Adams Paul: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Adams Paul: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11556] 
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
: 
 I must confess I was disappointed with Peter Brown and also Rick Barker on their definition of a worker in this nation. The whole thing seems to focus back that one is only a worker in this nation if one is on somebody’s payroll. Let me assure members that there are many workers in this nation who are not on payrolls who take the risks who go out and work for themselves. What I dislike about this entire legislation is that yes there are agreements for redundancy and all those things but it is basically paying somebody for work that is not done before it is paying somebody for work that is done. Mr Peck should not shake his head because that is quite correct about what is happening. 
The self-employed small-business people in this country face many challenges even with Accident Compensation Corporation benefits. Perhaps they have had a tough year. They are just establishing a small business yet if they are tired and injure themselves what is their income from that point based on? It is based on what they have earned in the previous year. If they have not earned anything as such in the previous year they are really starving. So they have many things. 
I do not want to get into a discussion on whether a person on a wage is better off than a self-employed person because it is not an issue about that. I employ staff I appreciate staff and they are the backbone of any company. They are the ones who make or break the business. So I am not getting into a debate about which is better and which is not. But let me give an illustration that may show members how the thinking changes. There is not a right or wrong on this but let us take a seed. Let us take a pine seed. A worker may see it just as a seed so he will eat it because he will see it as food. Yet the entrepreneurs in this country will see that same pine seed and they will decide not to eat it but to plant it because they see within the seed a pine tree—that can produce a pine forest that can produce a timber company that can employ people. So it goes on. This is where we need both types of people. 
We heard Mark Peck mention that the Credit Contracts Act was enacted to cover payments for these small workers. That was great but this bill now takes away all that advantage. For those workers who have come to the last part of their contract—let us go to the end so the member is happy and agrees with me—maybe on this invoice they have most of their materials which is what would happen with a lot of tradespeople and the firm goes turkey up. Right. So they have done the work and they have bought the materials. They have invested their money but this legislation is telling them they cannot get their money for what they have done unless redundancy has been paid out to workers who have already been paid for all the work they have done. This is to tide them over for a period unless they get work. As has very rightly been pointed out tonight the moment those workers are made redundant they are able to go down and register for the unemployment benefit. Therefore from that day on they get income coming into their families. 
What happens to the small contractor who also has a family and children to support? What happens to him? Firstly he is devastated emotionally because he is now in a situation where he is likely to face bankruptcy through absolutely no fault of his own through circumstances and situations that he had absolutely nothing to do with. We talk about agreements. We talk about a redundancy agreement that is an agreement between a worker and an employee for that which they expect in the future. 
If we are going to have that sort of agreement I ask Mr Peck about the agreement where a contractor quotes for a job puts in the tender has to be competitive and is fighting against many others. What about that agreement where the contractor is saying he will do the work and the client is to pay for it? There is no rationale in the argument that one agreement may stand because someone is on a payroll but that another agreement does not matter because the person is not on a payroll has taken a risk mortgaged the house and has taken on workers.