Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I stand to oppose this legislation. I'm surprised—I suppose the starting point would be: is there a crisis in the employment scene in New Zealand? Most people would come to the conclusion that at record low unemployment and having seen a jobs boom in this country over the past few years—particularly the latter years of the National Government with 245000 new jobs created in the last two years of the National Government. With the economy having great momentum even still and with jobs being created and with opportunities for young people and old people and people of all ages and backgrounds to get work in this country you would have to say Well the employment relation scene's working pretty well." and it has been working pretty well in this country. It's been based on predictability and flexibility so that the New Zealand workforce has been flexible and able to provide people with the opportunity to work and that is the most precious thing. So what have we got here? The Government comes along and says "Oh well we're creating more jobs than we have in a generation. More New Zealanders have the opportunity to work than ever before in recent memory. Well why don't we just foul it all up and change it?" and that's what this legislation is doing. It's taking out those foundations of that successful flexible working environment that we've had over the long period of time. We're left with what is the most muddled and confused Government that we've had for a long period of time. On the one hand we see Mr Jones over there—Minister Jones—who is responsible for what is in effect a very expensive job creation scheme in terms of the Provincial Growth Fund. As I'm sure he's aware when he goes around the countryside the most frequent thing that he'll hear is "We can't find any workers. We're desperate for workers." and yet he's going out and spending lots of money to create more jobs so that he'll have to import people from Vanuatu and the other Islands to plant all these trees because there are no workers available in so many parts. But there are definitely still some people who remain unemployed and there are still some of what we call young NEETs—people who are not in education employment or training—and how do we draw them into the workforce those people who are the most marginalised? It is not easy. It's difficult. As Willie Jackson will know it's difficult to deal with these sorts of issues. But what is this Government doing? Well for a start it's spending all its money that could be focused on drawing more people into the trades and helping those NEETs into useful education and training—it's spending all that money on middle-class welfare for free fees. Billions of dollars are going in and not creating any more students so that that's a strange kind of way of dealing with the issue. Then on the other side in terms of trying to get the nephs off the couch—as Mr Jones talked about—well what are they doing? Well Carmel Sepuloni is working very hard to undermine any of the sanctions within the welfare area. So we're not going to do anything to compel or encourage people who aren't prepared to work to work but somehow we're going to talk about helping NEETs. Then we get to this legislation. I mean what is the group of people that are going to be most negatively affected by doing away with the 90-day work trials? What is it? What group is going to be most negatively affected by doing away with 90-day work trials? Well it is the young unemployed inexperienced young Māori from Northland for example who haven't had any experience in work who come from a background of not having been through school and who have been in a difficult environment. That group of people is most likely to benefit from an employer having the opportunity to take a chance of them—take a chance on them. Whether it's planting some of those trees up in Northland that we're spending all the money for—the ones that haven't gone into the mulcher. But there are still a few trees that will be planted and the ones that haven't gone into the mulcher and that need to be planted will be planted by young men and women who somebody is taking a chance to employ. This legislation takes away that opportunity for most businesses. So there's—Hon Shane Jones: Wild country—wild pigs. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well he's referring to pigs. Well even the pig farmers are going to need to have the opportunity to employ young people and most of them will have more than 20 workers because we're not just talking about full-time workers. It's a small little business which might have 20 part-time workers on their books—well they can no longer use the 90-day work trial. Anybody who has spoken to business people around the countryside who are wanting to take a chance on employing somebody who has no background in work and who may have all sorts of personal issues addictions and all those sorts of things where we're wanting to take a chance on that person—they are going to be less likely to do that because of this legislation that we're talking about here today. It is a confused and muddled Government that spends half its time talking about how it wants to help these people and then the other half of the time passing legislation that will make life more difficult for that very same group and—Hon Willie Jackson: Give us an example. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Mr Jackson—I'd be very keen to hear from him how he can possibly justify this piece of legislation which is going to hurt the very group that he says he's working to try and help. Now we heard this huge big claim from New Zealand First about how they were going to tough it out—they were going to straighten out this legislation and help the regional businesses to deal with it. They're going to push back against the "Great Bearded Wonder" Lees-Galloway and toughen up this legislation. Well what a wet blanket that turned out to be. They haven't made any changes whatsoever hardly. I mean it's a little tweak here and a little tweak there but essentially this juggernaut still carries on and it's going to undermine the confidence that New Zealand businesses have and it is the primary reason why business confidence is at low levels. Now of course we'll hear from Government Ministers that all these references to poor business confidence is just rubbish it's mumbo jumbo it's confusion and it doesn't link with reality. Well I tell you what: when business confidence is low that leads ultimately to fewer investments being made and the only way that we continue to create new jobs is through somebody making an investment deciding to invest in a new business buying new plant and hiring a new worker and those investment decisions are less likely to happen in an environment of poor confidence. Now it's absolutely the case that this economy still continues to have momentum over a decade of good governance and very high terms of trade for our export prices. So yep we've got a good strong economy with good momentum but this Government takes that for granted and just assumes that it will carry on for ever. If they continue to chip away at the foundations of that success we might wake up one morning and find that actually unemployment starts to increase and fewer people have opportunities. So that 90-day work trial to me is one of the saddest things that I've heard in recent times—depriving young people of the opportunity to have a chance taken on them by employers up and down this countryside. I think that the members on the other side need to take a long hard deep look at themselves and ask themselves whether they've got that one right and I don't think they have. Just some of the other things that people will be shocked to discover about this legislation which hasn't been changed: one is the idea that businesses have to essentially help unions recruit new members—because that's what this is all about—and how employers should have to pay full salary and wages to someone even if they're on a partial strike. Well I mean just imagine how that works in practice. You've got a group of people who are wanting to go and work only half-days or work to rule work slowly—not do what they are supposed to be doing—and they expect to be paid full-time by their employers. Well how do they think that sort of works? It doesn't work very well—that's how that's how businesses go to the wall. So this legislation is about helping unions strengthen their grip on the New Zealand economy. There are 82 percent of workers who aren't—Tim van de Molen: 83 percent. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —83 percent—members of unions at the moment but this legislation is designed to increase that over time and I don't think that's going to be a helpful thing for our opportunities. It won't be an environment that will create the kind of jobs growth and jobs boom that we have seen over the past decade."