Copeland Gordon: Employment Relations (Probationary  Employment) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Employment Relations (Probationary  Employment) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6740] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 United Future is totally committed to doing all we can to ensure that as many New Zealanders as possible have a job. Earlier Mark Gosche commented that the United Kingdom Germany and France etc. have probationary periods in their law but also have higher rates of unemployment than New Zealand. I would like to say that it is rather cold comfort to people who are endeavouring to find a job and who for a long time have been unable to work in New Zealand to know that they are at least better off than people in Germany. I suppose they are in that sense but it is still very very cold comfort. That is why United Future in our election policy in 2005 suggested that there was a useful place in New Zealand employment law for a probationary period. 
I want to tell members why we believe that a probationary period is important. We see it as being important for four different categories of people who at the moment find it very very difficult to get into a job. 
The first category is people getting their first job. I have been with a number of young people who have been endeavouring to get their first job and I have experienced firsthand how difficult that can be for many of them. They tend to pick up the  
Dominion Post 
 on a Saturday with its employment supplement that has 640 jobs or something of that sort. They go away with their hopes up that somewhere amongst those 640 jobs there will be one that they can apply for. They come back to me and say: “Well I’ve isolated about 15 jobs that I think I could do but in every single case the advertisement states ‘experience required’.” One has to ask how someone looking for a first job can have experience; obviously that person has no experience. We feel it is important to allow those people to have an opportunity to overcome that problem. I will come in a moment to why employers insist in their advertisements that they require people who have experience and how a probationary period might help that. 
The second group of people we have in mind are people who are re-entering the workforce having undertaken courses for drug and alcohol treatment. These people are a very very high-risk group of people when it comes to getting back into the workforce. If they are honest when the employer asks: “What having you been doing for the last 6 months?” they say: “I have been in a rehabilitation programme.” Very often when they get to that point in the conversation the interview is immediately terminated; that is the experience many of them have. 
The third group whom I think are in an even more difficult position is prisoners who are coming back into the workforce having done their time in prison and therefore having paid society their dues in respect of their criminal activity and the like. A number of wonderful organisations in this country specialise in trying to rehabilitate these men—normally they are men; there are very few women in our prisons thank God. Nothing is more important in that process than being able to get those people a job. I have met with people from several of those organisations and they have told me it is extremely difficult to get those people back into work because the employer says: “Look you’re just too risky.” 
The fourth group of people we have in mind are new immigrants and refugees. Again I have personally spent time with those groups and the people who work with those groups and I know the great difficulty they have in getting their first job in New Zealand. That is particularly the case for people who have relatively poor English language skills. They have a tremendous struggle getting their first job in this country sometimes to the point of their feeling total despair because no one is prepared to risk taking them on. 
That is what this bill is trying to address. How do we mitigate the risk? How do we get an employer to take a risk with this people? It is not made any easier by the fact that a number of the employers as they have told me have taken risks with people in those four categories I have mentioned only to find that 2 3 4 or 5 days or weeks after they start a job they simply one day do not turn up. That illustrates the fact that our present arrangements are kind of one-sided. We have a contract of employment between employee and employer but if the employee opts out he or she can walk away and that is the end of the matter. There is no come-back at all for the employer. It is unfortunate because those people—and there are not many of them; I am not saying it is a big problem—make it more difficult for people who really want to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay to get into the workforce. 
United Future members believe that there is a risk involved from an employer’s point of view when he or she evaluates the situation and asks: “Am I prepared to take this person on?”. Therefore we believe as does Dr Wayne Mapp that it is important to address that reality and do something about it rather than sit here with our hands folded as it were and say that we are not prepared to address this issue. Because if we do not address this issue the reality is that it will continue. 
Something else really really disappoints me about the debate that we have had so far on this bill. I have noticed a tendency coming up more and more in this Parliament and I think it is very disappointing and it is this. Wayne Mapp comes up with a bill. It gets through its first reading it goes to a select committee submitters come along and the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee produces a report which states the reasons why the bill should not proceed—breach of human rights overturning of employment law etc. They are all listed on pages 3 to 5 of the report. Wayne Mapp listens to those submitters and he alters his bill. 
How has he attempted to amend his bill? Let us look at what Wayne Mapp has put before Parliament. He is saying we should give this bill a second reading so that it can go to the Committee of the whole House and he will put amendments to change what was originally put before this House to something different. Yet speech after speech so far from the opponents of this bill have referred to the bill as submitted. I think that is lazy and in a sense kind of dishonest. 
So let us look at what Wayne Mapp proposes. First of all he said probationary periods would be by agreement between the two parties. They will not apply to every job; they will not apply to everybody. We heard from Sue Bradford that they will apply to hundreds of thousands of people. That is a nonsense. They will apply to a particular situation whereby the parties themselves agree to them. They will apply to the sorts of people I am talking about who want their first job or want to get back into the workforce after prison or rehabilitation or have come to New Zealand as immigrants or whatever. Those employees are happy to be taken on on the basis that if it does not work out they will not be able to take a personal grievance against their employer. 
Wayne Mapp has a specific amendment about this and it is worth reading it out: “For the avoidance of doubt all issues other than personal grievances including arrears of pay discrimination under the Human Rights Act and issues arising from health and safety can be subject to proceedings under this Act.” In other words there would no loss of rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or under the Human Rights Act in relation to this bill if it were amended by Dr Wayne Mapp’s amendments. But here is the rub: Parliament will never even debate these amendments. No we have made our minds up and we do not want to be confused with facts or amendments—this is a dead loss! 
Hone Harawira said we cannot do this because it might be risky. I ask Hone how will we ever know— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Please use the member’s full name. 
GORDON COPELAND 
: —if we do not do it. Suppose the bill were successful in getting a lot more Maori into employment—would that not be worth it? Unfortunately we will never know because you are not actually prepared to give it a go. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
GORDON COPELAND 
: I want to say on behalf of United Future that I am disappointed that this bill will not go to the Committee of the whole House and that we will not be able to look at sensible amendments. That is what we should be doing as a responsible Parliament. Obviously with that in mind United Future will be voting in favour of the bill at its second reading. Thank you.