Its lolly cups, for example, are legendary and have fuelled many an urgency debate. Former prime minister Helen Clark, for one, always had one on her bench in the House and woe betide a whip who failed to ensure that a full one was at hand.
One thing Coppers, as everyone knows it, does not serve is dead rats. And just as well too, but that rodent repast has been a staple part of the political diet for generations, as successive MPs have had to summon the intestinal fortitude to vote for legislation that they do not agree with.
Patterson holds three ministerial roles, but he had to front up to the House in this respect in one of his lesser spotted roles, as NZ First’s spokesman on employment and employment relations, to throw his party’s far from whole-hearted support behind the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill.
If you are the Bill’s architect, Act New Zealand’s Brooke Van Velden, this law change restores clarity, common sense and focus to New Zealand’s work health and safety system by making compliance with such regulatory requirements less onerous.
While measures to prevent harm remain, the government’s expectations are that they will be interpreted and implemented in a way that is practical and workable.
Unions, however, have been horrified by this Bill and railed against it at some length.
They have a point. In 2023, 67 people died at work and in 2024 it was 70, and for the past decade those figures have been more or less consistent at about that level.
Even one is too many, and workers representatives fear that any easing of safety requirements could see the death toll rise back to the realms of 110, which it reached in 2019.
More than a few employers are uneasy about this too. In any negligence claim doing everything possible to prevent a possible accident is a useful defence, and many bosses would rather implement as many, rather than as few, safety measures as possible.
Among the most vociferous voices against the Bill have been Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse, who as Pike River widows know a thing or two about workplace safety.
Their concerns have impressed NZ First leader Winston Peters, who has accepted their arguments against the Bill, but has also been obliged to vote for it anyway because he signed a coalition agreement which said he would.
Each such agreement has an ‘‘agree to disagree’’ clause, and the MP charged with doing the disagreeing — but also the voting for — has been Mark Patterson.
Back in February’s first reading debate, when NZ First’s reservations were yet to bubble to the surface, he told the House that the present health and safety system was not delivering the outcomes that anyone would want, and praised Van Velden for the extensive consultation exercise she had carried out while drafting the Bill.
Come last week however, and Patterson and NZ First’s enthusiasm for the Bill had waned considerably, and he offered ‘‘what I could generously describe as tepid support’’ at second reading.
While still backing Van Velden’s endeavours to have a less bureaucratic, burdensome, and ultimately more effective, workplace safety system, he cast extreme doubt on whether one of its features, a differentiation between small and large businesses, was realistic.
‘‘While admirable in its intent, in reality the size of a business is in no way a proxy for risk. In fact, the stats appear to show that the opposite applies,’’ he said.
If Patterson and NZ First’s support was tepid last week, it was positively frozen by this Wednesday when Patterson spoke in the third reading debate.
‘‘I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill, which brings into effect a coalition agreement between the Act party and the National Party,’’ Mr Patterson began, identifying the culprits nice and early.
‘‘It is no secret that New Zealand First has reservations about this Bill ... it has not been possible to convince our coalition colleagues to make substantial changes, and we are compelled to vote for this Bill via the coalition agreement.’’
Patterson expanded on this point philosophically, noting that politics was the art of the possible and what NZ First had been able to do was — with Van Velden’s agreement — delay the law’s implementation date so that some aspects could be reconsidered.
‘‘We know we have our colleagues in the National Party, some of whom share our concerns, and we look forward to working with them after the election to change these settings, settings that preserve the intent of this Bill but in a way that won’t unduly compromise our most precious resource: our people.’’
There is a lot to unpack here, both in that sentence and in the whole way this has played out.
Firstly, it is worth remembering that there has been a whole lot of rat consumption going on in the government ranks this term: Act’s Treaty Principles Bill and NZ First’s Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill being two prominent examples.
Also, note that despite the theatrical friction between NZ First’s leader and National’s senior MPs, at Patterson’s more practical and less hyperbolic level there is an expectation that both parties can and could work together whatever happens come November 7.
It is also worth remembering that NZ First staged a high-profile, Labour-baiting meeting on the West Coast a few weeks ago and that the party has a high-profile candidate in the West Coast-Tasman electorate — where opposing this Bill may well play well.
Those thoughts may have offered Patterson some comfort as he put his knife and fork down and pushed his unpleasant meal to one side.
