This is important because ACC have made this complaint to the NZ Police, and they are investigating it. I have always been suspicious of ACC’s claim about what happened at the meeting. I have various reasons, but one was that the meeting occurred at the beginning of December 2011, but no complaint was made to the Police until March 2012, following unfavourable headlines for ACC when its massive breach of privacy was revealed. My suspicion, to spell it out, was that the Police complaint was essentially trumped up in an attempt to divert attention away from ACC’s own shortcomings.

What we have learnt about the recording of the meeting adds weight to that suspicion. But if it is true, then very serious issues indeed are raised about the integrity and honesty of some senior public servants, because the account of the meeting they have given both to the New Zealand public and to the Minister herself would, at the least, seem to be misleading. Their actions also reinforce the belief that the culture at ACC has become one in which the ends – in this case self-serving ones – justify the means. As Bronwyn Pullar points out, if the recording hadn’t existed then it would be a case of her word against that of senior ACC managers, and their account was that she was a villain trying to hold ACC to ransom.

The other aspect of that December meeting that I have struggled with is that two senior managers met  a claimant with a heavy-hitting support person (Michelle Boag used to be President of the National Party), the meeting was arranged by an ACC Board member, with the approval of the ACC Chair, very serious issues about ACC’s claims management were raised, including arguably the largest breach of privacy in NZ history, and yet we are asked to believe that they did not report back on the meeting or issues raised to their boss, ACC CEO Ralph Stewart, or the ACC Board Chair John Judge. That’s just not how it works. That meeting would have been an absolute focus for the ACC Board and senior management and, in any case, the managers involved in it would have been desperate to ensure that they didn’t personally shoulder the risk.

Which raises the question: since Ralph Stewart and John Judge were presumably the ones who made the decision to eventually complain to the Police, were they aware that what happened at the meeting didn’t really support their complaint, or had they somehow gained the wrong impression of what had occurred without this being corrected at any point, then or subsequently?

Either way, I’m guessing the Minister has some more questions for Mr. Judge.

Legislation, Guidelines & Code Breaches by ACC:

1. Repeated non disclosure of correspondence regarding Bronwyn’s claim when requested.

2. Extensive disclosure of other claimant’s information to Bronwyn

3. No ability to restrict unauthorised access by 2500+ ACC staff and contractors to files, or medical files

4. Medical records (considered in law to be the most sensitive of personal information) are not given protection which is appropriate to their status and are treated as general documents.

5. Lack of procedure around dealing with statements of correction to incorrect reports

6. Threats of legal action against Bronwyn’s GP for refusing to disclosure non-injury information. Misuse of criminal provisions in ACC legislation.

7. Collection of information for an unlawful purpose

8. False written and oral statements by ACC staff with the purpose of unlawfully procuring medical reports for pecuniary purposes.

9. Defamatory statements by ACC employees

10. Exceeding lawful powers by investigating injuries for which no claim has been made.

11. Derogatory emails by ACC staff

12. Excessive Access to Bronwyn’s files – 1948 accesses within 3 ½ years, by about 150 different individuals, of which 1100 were in a single one year period.

13. Staff accessing files against management instructions

14. ACC167 Consent – used to coerce claimant’s into authorising otherwise unlawful collections of information.

15. Collection of personal information without claimant’s knowledge &/or attempted collection without knowledge

16. Collection and attempts to collect information unrelated to injury/claim

17. Imbalanced and biased decision making by Corporation

18. Covert/inappropriate communication to assessors which bias & negatively influence outcomes against claimants

19. Decision making without reviewing EOS

20. Lack of workability of electronic medical file for lawfully compliant decision making

21. Coercion, Harassment & Bullying, Unreasonable approach in management of claims. Use of threats of disentitlement to coerce

22. Dictatorial approach of Case Managers, failure to make reasonable accommodations for claimant needs.

23. “cherry picking” of unfavourable phrases from medical reports which contradict the ultimate conclusion.

24. ACC abusing its monopoly position by limiting the pool of qualified medical assessors to a select group (some individuals assessors are paid up in excess of $1 million annually for services), leading to the appearance of bias and unfair market practises.

25. Failure to demand adherence of staff to State Services Code of Conduct and to take appropriate action for  breach

26. Failure of Office of Complaints Investigator to independently investigate complaints

27. Failure of Office of Complaints Investigator to follow a reasonable process when conducting investigations

28. Failure of Office of Complaints Investigator to validate the responses provided by ACC with the claimant for accuracy

29. ACC’s case management approach to Bronwyn is disruptive and destructive of her ability to rehabilitate/work part-time

30. ACC staff deliberately lying and writing false reports

31. ACC staff making clinical decisions without appropriate qualification

32. ACC staff making clinical assessments without medical competency

33. Deliberate interference in independent medical assessments

34. Prejudicial correspondence with independent assessors prior to assessments communicating ACC’s desired outcome – that injuries are spent &/or due to non-injury causes

35. Provision of unqualified, non-specialist opinions, by ACC internal medical advisors, contradicting existing specialist advice, prejudicing independent assessors and compromising their independence

36. Branches/Units having Case Managers who made an initial decision then conduct an administrative review of a matter before being sent to DRSL for review

37. Taking advantage of disabled claimants for actuarial/financial gain

38. Poor decision making which adds cost to the Corporation

39. Poor OCI processes which adds cost to the Corporation

40. Lack of flexibility over assessments/appointments/referrals

41. Lack of reasonable consultation and flexibility over assessments/ appointments/referrals

42. Unreasonable referrals/assessments  processes which are exploitative e.g., chaperones, multi-party assessments, lack of privacy & dignity;

43. Focus on avoiding liability at the expense of effective early rehabilitation

44. ‘Silo’ culture where case managers are unaware of ACC’s own research into rehabilitation best practice

45. Constant churn of case managers – each new case manager is unaware of the medical evidence on file leading to poor decision making and is unaware of claimant’s issues; Avoidance strategy for accountability of actions.

• Are the four letters that Nick Smith wrote concerning Ms Pullar’s claim the extent of his interference in her claim, or is there more?
• Did he interfere in other claims also?
• What effect did Nick Smith’s interference have on ACC? As everyone has pointed out, an ACC case manager seeing a letter from the Minister on the file is highly unlikely to be unaffected, and perhaps his involvement explains why two senior managers fronted up for a meeting with Ms Pullar.

New Zealanders are entitled to have confidence that there will not be political interference in ACC claims. We cannot have that without a full and independent investigation of these and other matters. On Tuesday, I wrote to the Office of the Auditor-General asking her to initiate such an investigation. I’d also be happy  if some other form of independent inquiry (retired Judge, Commission etc) were used, so long as it occurs.

But let’s remember that Nick Smith’s political interference was uncovered because of arguably the greatest breach of privacy in New Zealand history, with confidential information relating to almost 7,000 people being leaked. These confidentiality issues also raise extraordinarily important questions, such as:

• What was the purpose of this spreadsheet that had these 9,000 records on it?
• Given ACC’s history of inadvertently sending confidential information to the wrong people, why had ACC not developed robust data management procedures, such as data encryption or dis-aggregating names from other information?
• How did the information get sent to Ms Pullar?
• Isn’t that a really amazing coincidence that random chance saw this highly confidential and potentially damaging information being sent to Ms Pullar specifically?
• Why was the privacy breach, which occurred in August 2011, not detected until Ms Pullar told ACC about it in December 2011?
• Is it actually credible that the two senior managers who met with Ms Pullar in December then did not mention the privacy breach to more senior figures? (as a former senior public servant myself, I can tell you that this does not ring true at all: their strong instinct, and correct procedure, would be to report this risk up the chain of command. I would be very surprised if the CEO and Chair were not informed.)
• Why was no action taken to repair and manage the privacy breach once Ms Pullar did not return the information she had been sent? (according to ACC’s account that is.)
• If ACC senior managers (the same ones who apparently did not report it to their superiors)  felt the organisation was being blackmailed in December, why did they wait until now to raise this with Police?
• Why was information about Sensitive Claimants routinely distributed to ACC managers who are not part of the Sensitive Claims Unit?
• Why were the staff, who called those whose privacy had been breached, often described by these claimants as not understanding the impact of the news, insensitive, and unresponsive, in an organisation for which privacy ought to be an absolutely central consideration?

So, some issues for the Privacy Commissioner to look at as well. I wrote to her last Wednesday asking her to investigate and I’m pleased she is going to do so. However, the scope of her inquiry will be limited to privacy issues. The Privacy Act will not empower her to investigate non-privacy matters like political interference, a fact which is apparently lost on the Prime Minister.

And there is another set of issues again. The reason Bronwyn Pullar and her support person Michelle Boag were meeting ACC in December was to discuss a list of more than 40 breaches by ACC of the law, its own rules and good process. The existence of such a list will hardly be a surprise to many ACC claimants. There are still many good people working in the ACC system, and the organisation itself is fundamentally sound, but it is changing for the worse and good people are being squeezed out. A culture of public service is being replaced by what I call a culture of disentitlement: claimants are seen as the enemy, and the prime directive has become minimising expenditure rather than meeting needs. For well over a year I have been calling for an independent review of the reinterpretation ACC has conducted of its Act, which has seen large numbers of people denied cover because of assertions of “degeneration” or “pre-existing condition” and rapidly increasing numbers of ACC decisions being overturned by review or in the Courts.

Sounds like we need three inquiries.

I’ve just dashed out and picked up a copy of the book, so have only skimmed it, but essentially the authors argue that current strategies intended to alter adult behaviour are failing to halt the tide of non-communicable diseases like cardiovascular disease and diabetes, either in the developed or developing world. They also set out substantial evidence that the in utero environment and even pre-conception factors can be powerful shapers of later behaviour, metabolism and disease. Their argument is that a focus on changing the behaviour of pregnant women and both men and women who are considering having children is necessary if we are to stem the rise of non-communicable disease in future generations.

Well so far, so good. But it’s alarming the Ministry of Health proposes to stop funding existing programmes in order to fund some ones with this focus. If the Ministry is seriously intending to do this then it reveals a breath-taking lack of judgment and understanding of public health programmes’ effectiveness.

Here are some considerations:

1. It is true that the rising tide of communicable disease has not been stopped by current strategies. This is not because the programmes didn’t work but because funding was split between programmes with a sound evidence base and some that didn’t. Successive governments have not been prepared to make public policy decisions or properly resource programmes compared to money spent on promoting unhealthy behaviours (for example fast food advertising). It is quite possible to fund and implement behaviour change programmes that are effective.

2. It is not acceptable to sacrifice the health and wellbeing of both adults and children currently living in order to improve the chances of those not yet alive. Or at least, if such a trade-off is proposed, then New Zealanders must be consulted about it and agree to make it. I rather suspect that most people would say we need to do both.

3. The evidence is strong that programmes that are tightly targeted at a particular set of people are generally less effective than programmes intended to shift whole population behaviour. If we want pregnant women to do more of a particular thing we will be most effective in doing this by trying to get the whole population doing more of it. A highly targeted campaign will tend to work for the most empowered in society, typically those who least need to make the behaviour change, but will be pretty ineffective for those with the greatest needs. The same applies to campaigns based on giving people more information about benefits and risks of particular behaviours. So while the Gluckman and Hanson thesis should perhaps see greater focus put on pregnancy in community-based campaigns and greater emphasis placed on nutrition in primary care for pregnant women, we will have the greatest impact on pregnant women by getting better at whole population change.

The Ottawa Charter for health promotion sets out five evidence-based and widely endorsed action guidelines for improving health:

A. Promote healthy public policy

B. Create supportive (physical and social) environments

C. Strengthen community action

D. Develop personal skills

E. Reorient health services (towards prevention and promotion of health, rather than just treatment)

In the case of improving nutrition, say, we could and should be doing things in each of these areas, yet Tony Ryall has axed some of our existing Healthy Eating, Healthy Activity programmes and is driving public policy and social environments in the wrong direction.

Not either/or please. Evidence-based, and both.

I’ve often thought it’d be great to design a conference based on the needs of those who’ll be attending. What do they need to hear about and discuss? What will be the best ways of structuring the time together so this is achieved? I’m thrilled to say I’ve just spent a couple of days at a conference that accomplished this superbly.

One of the many recommendations in the Law Commission’s report on the Misuse of Drugs Act was for the introduction of courts for Alcohol and other Drugs. Officials have been working with the judiciary to plan a pilot and, later this year, Drug Courts will be established in Auckland for a maximum load of 100 ‘participants’ and a five-year pilot period.

Two of the judges involved, Their Honours Lisa Tremewan and Emma Aitken, had researched Drug Courts in the United States and had been to a great conference about them over there. When they posed themselves the question “wouldn’t it be great for everyone involved in New Zealand to be able to go to that conference?” they realised there was another option, and brought the main keynote speakers to New Zealand instead.

Hosted by the Auckland District Law Society, the conference attracted over 300 people drawn from a wide range of sectors: judiciary, prosecutors, defence lawyers, law enforcement agencies, Ministries of Justice, Corrections, Courts and Health, treatment agencies, academics and a couple of politicians.

Catherine Masters’ excellent report for the NZ Herald, “Go Straight to Rehab” covers the ground nicely. Most crime dealt with by our courts — generally estimated to be 80 to 90% — is caused or influenced by alcohol and other drugs. There is widespread recognition that the increasingly punitive sentences seldom make a positive contributions to this situation and, often, are making it worse.

Drug Courts are intended to help people escape addictions by using a “carrot and stick” approach. Participants are referred into treatment services and reviewed every couple of weeks by a judge. That judge leads and works with a team including a prosecutor, a defence lawyer and treatment providers. There is regular, random testing for drugs, and positive developments are praised and rewarded. On the other hand, drug use or, more importantly, lying about drug use or not showing up for treatment, are punished. Punishments might include an immediate spell in prison (interestingly, it seems a stay of more than three days has no extra deterrent value, and more than six days makes recovery less likely) but could also be more creative, such as a writing assignment. The test is what will work for that individual.

It’s a pretty familiar approach, and it might surprise us that it works, but the evidence is strong that it works a heck of a lot better than what we do now. With variants of the model now widely used in the US, there is now a lot of evidence about what elements are important in maximizing effectiveness. These include: having police and treatment providers as part of the inter-disciplinary team, having judges who actually want to be involved rather than being assigned to it, making the drug testing truly random, having an extended drug-free period before participants ‘graduate’, and having a relapse prevention service after people leave the programme.

Some of this will translate to a New Zealand context, and some won’t. The strongest elements associated with best outcomes were collecting good data and regularly using this to fine-tune the programme (essentially a quality improvement loop) and making use of independent evaluation. I think this latter point could be important. The tendency to do things on the cheap might lead the Government to try to evaluate the programme internally. In fact for scientific robustness, for the transparency of independence and to insulate the pilot from political interference, the evaluation must be truly independent. Ideally, the evaluators should be contracted at the beginning of the programme so they can inform data collection and other practices to maximize effectiveness.

And, by the way, two pilot sites rather than one is a much smarter way to see what works and what doesn’t.

As I’ve been raving about this conference some people have raised the issue of drug decriminalisation (Portugal, and all that), saying they prefer that model. I don’t see a conflict between the two. I’m guessing that even Portugal still has people who are addicted to drugs and that they make up a disproportionate share of those before the courts. Having a smart way of channelling these people into treatment seems like a good idea to me and, ahem, we’re not quite Portugal, are we.

[Update: included link to NZ Herald Article]

The research looked at the differences in health benefits of using a bicycle sharing scheme run in Barcelona compared with travel by a car in an urban environment. The results were clear: public bicycle sharing schemes can improve public health.

In particular, the study found that physical activity lead to the avoidance of death producing a benefit to risk ratio of 77:1.

Using bicycles was also good for the environment. Annual carbon dioxide emissions in Barcelona were reduced by an estimated 9,062 tonnes.

The study adds to the growing body of evidence (from a public health perspective) for central government to subsidise bike sharing schemes in our major cities.

Kevin

However, this press release from the Ministry of Health is worrying.

The key message for World Suicide Prevention Day is that help is available to people who need it.

The release points us to thelowdown.co.nz, The Journal (with no URL) and the Depression Helpline.

That’s all you get.

They miss out and play down other wonderful services available to people with mental health problems, such as

• Depression.org.nz
• Mental Health foundation (and their mental health awareness week page!)
• Supporting Families with Mental Illness
• Youthline Call 0800 376633 or Free TXT 234
• Balance NZ
• Headspace.org.nz

They are also silent on how to access mental health services through your GP and DHB.

Mental health officials are urging people to seek help on Suicide Prevention Day. They say help is available for them and their loved ones but are they doing enough to help when all they promote is nothing except for a website?

There are also worrying signs that some of the progress previously hard won on mental health is being undone. I spoke in the House recently against the Government’s plan to roll the Mental Health Commission into the Health and Disability Commissioner’s office. There is clear evidence that DHBs are using money intended for mental health in other areas. Primary care referral to a Clinical Psychologist for free sessions is now only available for Maori, Pasifika and people with a Community Services Card. These services used to be for everyone, until the National Government cut them.

This Government needs to make a commitment to funding mental health services and promoting them adequately so that everyone can get the help they need and live happier lives.

Being in Hamilton reminds me of how it felt to be a young man realising my difference for the first time. Although Hamilton is now actually a pretty cool place, I remember the fear, isolation and desperation of the mid-1970s. You may well have seen the video clip I shot for the “It Gets Better” project. But why can’t we make it better right now?

That’s the genesis for Murray’s report (or at least for my role in sponsoring it). As an adult gay man, my life is immeasurably better than the one I would have led in 1970s, as a result of the hard-won gains like Homosexual Law reform, legal protection from discrimination and civil unions. But the teenage gay boy growing up today is still surrounded by a family, friends, school, church and pretty well every other element of his environment that assumes he is heterosexual. What he is most aware of is his difference from his peers and from the expectations of others. And most likely his role models are that guy in Glee, Ellen de Generes and an occasional character on Shortland Street. Sure it’s better than it was for some, but it’s still much worse than it should be, leading to many negative health, educational and other social outcomes.

So Murray’s report sets out to write the agenda for making it better for those young people right now, rather than having to hang on in quiet desperation until their fabulous adult lives kick in. The specific issues raised include bullying, isolation, invisibility of queer people, a lack of knowledge amongst professionals who work with youth, inconsistency in how school support queer students, the struggle to embrace the diversity within the queer community, a lack of public awareness of queer issues, poor policies for transgender health provision, and growing complacency towards queer activism and rights. This is the agenda around which we want to unite the adult LGBT communities and the wider community in working to implement. These were the key actions:

Schools

• Develop policies that would ensure all schools create safe and empowering environments for queer students.
• Make sexuality and gender diversity education part of the core curriculum.
• Weave diversity awareness into all aspects of the curriculum.
• Make queer issues and diversity training a central part of teacher training and professional development.
• Ensure that teaching staff diversity, in terms of culture, gender and sexual identities, has administrative and institutional support.

Support Groups

• Promote the establishment of both community and school based support groups.
• Develop a national network where support groups can collaborate and support one another.
• Develop a national QSA network to promote the establishment of QSA groups throughout the country.
• Ensure collaboration between QSA and community based groups and networks.

Visibility

• Hold the media accountable for negative or narrow representations of queer people.
• Develop the capabilities of media spokespeople throughout our community.
• Develop a database of media spokespeople throughout the country.
• Engage with and educate journalist and reporters.
• Encourage celebratory events that raise the visibility of the queer community.
• Seek government support for a national visibility/public education campaign.
• Work alongside sporting and cultural institutions to encourage more out role models in different public domains.

Nurturing Internal Diversity

• Ensure queer events and spaces cater for all queer people, not just the hegemonic groups.
• Cross-Sectoral Professional Development:
• Make diversity training and queer issues a central part of the training and professional development of all professionals who work with youth – i.e.Counsellors, Nurses, Teachers, Social Workers.

Policy

• Establish a policy group or network dedicated to promoting policy initiatives that will empower queer youth and seek to have the queer youth perspective heard in any policy development.
• Work with schools and other institutions to see existing policy implemented or enforced.
• Develop policies that make it easier for transgender youth to navigate the health system and access the appropriate services.
• Specific research into the health needs of transgender youth and the implications of existing policies is needed.

Immediately prior to going to Hamilton for the Pride Festival I had a day in which two situations were raised with me, with requests for my help. Coincidentally both were of 17 year old young men who had come out to their parents and been thrown out of their homes. It was a sobering reminder of just how important Murray’s report may prove to be.

The families of the Pike 29 have been there from day 1 of the Royal Commission, some there all day, every day, others dipping in and out as their other commitments and personal strength allow. I remember one event from Phase 1 that I found utterly heart-wrenching. Peter Whittall was giving a very long account of the types of machine being used in the mine. I was sitting out in the waiting room with a handful of family members, getting a break from the intensity of the courtroom itself, but still able to watch the evidence on closed circuit TV. At one point Mr. Whittall brought up a slide of the coal face to illustrate the pattern of scouring on the rock left by a continuous mining machine. It was an unremarkable image. Yet two of the women in the waiting area with me suddenly became very animated and rushed to the wall where the screen hangs. “That’s where they are” one of them said to the other.

For the families, who wait through agonising months, now almost a year, for the remains of their loved ones to be brought out of the mine so they can have some sense of closure, the Royal Commission gives them the opportunity to understand how this disaster occurred and, perhaps, to hold someone accountable.

In this phase of the inquiry we are going to hear a lot more about how the families have been communicated with, but already we have heard some damning revelations. Some readers may have seen on television  earlier this year some of the images taken in the so-called ‘fresh air base’ in the mine, showing an opened box that contained self-rescuers (which allow a person roughly 50 minutes of Oxygen when worn correctly). We don’t know exactly how that box was opened, but it very clearly establishes that at least one strong possibility is that one or more people survived the initial blast and were able to access the self-rescuers.

What has been revealed publicly for the first time this week is that this image did not just become available this year. In fact it was recorded on November 24th, just days after the first explosion and before the second explosion. The Mine Manager gave evidence that it was clear to him as soon as he saw the image at that time that it showed an opened self-rescue box.

You probably won’t remember, but the second explosion corresponded roughly with the time that all the authorities started assuring us that everybody died in the first explosion, but all the time they said this they KNEW that there was at least a strong possibility this was not the case, but elected not to tell the families or the public. In fact I know how this image eventually came to light publicly, and it was not through official action. If that hadn’t happened, would it ever have been released?

Two obvious explanations present themselves for covering up this evidence; one charitable, one not. The charitable explanation is that authorities believed it would be of some comfort to families to believe that their loved ones had died instantly. The uncharitable explanation is that authorities wished to divert attention from the obvious questions about whether or not it had actually been possible to mount a rescue.

There’s a political dimension to this too. You may remember that at the time of the disaster, Mr. Brownlee and Mr. Key were apparently very closely involved. It is inconceivable that they were not told about the opened self-rescuer box, which means that they were almost certainly party to covering this up, and deceiving the families and the public.

The questions for Mr. Key don’t stop there though. Mr White indicated that as far back as December he was instructed to refer to a ‘stabilisation’ operation at the mine and not to use the word ‘recovery’. Talking about recovery of the human remains was “politically unacceptable” he had been told. It would raise expectations and cost too much. He had budgeted that recovery could occur with a budget of $10 million. He had been given a budget of $5 million. When this evidence was given the talk both inside the Courtoom and then outside during the break was of the many occasions on which Mr. Key gave the families a sweeping assurance that no effort would be spared to recover the dead men. Apparently a disconnect between the public assurance and the behind closed doors instruction.

I was going to say that I think I am now the only person from the official party at the Pike River Memorial still following the Royal Commission. That wouldn’t be fair though. I can’t make it every day, and no doubt there are some people there when I’m not, and others are watching online. But the person who really doesn’t seem to be involved right now, who really needs to be is John Key. He needs to give some answers. And he needs to follow through on his promises.

I got to part of Phase 1 as well, and the routine is much the same. Half the public space is taken up by members of the Pike families, the other half by witnesses, people from helping agencies and affected parties, and a couple of strays like me. I hope nobody else needs legal representation in New Zealand at the moment, because there’s a small army of barristers, including at least 4 QCs. A couple of journalists sit in the Court room, but most are in a separate room watching proceedings on the closed circuit TV, and are strangely insulated from what is going on.

The Commissioners don’t have much to say, but their questions, hearteningly, usually indicate a strong focus on the most important issues. This week the most significant witnesses have been Daniel Rockhouse, one of the two survivors and a genuine hero; Doug White, who was the Mine Manager at the time of the disaster, and enormously experienced, especially in Australia; and Neville Rockhouse, the Safety and Training Manager for Pike River Coal, and father of both Daniel, and Ben, who died in the disaster.

Commissioner Bell, an Australian mining expert, has asked, for me, the two most telling questions of the week. At the end of almost two days of evidence from Doug White, he asked him whether, in his extensive experience of mining around the world and especially in Australia, he had ever encountered a situation where a mine operates for 7-8 years without receiving at least some kind of corrective instruction from the regulator. The answer was no. That happened at Pike.

Then today when Neville Rockhouse finished his evidence Commissioner Bell asked him how often the Department of Labour Inspectors had audited the safety procedures and policies he had developed. The answer was never.

I think these exchanges carried such a powerful impact because we have sat in the Court day after day hearing damning evidence of safety problems. Some of these we already knew about because I had tabled the evidence in parliament or from the miners’ accounts, but they included:

• The disastrous “second exit” up the ventilation shaft, that would have required a sheer vertical climb (actually overhanging for a period) up a 55m ladder, which Mines Rescue characterised as “extremely difficult to use in normal circumstances; impossible in a fire”. Oh, and the ladder could only support 8 people on it at one time, just supposing they actually could climb it (contrast with up to 60 who could be in the mine at a change of shift)
• The emergency phone line that went to answerphone
• Nobody to meet the two survivors when they struggled to the surface
• Broken ‘smoke lines’ that miners use to find their way out of the mine when there is limited visibility because of smoke
• Sensors disabled on safety equipment
• Very infrequent disaster training exercises
• Wholly inadequate gas drainage plans
• Drilling occurring immediately adjacent to cavities filled with pressurised flammable gas. If these cavities were actually breached they were ‘capped’. There was an incident where one of these caps didn’t hold and was forced out at speed, knocking out a man nearby
• Reports of multiple ignitions
• Telephone and air supply to a decommissioned “fresh air base” part way along the ‘drift’ which is the tunnel leading from the portal to the working area, was disconnected without the knowledge of the Mine Manager, the Safety Manager or the miners
• The area in the working area of the mine called a “fresh air base” was not actually sealable from the atmosphere in the mine, meaning that it was not, in fact, a fresh air base and, indeed there was not one in the mine. This is especially important because Peter Whittall in his evidence said that, because of the difficulty of using the so-called second exit, miners were instead encouraged to go to the fresh air base in the event of an incident.

In some ways the most telling illustration of the safety culture that prevailed was the tag board. Each miner or contractor has a personal ID tag. When they go underground this must be put on a hook on a board, and when they leave underground they collect the tag. It’s obviously of fundamental importance to know who is underground at any one time. Yet on November 19th two people had left the mine without removing their tags, and one person was undergound without his tag being on the board – an error rate of about 10%.

Clearly there was something fundamentally wrong in Pike River Coal. It was clear from the evidence that the Safety Manager had a relatively low status, and very limited influence or authority (his delegated authority to spend had a maximum level of $5,000 for example). He had only one staff member, who focused on training. The answer to virtually every question about safety problems has  been that a plan was being developed to deal with it, but I have heard almost nothing about safety improvements actually being implemented. Both Doug White and Neville Rockhouse have said, when confronted with the inadequacy of systems to deal with what actually occurred, that nobody ever expected the mine to blow up.

And that’s just it really: the company was under financial and production pressure, creating strong incentives for it to cut corners and to wave away the risks of unlikely disasters. In this they were aided and abetted by regulations that only require them to do what is “practicable” and an inspectorate within the Department of Labour with the even weaker requirement to take “reasonable steps” to ensure that employers do what is “practicable”, and where inspectors were over-stretched, under-resourced and insufficiently experienced.

It’s great that the Government has been forced to back down and create a dedicated High Hazard Unit, with significantly more personnel and resource for inspections. But if all they can do is police against the morass of weasel words that is the current OSH regulatory approach then yet another disaster will be inevitable. Government must move to make mine safety regulations mandatory and universal. Not after the election. Not when the Royal Commission reports. Now.

The weekend had a bit of everything: gorgeous scenery, local hospitality, wide-eyed children, even local political drama.

The ride follows the Forgotten World Highway and is framed by Mt Ruapehu at the start and Mt Taranaki in the end. You cross several great passes and ride through the deeply forested Tangarakau River gorge. You’re pedalling along one of New Zealand’s quietest state highways, so you often feel like you have the whole place to yourself. It’s certainly a very safe route for cycle touring.

And that’s where things got interesting. The local head of Federated Farmers wrote a strongly worded letter to the Ruapehu Press labeling the route too dangerous for “pushbikes” and was offended at the thought of cyclists pooping in farmers’ fields along the way. Many believe the letter led to the local mayor to cancel at short notice her appearance at the launch.

The letter was obviously unfair and reminded me of how we can sometimes be our own worst enemies. The Forgotten World Highway Cycle Trail offers Taumaranui the opportunity to diversify and strengthen its economy. It’s one of the safest routes in New Zealand for cycling and any toileting issues, should they arise, can be solved quite simply.

The weekend’s ride gave a handful of New Zealanders their first glimpse of what our Cycle Trail network will eventually look like, with outstanding backcountry road rides joining our network of Great Rides off road and urban cycling infrastructure in places like New Plymouth.

It’s exciting time to be a cyclist in New Zealand.

This weekend people will be able to get more of a sense of what that network might eventually look like. The first phase of Nga Haerenga has focused on creating ‘Great Rides’. These are mostly purpose-built and off-road, and mostly oriented to recreation and tourism, showing off some of  our country’s most visually impressive natural features.These tracks are mostly finished or close to finishing, and I have several more to open before the election. In the meantime the team has moved to start identifying great cycle touring routes. These will both link the Great Rides and provide recommended ways to cycle longer distances. The routes are mostly on quiet back-country roads, which will be prioritised for safety improvements and signed so that all road users know to expect cyclists. There are three routes being launched this weekend, all linking to Taumarunui (which is, after all, on the Main Trunk Line. As if there were branches). One goes to Ongarue, which is one of the launching points for the amazing new track through Pureora Forest, while another heads to Whakahoro, connecting to the tracks linking Ruapehu District with Whanganui (some of which I’ve previously ridden, and know they’re going to be great).

The third route takes the “Forgotten Highway” through Whangamomona (which, as I recall, is a separate country, unless it’s been re-annexed) and then branches off to New Plymouth. New Plymouth is already well-known for its fantastic coastal pathway for walking and cycling (which now extends as far as Bell Block and looks like going further) but was also selected, along with Hastings, to be a ‘model community’ for walking and cycling. In this scheme NZTA has put up some funding that will assist the City Council to implement and pilot best practice in encouraging walking and cycling with a view to rolling these ideas out in other areas.. Ive been speaking to the team from the Council and am pretty excited by what they have achieved already and what they have coming up.

So this weekend people will see three distinct but integrated components of the eventual national network: the Great Rides, on-road great cycle touring routes, and urban cycling infrastructure. We start with some speeches in Taumarunui tomorrow morning and then a bunch of us will ride the new route to Whangamomona on Saturday night and then on to New Plymouth. Local riders strongly encouraged to come and join us, or at least roll up for my compelling and insightful speeches in both locations!

The original bill was already doing some daft things — significantly expanding offences relating hardware that could be drug-taking utensils, and making medicines containing pseudoephedrine ‘prescription only’ in the name of the war against P.

Now Dunne has abused the parliamentary process to introduce an amendment that has no real relationship with the original Bill, except that it too is connected with drugs. If we had tried doing this it would’ve been ruled out of order, because people who submitted on the Bill could not have anticipated that this might become part of it and so won’t have commented about it.

I maintain that if the Government wanted to add in this whole new set of provisions, they should have used the recent two week recess to give the public the opportunity to have a say about the plans. I challenged them to do this three weeks ago, but to no avail. There has been enough time to run an acceptable process, but Government has simply chosen not to do so.

Along with this poor process, the amendment itself is rather bad.

Under the proposed law, the minister could gazette pretty much any substance that could result in harm — salt, caffeine, icing sugar — therefore making it a class C substance. There would be no public scrutiny or medical/scientific advice.

The “herbal high” industry has done a very poor job since the issue of synthetic cannabis turned into a public debate. There have been problems with the quality of their product and they have acted irresponsibly when criticised.

We do want regulation of synthetic cannabis, but the move to outright ban it is not the right direction.
The Law Commission issued a report last year which recommends that we move away from the ineffective and dangerous criminalisation of drugs to a model that minimises harm.

The best lifestyle is a drug free lifestyle, but banning synthetic cannabis and criminalising users is not the answer. Regulating the industry and providing addiction support services is a better option.

Peter Dunne has circumvented the democratic process by not letting this issue that — judging from the media coverage — is of great public interest, go to select committee.

Readers may well have heard me talk previously about the Adoption Act. It dates back to 1955, and effectively fossilises the attitudes and values of that time. Greens started looking at this because the Act only permits couples to adopt if they are married, excluding de facto couples (though that has been reversed in Court) and same sex couples from adopting. First Metiria and then I had Members’ Bills in the ballot to change this. However we were persuaded that a lot more was wrong with the 1955 Act, and that total overhaul or replacement was necessary.  Most crucially, the 1955 Act treats children as, effectively, chattels and adoption like a property transaction. The law needs to reflect the primacy of the child’s interests and welfare.

Ten years ago the Law Commission produced a comprehensive report on the care of children. The Labour Government of the time passed the Care of Children Act, which implemented the Law Commission’s proposed changes to limited term guardianship arrangements, but did nothing with the recommended replacement of the Adoption Act. Probably this was because Labour was scared of debate around the issue of same sex couples, and maybe couldn’t muster the numbers within its own caucus – six Labour MPs (including three current ones) even voted against Civil Unions, for goodness’ sake.

Because of Labour filibustering on the VSM bill there is no real prospect that Jacinda’s bill will even go into the ballot, let alone be drawn from it, and anyway National’s approach to all bills from Opposition members has been to vote them down at First Reading. Jacinda argues that the purpose of her bill is to put pressure on Simon Power to instruct the Law Commission to do more work, but I can’t see how her idea of a bill could even remotely do this. Instead the real reason for her announcement is its rhetorical value. On the positive side I guess it indicates to the public that Labour does now support adoption law reform and maybe helps to raise awareness of the issue. Jacinda will also be hoping that gay, lesbian and other progressive voters in Auckland Central will also read into her move that she is doing something about adoption by same sex couples. Unfortunately for Jacinda, while I’m sure she is personally progressive on the issue, she doesn’t get to speak for her Party on it, and Phil Goff, along with opposing gay marriage, has also been at best cagey on adoption.

But while it’s useful for the public to know that Labour now supports some sort of adoption law reform, Labour’s unilateral action with the proposed bill will also damage the work that has been occurring to overhaul adoption law. When I withdrew my previous bill I instead set out to achieve the broader reform of law that was needed, and first developed support for and then convened a multilateral, cross-party group to work on the issues. The progress of the group has been slow but, as I have tried to point out to the less patient advocates for change, the best chance of success is a careful process that builds support and keeps everybody on board. Rushing makes reform less likely, by returning the issue to the traditional arm wrestle for political advantage between National and Labour.

What remains to be seen is whether Jacinda’s move represents an abandonment by Labour of the multilateral approach, and whether National will be willing to stay at the table in the face of Labour’s attempt to gain political advantage from the issue. I will be working to try to keep the cross-party approach alive. Otherwise adoption law reform will be off the table for another decade.

Thought you might like the video of my questions in the House about mine safety. You might like to consider whether you think the Minister is answering the questions or evading their main points!

It’s effectively the companion to our release today.

Essentially what I am saying is that while National was dismantling the structure and regulations that maximised underground safety during the 1990s, they were being repeatedly warned by experts that this would cost lives, yet paid those warnings no heed. In 1992 they did away with the check inspectors – effectively one leg of a 3-legged stool, and in 1998 they sawed off more than half of one of the other legs by closing down the Mines Inspectorate.

This was coupled with a change to regulations. The Health and Safety in Employment Act in 1992 repealed the strict and mandatory safety rules for underground mining in the Coal Mines Act 1979 and replaced them with nothing, leaving underground mining largely unregulated. No new regulations were introduced until 1999, but the new rules incorporated a fundamentally different approach. Instead of being mandatory and universal, the new regulations generally contained a qualifier “where practicable”. The idea of practicability has embedded within it the idea of “affordability”, which is highly specific to an individual mining company and mine. Thus a safety measure that may be practicable for a substantial and well-founded mining company like Solid Energy, may be impracticable for a smaller and cash-strapped company, perhaps like Pike River Coal. I believe that the Terms of Reference for the Royal Commission may well not be broad enough to capture this.

I make the point that Labour had nine years in which to restore the ‘triangle of safety’ inspectorate structure and the universal, mandatory regulations that had previously ensured safety, but did not. Now this Government has had repeated opportunities to do something but has turned them all down. Now they say they will wait for the findings of the Royal Commission before doing anything – 2013 at the earliest. Could it be they would prefer to not have their inaction on mine safety connected with the Pike 29 before the General Election?

And in the meantime, every day, workers go underground into mines that we know operate in a regulatory framework that does not do all that it could to maximise safety. That seems to me to be fundamentally unacceptable.

You might wonder why I tabled the 1995 submission of Mr. Brazil, a Mines Inspector and underground mining expert, at the end of my questions. Here’s a quote from his submission:

“Furthermore the Health and Safety in Employment Act is being used as a manipulative device to eliminate management structures and many historically formed mining codes of practice that were firmly established in the heart of previous legislation, much of which has proved successful over 100 years. Should this situation be allowed to continue without intervention the end result can only be the escalation of potential for further disaster”

How many more?

This clip from New York shows how one cyclist is fighting back, with humour:

I have, and when I used the Official Information Act to find out if my experience as a cyclist was shared by others, the Police couldn’t tell me — they don’t keep any meaningful records about who’s reporting what.

Cyclists’ complaints are getting lost in the system and bad driving is going uninvestigated and unprosecuted as a result. Their negligence is compromising the way they prioritise the policing of roads.

People who ride bikes deserve the same protection from the Police as other road users, but it seems they are being badly let down.

Take a look at the following examples of driver behaviour around cyclist Ian Wilde and comment whether you think the Police should be taking action. Despite the video evidence, the Police are still to act on either incident!

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To see more examples of bad driver behaviour around cyclists that Police are yet to act on, click here.

Kevin

The theme of International Nurses Day 2011 is increasing access and equity, and it is particularly timely. Next week’s budget will see cuts across a range of social services and income support such as Working for Families, and it is reasonable to assume these cuts will have a flow on impact on access to health care. This is on the back of cuts to primary health funding in last year’s budget. Less income and a lack of funding make health choices harder.

25% of New Zealand kids live in poverty and there is a direct correlation between their economic status and their poor health outcomes.  Last year Dr Nikki Turner, from Child Poverty Action Group, put together a presentation called Poverty Leads to Poor Health that shows overall a child from a low-income household has a 1.4 times higher risk of dying than a child from a wealthy household. She also shows that after hour emergency costs for kids can be over $50 depending on where you live. That is a lot of money if you are on a low income.    

Nurses are on the frontline dealing with these issue day to day. So it is great to see their union,  the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO), again leading the charge for a better health system. Their 2011 election manifesto sets out a series of recommendations that would make our system better and improve access and equity.  Universal access to primary health care, greater investments in the nursing workforce and addressing the drivers of poor health outcomes are essential to building a happy and healthy New Zealand.

Nurses’ historic pay equity campaign showed that they and their union are capable of winning the changes they want. Let’s all get behind their campaign Vote Well for a Healthy Future to win the health system we need.

Blackball speech – Time for a Green Change

30^th April 2011

(speech as delivered was slightly different)

E nga mana, e nga reo, e nga iwi o te motu, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa.

It’s great to be in Blackball again this year to be part of this great Mayday mix of food, entertainment and politics. Thanks to everyone involved in the organisation.

I very much appreciated being part of this afternoon’s opening of the memorial wheel for the Pike 29.  I couldn’t be here on Thursday, having earlier promised to attend the Service and Food Workers Union event in Nelson for Workers Remembrance Day, but I want to add my voice to those mourning the guys who were lost to our community in the mine. No reira, e nga mate, haere, haere, haere ki Hawaiki Nui, Ki Hawaiki Roa, Ki Hawaiki Pamamao. Apiti hono, tatai hono. Te hunga mate ki te hunga mate.

It is a national disgrace that these guys will now only be brought from the mine as an inadvertent consequence of some future decision based on commercial grounds.

I know on Thursday Helen Kelly spoke about the responsibility of employers to provide a healthy and safe workplace. I am certainly going to be monitoring the Royal Commission of Inquiry to see that it fulfils its responsibility to determine whether Pike River Coal did all it could to meet that responsibility but also that successive governments did all they could to create and maintain a framework for mining to occur that would achieve maximum workplace health and safety. I guess it’s no secret that I believe shortcomings will be found on both of those grounds.

And that’s not a surprise. I spoke last year about the central idea in capitalist economic theory in which big capital extracts as much profit as it possibly from people’s labour and from the environment, which it regards as “raw materials”. It’s an amoral process, in which if costs can be reduced, they will be. This National Government sees its fundamental role as allowing this process to occur with as few obstacles as possible, and at the same time dismantling the role of the State, to create fresh opportunities for profit maximisation.

Since I spoke last year, the Government has kindly provided me with yet more examples:

• The new law allowing workers to be sacked for no reason at all within their first 90 days of work
• The new law denying trade unions right of access to their members’ workplaces
• Wave after wave of attacks on beneficiaries
• Effectively nothing to create new jobs, thus maintaining high demand for jobs and keeping wages low
• No new state houses (despite the waiting list of 10,000)
• Tax changes that greatly benefited the rich while leaving the poor worse off
• Ongoing dismantling of our ACC scheme and preparation for its privatisation
• Significant cuts to DOC’s budget, with nearly 3,000 species on the endangered list and in the International Year of Biodiversity
• The Minister’s refusal to agree to new marine reserves

There’s also been progress towards the TPP, the free-trade agreement being developed with the United States and others. We have mostly been attacking it because it will involve compromising on important NZ laws, allowing tobacco companies, for example, to sue the NZ Government for smokefree initiatives, and requiring changes to our patent laws to allow big pharmaceutical giants to maximise their profits at our expense. But some of you may recall that last year I also made a critique of free trade agreements and globalisation in general: fundamentally these are about lowering national boundaries so that big capital has access to the cheapest labour and cheapest natural resources wherever they are in the world.

In that light you may want to note a couple of other developments:

• The Government changing well-established employment law because Warner Brothers didn’t like it
• The Government issuing an oil exploration permit (which requires drilling) to the Brazilian company, Petrobras, which has a poor safety record, without it having to submit any plan to deal with an oil spill, and without there being any realistic way at all of dealing with an oil spill.

In both cases, you may observe that these companies take all the profit. All we get is the wages, in return for all the risk.

Last year I outlined the Green Party’s overall approach to turning things around. We say that the relationships between economy, environment and people need to be reversed. Rather than people and the environment serving the economy, we need to re-engineer a smart economy as a set of tools for achieving our goals of environmental protection and a fair, just society.

Over the past week or so we have fired off an opening salvo in this election campaign with a leaflet with the theme ‘Looking Forward’. In part that reflects that long-term thinking that the Greens are well known for. But it’s also meant in the sense of “what are you looking forward to?” We are asking everybody to engage in thinking about what they most want to see – effectively setting those environmental and social goals we want to achieve. There’s been an extraordinary diversity so far, but also some really consistent themes.

Closer to the election the Greens will issue a number of concrete and robust commitments that we will advance in the next Parliament if you give us your party vote (and remember that’s what we campaign for, not the electorate). In the meantime, here’s some of the things we would do if we led the next Government:

• Increase the minimum wage (and index it to the median wage, along with MP salaries)
• Compulsory quality standards for all freshwater streams, rivers and lakes
• Recovery plans for all threatened species in NZ and realistic support to help DOC achieve that in partnership with communities
• Building resilience in rural areas by relocalising economies (encouraging local food and energy production,  local goods and services and Government services)
• Plan for energy independence from oil
• Return to a planned system for making electricity generation decisions in which all the alternatives are considered and the ones that are best for the public are chosen
• Reprioritise Government spending (less on roads and more on “nice to haves” like education and health)
• Repeal the anti-worker laws
• Cancel the plans to sell SOEs and privatise government services
• Retain our economic sovereignty by much tighter restrictions on foreign ownership of NZ land and assets
• Incentivise research and development to help build a clean tech economy that delivers higher wages by making higher value products, at no net cost to the environment
• Help make the 100% Pure brand real, by reducing taxes on people’s work and replacing the revenue with new taxes on waste (including Carbon emissions) and resource rentals
• Create green collar jobs by directing both public and private investment into areas that are job-rich and help protect and restore the environment
• Build 6,000 new state houses
• Legislation to require rental properties to be healthy and warm
• Extend our home insulation scheme to schools and other public buildings
• Introduce a capital gains tax to redirect investment into productive activity rather than housing speculation and fund other policies like first $10,000 of income tax free, progressive electricity pricing, extending the WFF in-work tax credit to beneficiaries, reinstating the training incentive allowance
• Incentives for new and more diverse forestry
• Encourage businesses whose profits are retained in the communities where they were obtained
• Encourage community- and cooperative-owned businesses
• Sharing the cost of rebuilding fairly by a temporary levy on those with higher incomes rather than making the poor pay by service cuts or are kids pay through more borrowing

That’s a programme that would provide immediate benefit in the places and for the people who need it most, but maybe more importantly would put in place the correct relationships between economy, environment and society and establish a virtuous cycle whereby the whole system would continue to improve. And it’s all practical, and achievable by reprioritising spending and tax reform. Big business would hate it!

The fact is that NZ faces big challenges. National is steering the ship with blinkers on and without using the radar. If it is re-elected, its programme – whether through ignorance or malice – will be an acceleration of these policies that have done so much to unravel NZ’s social fabric and benefit a few to the cost of so many. The Greens have chosen to focus on hope for a better society and on a programme of practical, achievable and fiscally responsible steps that will be good for you, for me and our planet. Party vote Green!