Dalziel Lianne: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee Recommittal Third Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee Recommittal Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:449] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am very happy to take my additional 4 minutes and 30 seconds of speaking time and probably a couple of other calls as well because this is a very important opportunity to finally get answers from Minister Kate Wilkinson on the questions we have been asking throughout the Committee stage. Of course because the bill has not been to a select committee we are entitled to scrutinise it in a very in-depth way in the Committee stage. There is a wide-ranging debate on clauses 1 and 2 when a bill has not been to a select committee. 
I believe there are a number of questions that the Minister should respond to. The first one is why does this legislation have to go through all its stages under urgency when it does not come into effect until 1 April next year—the April Fool’s joke as we have described it in this House over the last day? It is important for the Minister to explain why the bill is going through under urgency. Even the  
New Zealand Herald  
cannot understand why it is going through under urgency “other than to give the perception that the Government has ‘momentum’ ”. Well that is not very satisfactory and I believe that the Government should explain why this bill is being rushed through all its stages without going to a select committee and without democratic input. Because the bill is not coming into effect until 1 April there is plenty of time to send it to a select committee to call for submissions and to have it still take effect from 1 April next year. 
The second question that the Minister has not yet responded to is the question of immigration visa status. One of the subsequent questions that really follows on from the one I have asked is whether the Immigration Service will now decline to accept as a job offer anything that contains within it a trial provision. Of course if the Immigration Service continues to accept job offers for the purpose of allocating points under the skilled migration scheme then the trial provision actually negates the whole purpose of having a large number of points attributed to the job offer because it does not mean anything. After 90 days the person may not have a job and the whole point of having a high number of points allocated to the job offer is to ensure that people are actually able to settle well in New Zealand and bring their skills into New Zealand and into skilled employment. That is a very serious question; the Minister has not responded to the question of how the Immigration Service will respond to trial provisions within an employment agreement. The Minister has stood up in this House on other occasions and said that it is just a matter of choice and that people can freely negotiate one of these provisions into their agreement. But when people are desperate to find their way into New Zealand and are prepared to accept any terms and conditions—and the Minister will find that out in her role as Associate Minister of Immigration—they will sign up to trial provisions if that requirement is placed upon them. 
The third question that the Minister has not responded to concerns the particular vulnerability of young people going into their first jobs. They are entitled to know what their employer expects of them. It is not good enough that we let employers off the hook by saying they do not have a human resources department so therefore they will be let off the hook or by saying they do not have to tell new employees what they expect from them and they can simply let them go. I think that the point I was making last night was a very serious one. When employers can simply let someone go without any explanation without any reason being given they could have breaches of our human rights laws at the back of their minds but they will certainly not bring them to the forefront. They may want to dismiss people when they turn up at work on Monday and find out that their manager has hired a Maori someone from an Asian country or a woman—God forbid. So sexism and racism can occur under this legislation.