Henare Tau: Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Henare Tau: Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 Anybody who is listening on their crystal sets at home will believe after listening to some of the members of the Labour Party that the sky is going to fall in that it is the end of the world in terms of workers’ rights and that all this sort of— 
H V Ross Robertson 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The member has been here for some time now and I refer him to Speakers’ ruling 48/3 which refers to addressing people who are outside the House or radio listeners. The member referred to transistor radios. I suggest— 
Hon Simon Power 
: He said crystal sets. 
H V Ross Robertson 
: I am sorry. He referred to crystal sets which is much the same thing. He should be addressing the House and not those who are listening on crystal sets outside the House. He has been here a long time and he should know better. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I apologise for that— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: No I will make a ruling. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: —gross misdemeanour— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: The member will be seated. Speaker’s ruling 48/3 states that the “blatant talking to people outside the House” is not in order. I think that is the measure of a certain type of behaviour that I do not believe the member crossed but I caution him not to cross it. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well I will take my apology back and save it for another day. It is good to see that Ross Robertson is on the job. It is really good to see him on the job. He is like one of those delegates in one of the businesses that the Labour Party mentioned earlier on. He is fastidious. He is on the verge of being—oh I will not say it. He is like a little Rottweiler making sure that everybody has what the old national award said that he or she is entitled to. This is what the Labour members’ argument is all about. It is as prescriptive as the Country Women’s Institute’s recipe book of 1951. And I must add there is nothing wrong with that recipe book; I have used it myself on a couple of occasions. 
The old law that Sue Moroney dined out on for a number of years was far too prescriptive. The amendment that my colleague the Minister of Labour is moving tonight is about being flexible. It is about good faith. It is about protecting the rights of both employers and employees. You know we would not get productivity going at the rate of knots in this country when we have climbed out of the mess we were in if it were left up to members on that side of the House. 
What are we talking about here? All we are talking about is being able to ask workers when they would like their lunch break when they would like their smoko break for the morning period and when they would like to have their smoko break in the afternoon. What Labour members do not realise is that workers can actually think for themselves. They can sit down with the boss without the unions and without having the union clip the tickets as they go along and pay their union fees. I know that that is what happens because I have been there. I have been there and some of the worst employers might I add were union officers. The worst employers whom they rail against were the likes of the Northern Hotel Workers’ Union. 
Sue Moroney 
: It was only you Tau. It wasn’t everyone else; it was only you. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I was a member of the Northern Clerical Workers Union which was a very very fine outfit. 
Hon Member 
: We’re a broad church. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: We are a broad church. But is it not great to hear the old Fabian Society ramp up the old cloth cap arguments that we had in the 1970s? I have news for the Labour Party. I have news for the Labour Party and it is all bad. The days of those battles have gone the winning and losing of those battles has gone—[ 
Interruption 
]—and as my learned colleagues say the wall has come down. We now live in a more peaceful society. We now live in a society where we can be flexible where we can say to each other: “Excuse me Mr Boss-man I would like my 10 minutes now.” rather than being constrained by the Fabian Society whose members tell me that at 10 o’clock in the morning I am to have my smoko break and at 12.30 I am supposed to have my lunch break. 
This is the 21st century; these are not the days of Blackball as my colleague from the Maori Party said. These days are not those days. We have moved on. We are a better place. We are a more flexible place. There is nothing wrong with workers making decisions for themselves.