Bidois DanDAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It is a pleasure today to be speaking on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. Now I first came across this bill while I was at Foodstuffs last year and not many of the people at Foodstuffs were happy about this bill. They weren't clear about what problem they are actually trying to fix. Then I got elected about six—Hon Scott Simpson: Low union membership—low union membership.DAN BIDOIS: That's right. That's right—low union membership. That's what's clear to us on this side of the House. Then I got elected about six months ago at the time that this bill was put into the select committee stage. I haven't had a chance to sit on that committee the Education and Workforce Committee but I've gone around and interviewed a lot of businesses in that time and it is again very clear that this bill doesn't seek to solve any problem that is real in the market place beyond giving unions greater power to essentially recruit members. This is in a sense a payback. I know that there's a fine line of what we can say here in the House but that is what the people out there in the market place are feeling—that this is in a sense a payback for what the unions have done for certain political parties.But let's come to the bill because I think it's a really important bill to understand. What I want to spend a bit of time on is this thing called a MECA. I'm not talking about Mecca as in the place in the Middle East; I'm talking about the multi-employer collective agreement. I'm going to be honest: a year ago I had no idea what a MECA was and nor do most employers. So we're going through the clauses and we're going through the clause which deals with the MECA and the duty to conclude. Now I know that we've got a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) on the Table that narrows the duty to conclude only for those that are under a collective agreement or collectively bargaining a collective agreement but I do want to just spend a bit of time—and I'd love to hear from the Minister in the chair Iain Lees-Galloway about how he sees this working in practice because all of the businesses that I've spoken to can't see how MECAs work on a practical basis.Let me take any industry whether it be retail whether it be wholesale whether it be the business that I used to work in which is Foodstuffs—there are as you know Foodstuffs stores throughout the country but each store has their own unique challenges and the business world doesn't feel simply that MECAs are a sufficient mechanism for what are going to be very unique and localised challenges across New Zealand. For example in some Foodstuffs stores in say Hamilton there may be some issues around the cafe and what the employers want at that store is a better cafe but then there might be a supermarket up in Auckland where there's a brand new cafe in store. So why should a MECA agreement apply essentially to them when we're talking about very unique circumstances?I do want to talk a little bit more about Foodstuffs because they made a submission on this bill regarding MECAs. They've said very clearly that it's not practical or appropriate where there are very localised issues going on within their stores throughout the country. So they recommend a repeal of that which is where I come to my SOP in my name SOP 114 which essentially deletes clauses 13 and 14. This would essentially allow the employers to opt out and would not mean that you need to conclude a MECA. I think that this would address some of the issues that I've spoken about with large employers but also medium as well that don't feel that an industry-wide approach is flexible. It certainly doesn't speak to the employment arrangements that we have already. I've mentioned already in this House that we already have one of the most flexible efficient labour markets in the developed world and this clearly does not—[Time expired]