling. The fact is that they just don’t get it.

With typical arrogance, if you dare to disagree, you obviously don’t care about workers and are really just a horrible person. We’ve heard that once tonight, at least, and, well, at the last reading the Greens said, “They”—that’s ACT and National—“are happy and willing to accept that number of people not coming home from work, that number of families who lose a member close to them. That is what they are accepting when they stand up in this House and say ‘Everything is fine.’” Yep, so anyone who doesn’t agree with the method of improving safety, anyone who doesn’t agree with what they say, is a horrible person. It’s just totally lacking common sense.

All new regulation should be able to be justified under certain criteria, and they need to pass the test of three basic questions. Number one: what are the problems the bill seeks to solve, and will this bill solve them? The answer is no, it won’t. As the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA) in their excellent, fact-filled submission said, there is no evidence of a problem at all. Small businesses are already doing it. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, employers must have records for all work-related accidents and take reasonable steps to resolve the cause for the future. How mature. The second thing is: what are the costs of the scheme proposed, and do the potential benefits outweigh them? Answer? Short answer: no. Long answer: definitely not; 210,000 training days, trying to get relief workers, special meetings—all stuff that is done already over a cup of tea and a biscuit. Number three: who will bear the costs, and are they fairly shared? Guess who bears the cost—all of the costs?

To continue the animal metaphor, this bill is a dog’s breakfast, a poor piece of work, and it’s a mess. Minister Wood’s inability to answer basic questions about the bill in the committee of the whole House made it obvious that the bill hasn’t been well-thought-out and is a response to appease his union mates, who have a disdain for employers and anyone successful. Increased membership is their only concern; disrupting happy, productive workplaces just collateral damage.

In the committee of the whole House, I asked the Minister whether those people who own their businesses but pay themselves wages and work alongside other employees—maybe in a three-, four-, or five-person cafe—can be health and safety representatives. Due to the fluid nature of their employees, it just makes sense. I still don’t know the answer—I asked three times; I don’t know. His answer was actually, “Again, this is a situation”—this is Minister Wood—“where I think members are trying to find enormously unlikely examples to try and discredit a bill where it is highly unlikely this will occur. I suppose it is the case that if an employer who is working in the workplace in an onanistic fit of health and safety fervour decided he wanted to be a representative to himself, then he might determine to do that.” I must admit I had to look up the word “onanistic”, and I urge members to do the same. It’s “O-N-A-N-I-S-T-I-C”. While I don’t think the term is relevant to this debate, it’s very appropriate in other ways.

The number of businesses with five or fewer employees is huge: 102,000 employees in businesses of one to five; 43,000 of employees in numbers of six to nine. The fact that the Minister doesn’t think that this could become an issue just astounds me. An ex - Labour voter said to me just at the weekend, “I’ve always voted Labour, but never again. They used to care about the worker, but their ideology has changed them.”

The submissions opposed to this bill, such as the EMA and the Motor Trade Association, explained the facts. They weren’t full of the emotive comments and unsubstantiated claims that a divisive subject often brings, but divisiveness has been a hallmark of this Government, and it’s something they’ll be remembered for long after 14 October. You name it: farmers, townies, landlords, tenants, women, men—many other examples that I can save for another day. This one: employees against employers, and it really is so unnecessary.

This bill is yet another example of a Government trying to appear as if they care, looking after their union mates, once again hammering businesses with silly regulation, and not doing a thing to help the workers they purport to care so much about. ACT opposes this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s with real pleasure that I rise to support the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. I stand by all of my statements in previous readings of this bill. We, the Green Party, support what has now been recognised by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a fundamental principle around the right of work to occupational health and safety, as well as the right to bargain collectively, freedom of association, the end of forcing compulsory labour and the abolition of child labour, the elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation. It’s only recently that occupational health and safety has been added to those fundamental rights at the ILO, which is a representative body involving business and unions and Governments.

The vision and why that’s been added there is in recognition that every working person has the right to expect to return home and to return home uninjured at the end of their day’s work and that no one should die or suffer real harm just to make a living and that it’s unacceptable for businesses to see workplace injuries as collateral damage and just a part of doing business, which is not a reality. Many businesses don’t take that approach; many, many businesses recognise the benefits of when staff are safe and able to contribute to their workplace. That is actually the norm, but not the rule.

Has it been mentioned that 64 people died at work in this country last year and an estimated 750 to 900 people were killed by occupational exposure last year? We have, potentially, about 1,000 who have died as a result of trying to earn a living in this country just last year. We had over 30,000 people with injuries that required more than a week away from work. That is just those that come up in ACC data; we know that a significant number of injuries experienced by women do not show up in that data.

So this a significant problem for us as a country. And if, for some of us, we may be a little emotive about this—given how many people don’t come home, actually, I think it’s justified to be a tad emotive about the fact that our regulations and our laws are not preventing that.

Part of what the work out of the Pike River disaster was recognising was that a laissez-faire approach to health and safety does not keep people safe. What was recognised, in terms of the lead up to the change in the law in 2015, the independent task force found that worker participation was a crucial weak link in our health and safety system.

I really just want to challenge what we’ve heard, which sounded like a very rational presentation, that there is no need for this and no evidence supporting it. What we know is that we have far too many deaths. It’s twice—per-head-of-population—the rate of deaths in this country compared to Australia; four times the rate of deaths in this country compared to the UK. We can’t just say that this is just normal. It’s not, and it’s a result of how we are doing business and it can be changed. But the evidence tells us that taking our hands off and just trusting businesses and workers to get this right themselves does not work, and it actually leads to more harm and more deaths.

There is really a huge amount of international and well as domestic research that tells us what does improve health and safety that can help prevent deaths and serious injury, and one of the absolutely key things is worker voice and worker participation. That is what this bill is addressing. It is using the evidence to actually help improve a very significant problem. We know that—

Toni Severin: What’s your evidence?

JAN LOGIE: We hear things like “What is the evidence?” Another piece of evidence about this is that workers in small firms—those with under 20 workers—are significantly more likely to suffer a severe injury and injuries more generally compared to workers in large firms. Then we have evidence that worker voice and worker representation is something that helps with health and safety. Why would we not standardise our response in terms of worker voice across large businesses and small businesses? That’s what this legislation does. It’s based on evidence, and it’s addressing a very clear and serious problem.

I do not want people I know or care for not to come home from work or for them to come home having been made sick by exposure in their workplaces so that then they lose their quality of life or their life later. There are absolute grounds for this legislation and it’s urgent, but it is not enough in itself.

We actually need to do more, and we’ve had significant issues raised through the select committee process around ensuring that the intent of the legislation is being properly implemented in terms of training for health and safety workers, and I was very concerned to hear that the Employers and Manufacturers Association—who were quoted previously—have been running training that takes up the whole two days that workers are entitled to that does not give them the qualification at the end to enable them to issue provisional improvement notices to be able to actually ensure action on health and safety risks. There was a concern that that may not be consistent with the legislation and, at the very least, it is deeply unethical and it made me question their leadership in this area. We also, from this, had concerns that, actually, WorkSafe was not being proactive enough in terms of being able to enforce the existing legislation and provide the leadership that’s needed to provide the cultural change across the country.

We’ve also been hearing from the unions more recently, wanting the implementation of corporate manslaughter charges where there is evidence that companies have made decisions to prioritise their bottom line over ensuring the safety of their workers that leads them to a death. I believe, considering the size of our issue as a country, that that is something that we also need to be looking at.

While not large, this is a significant and really important step, and when the evidence from the officials show us that the cost of this scheme is actually outweighed by the reduction in terms of time off work through injury, then I just cannot understand the arguments from the Opposition against that that are choosing only to look at the immediate dollar and not the life consequence or the medium to long term benefit to businesses from doing this. It’s about time these things changed.

It gives me great pleasure to take a short call on this bill, the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. As we have heard from other speakers, the current legislation limits worker access to health and safety representatives and that support, especially receiving education from a health and safety representative or a committee member, especially if the employer has 20 or less workers. Because currently, as we’ve heard, a business does not have to initiate elections for that education from a health and safety representative. This bill fixes that with this small change. It would remove the thresholds so that all businesses are required to hold elections if requested by workers. There are a number of colleagues that I have known—one in particular—who has lost their life in a workplace situation, because, as a Pacific Islander, they were too whakamā, they were too embarrassed to talk about their personal situation.

This bill, as we’ve heard in the first reading and the second reading, the objective of this bill is to contribute to improved health and safety outcomes in all New Zealand workplaces—specifically to reduce that work-related harm. I was not a member of the committee at the time, but now I am a member of the Education and Workforce Committee. I’m very pleased to be a member and to see this legislation go through the third reading.

As we have heard, in the current legislation, a person conducting a business or undertaking, aka a PCBU, can make a decision not to have an election, so it takes that right away from current workers in the workplace. So New Zealand has fatalities—it’s just too high in the workplace. We need specific abilities to ensure that health and safety measures are in place and that the members of the public, the members in workplaces specifically under 20 workers, this change will enable and protect our workers, giving them that ability to make that request. It is important that the fundamental of improving worker representation and participation to reduce work-related harm will go through tonight. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I call Chris Penk—five-minute call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill has been, obviously, subject to a lot of discussion and debate tonight, and I have the pleasure of providing the penultimate call for the National Party—actually it might be the last one that we have tonight. But as others have observed on this side of the House, there are various reasons that we can’t support what appears to be a well-intended bill. Of course, no one could argue with the aim of improving worker safety, if indeed that is what the bill were to be able to achieve.

But before I go on to note some of those more substantive points, I think it is worth noting—as we reflect towards the end of the process—that the Education and Workforce Committee provided a report in which there were a number of amendments that were made and those were agreed unanimously. So I think that’s an indication that even though members of the Parliament who felt unable to support the bill overall did nevertheless wish to agree to amendments that would improve the bill, knowing that it would be passed—it’s proposed by a Government that has a single party majority. So operating in good faith to improve the final product, in so far as they could, I think, actually reflected well on all those who are involved in that stage of the process. I wasn’t personally, but I followed the arguments that have been made at various stages of the legislative process, and indeed now I have this opportunity to contribute to them.

It’s worth noting, for anyone who’s been following the debate and isn’t finding it entirely clear what exactly is being done by the bill, a very important word in all of this is the word “and”. So as noted in the commentary, as provided by the Education and Workforce Committee, the current situation is that “a person conducting a business or undertaking can decline a request from its workers to initiate an election for a health and safety representative if it is not in a designated high-risk sector or industry and has fewer than 20 workers.”

So even if a business has fewer than 20 workers, if it is in what is considered a “high-risk” sector, then these higher standards actually apply to it. So it’s not the case that a business—either by virtue of being small or by being not dangerous, so to speak—will be able to avoid this requirement. But actually, it’s the combination of those two that would make the difference under the current law.

The second—and more obvious—point, I suppose to make in that is that we’re talking about the election of officers for health and safety and the establishment of committees. It’s essentially a bureaucratic, even technocratic—albeit democratic—function that this bill is providing. That’s not to pour scorn on the importance of democracy, or technocracy, or even bureaucracy. But these things have their place, and a small workplace that is determinedly and consciously classed as not being one that is high-risk, it seems that the emphasis is misplaced rather than saying, for example, what are the substantive measures that we can take to improve health and safety—whether it is by laws that will actually do something positive in that direction beyond the mere election of officers and establishments of committees and so forth.

One practical example in that regard would be that found in the National Party differing view within the select committee report, whereby our members on that committee had said, “Focus would be better placed on ensuring that WorkSafe operates as an effective regulator of the existing laws and regulations.” So we would prefer that additional effort, focus, resources, and so forth were concentrated in that area, and we think that would have a better chance of achieving tangible, positive change than one change that is merely technocratic, bureaucratic—albeit, as I say, democratic.

So distinguishing between high-risk and low-risk activities, one draws on the wisdom, as always, of Blackadder. If one compares the situation of Captain Darling versus that of Captain Blackadder and, of course, Baldrick—Private Baldrick, no less or no more—and the lorry load of paperclips that has been ordered on that morning, for example, by Captain Darling in a particularly exciting move not on the front line, but in the immortal words of General Melchett: “We are behind you, Captain Blackadder.” you know, some way behind you, etc.

Anyway, I’m not going to do it as well as some of those characters have. Similarly, my contribution is probably not as good as others. But nevertheless, we do oppose the bill for the reasons that I’ve said.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just want to take a short call on this important bill, and begin by coming back to some first principles. There are two that I want to mention, in particular. The first is around the Employment Relations Act, which stipulates very clearly the inherent inequality that exists between employer and employees. That is at the heart of this bill in terms of ensuring that workers have a voice and that that inherent inequality is addressed.

The second principle I want to just note is that those of us who have studied accounting at university, as I have, will know that part of doing business, you have two parts of your ledger: there’s revenue and there’s cost. And there are costs that are part of doing business. And people on the other side tonight have talked about the cost of this bill. Expenses are fundamental parts of doing business. On this side of the House, the Labour Government believes that paying the cost of ensuring that workers are safe at work so that inherent inequality is addressed, and so that workers can go home safely to their families at the end of the night, is an important principle that we proudly stand by.

Part of my study at university was also in employment relations. And one of the particular pieces of research that is very well understood by those of us who’ve worked in health and safety, as I have, is that if you have proper robust worker participation schemes operating within your business, it does actually lead to a lower number of incidents, a lower number of injuries, and a lower number of deaths. The Labour Government’s commitment to the working people of New Zealand is that we want less people injured at work. This bill will help with that, will help address New Zealand’s lax approach to health and safety, and I commend it to the House.

I just want to give one example as a contribution to this debate as to a business that might be affected. Take a small building enterprise. They’re actually probably riskier than the big ones, in a lot of ways. People are closer to the action. They don’t necessarily have someone to turn to in that situation who is apart from the situation, because it might be the owner who is working alongside them, and so it is really important that they are able to go through such a process. And all it does—all it does—is make this business safer, and that’s good for productivity, and it’s good for the health and the welfare of everyone in that business and the business itself. That is where we should be landing in New Zealand. We need a culture change which involves workers in growing a healthy New Zealand economy, and this is going to help do that. It isn’t the biggest thing in the world, but it is a good thing. I’m proud of being part of a Government that brought in this change. I commend the bill to the House.

Members, this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.58 p.m.