Prebble Richard: Employment Relations Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Prebble Richard: Employment Relations Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:16154] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 First of all I very much resent the way the Minister purported to speak for the Committee. He said—and no doubt it is accurate—that no member had spoken to clause 32. But he failed to mention that he had answered the question himself as to how many clauses there were. The Government had put all the provisions into one part. I defy the Minister to say that is not correct. If the debate had been taken clause by clause does he really believe that members would not have spoken to clause 32? I see he is silent now. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: Maybe. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: Come on Minister! Does he really think that I would not have spoken to clause 32? I would have taken four calls if I had been allowed to do so. 
I also resent the Minister’s suggestion that everyone has gone along with his socialist view that the Government ought to provide for everything. The ACT party does not go along with that view. We do not support safety programmes run by trade unions. The ACT party never has. The Minister knows that. One thing that I note about the trade union movement is that when all else fails it pulls out the safety card; it turns it into a safety issue. In my experience most of those safety issues were bogus. In my experience as an employer I have never agreed to pay danger money. Any time the trade union came along and started playing the safety card I have said that I am not prepared to pay people extra for something that is unsafe. But I have certainly seen unions raise bogus safety issues on many occasions. 
I believe that many of these education courses approved by the Minister will be a monstrous waste of taxpayers’ money employers’ money and employees’ money. I do not care whether the Minister publicises his approval of them on the Internet in the G 
azette 
 or on movie screens. It will still be a waste of money. I believe that this bill is another example. We ought to have a decent system of the rule of law. People should be held responsible for their own actions and the full consequences of them. If we did that we would not need to have the Government acting as granny and the trade union movement acting as auntie to try to do all these safety measures. We never used to have them. 
When we look at recent safety accident rates we see they have gone up. The real reason—and I do not want to go into any detail—is that no-fault accident compensation has made New Zealand more dangerous than Iraq. That is what has happened. That is why we have all these regulations. All we need is good old common law that states that people as adults are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions. If we had that we would not need the Minister having to gazette safety courses—in fact so many of them that he now wants to publicise them on the Internet. But how much money will be taken from the taxpayer? This Government thinks that it is its money. It is not. It belongs to employers and to the public. 
The ACT party will vote against this clause just as we voted if the Minister had noticed against clause 32. We are being completely consistent. We say that this bill has no redeeming features. It is not often we have a bill that has no redeeming features. This bill is a huge step backwards. The Minister can call it health and safety as much as he likes but that does not mean that it will improve the health and safety of New Zealanders. It will just increase their costs. It is just more socialist bureaucracy and more pandering to the trade union movement.