O'Connor Simon: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
O'Connor Simon: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 09 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2118. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 There is always a paradox when we talk about Luther and conscience as in that call from the honourable member Andrew Little as I stand to speak here today. I think it is good to start by saying that this Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill is not a bill that talks about the right to strike or freedom of association. This is about the process of making the decision to strike. I think that is an incredibly important distinction. I cannot think for the Opposition or others but this may help defuse some of the tensions that are there at the moment. Again it comes back to the whole principle that you have the right to strike and you can strike. When circumstance allows a person can strike.  
This bill though in the name of the Hon Tau Henare is looking at the process about how a person moves to make the decision to strike. In doing so it is with a great conscience—and I hope I sleep well tonight—that I stand in support positively. It is always good to be positive I think— 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: That’s right. 
SIMON O’CONNOR 
: —absolutely—in support of this member’s bill the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill. Again I just want to acknowledge Tau Henare and the work he has done not only to bring this to the House but also to take it through the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and to take I believe suggestions that have come from the floor and elsewhere and to incorporate them into the bill that we have in front of us now.  
I wanted to address a couple of the thoughts questions insights if you will that were being put out through this debate. One was that we do not have any problem so why do we need this bill? You know why put the law in place if it is already running perfectly? The first reason is clarity. I have always thought that one of the great principles of democracy and of this House is to have clarity in the law. There is no harm in taking the time at an appropriate time in this House to clarify the law to codify it to give it some structure and also to make success clear.  
I acknowledge what an honourable member was noting earlier that some major unions are conducting secret ballots and that is an excellent thing. That is something to be acknowledged. But this House can be about success: celebrating it clarifying it and codifying it into the House. To use an analogy if it is going well for others why not draw that into legislation? Why not put that across all the unions in this case so that they can share in that success? I have heard some say “No there’s still no need; there is still no need.” You know we have to look at it and say: “Well look analogously some people look after the environment some people are concerned about different aspects so let us not do any legislation around it because you know some are already doing it well.” That does not really work. It is not a logical conclusion.  
I find that law is often about exceptions. We put law in place to deal with exceptions. People have been talking about their backgrounds and a small part of my recent one is around contracts. The whole point of contracts is not to work with what is happening day by day; it is to work with exceptions. In some ways this is what this law is about. It is about trying to take the exceptions in the unions where democracy is not fully expressed and allowing it to become the norm to follow the example of many unions in allowing secret ballots. 
 But also this law is about providing certainty. It is not trying to rely on the moral goodwill of unions or individuals—union leaders in particular—to do the right thing. It does not work. Moral goodwill does not always work. Again this is one of the points why we have this legislature: to come along and provide certainty. I want to add too that when we got on to the aspects of morality a bit earlier from one of the speeches we cannot go about in this House constantly linking every issue to the UN to human rights to the change in oil prices or whatever. This is really a fairly simple debate.  
I also want to add that this is not about the particular strikes that we have had currently in the past or in the future and I say that because this is about democratic process. This bill is very simple. It is about the democratic principle to vote and to vote secretly. I think it really comes down to that. I was always a great believer in principles because what this is about is the Employment Relations Act. It is about modifying it to allow individuals within the unions to exercise a democratic right to vote secretly.  
Strikes are a serious undertaking.  
Andrew Little 
: So are lockouts.  
SIMON O’CONNOR 
: Yes anything like that lockouts strikes they are a serious undertaking and I am sure the honourable member would agree therefore as a consequence that these decisions of a lockout or a strike should not be taken lightly. In terms of a strike these are communal actions. Strikes are a communal action but each individual person is affected. So to that end in my thinking it is paramount that each individual has the complete freedom to act as they see fit.  
Looking at the democratic principles a secret ballot enables that. They have the right therefore to exercise democratically their vote secretly. I cannot perceive the threat the concern or the problem with that because ultimately secret ballots ensure freedom. They ensure a democracy. There are plenty of analogies—and many of them have been flown across the House today and in weeks past—around the secret ballot.  
This is not something new. This is not new to our democracy here in New Zealand or around the world. I think actually the last time that I stood to speak on this bill I noted that the idea of secret ballots had been around since the 18th and 19th centuries. Being the type of person that I am I decided to pick up old  
Hansard 
 records from the past and read through the debates. It is fascinating how in some ways history repeats itself. The same arguments against secret ballots continued back then; they are continuing here today.  
Personally a secret ballot empowers people. It empowers our democracy and the action of voting to bring us here to Parliament and I cannot see any problem with exercising it in any unions because as has been noted many a time it is already enacted in many unions. Let us codify it let us simplify it and let us express it in law. Personally as I stand here in the 21st century I do not know why we would look backward if you like and oppose this sort of democratic lineage. I think it is great to be part of a Parliament that is expanding and working to expand and enable this democratic process. You know it really is a privilege to be in this Parliament. It is a privilege to be in this Parliament that is helping develop the democratic process.  
But I thought I would just turn very quickly to some of the other issues that were being brought up because there has been a bit of a discussion around lockouts versus strikes and board stakeholders versus unions. I have been trying to give this some thought but it is somewhat on the hop so I will have to apologise in advance if need be. People are saying that there is no symmetry here and that there is no similarity between the boards and the unions.  
What I was thinking though was that boards are making decisions for others. The board is making a decision for others. When workers consider a strike they are making a decision for themselves as individuals and I think that is an important distinction. If individuals are going to be making their decision to strike they need those universal principles that we talk about in the UN and others these human rights—the ability to associate freely as the Opposition agrees—but also the ability to express their democratic franchise as they see fit. In a union vote when union members are making their vote to strike they are making a direct and deliberate action of and for themselves. But when we look at a board even when we look at shareholders—be it in a company be it in a friendly society or whatever—they are not making a direct association with themselves. It is indirect.  
I think that is an important distinction and one that we do need to think about because at the end of the day this bill does sit within a context of a National Government committed to all New Zealanders. We are not here to make random and rash decisions on people to fire ad hominem names around. We are here to work for all New Zealanders. We have progressed to increase the minimum wage we have put through the 90-day legislation to improve those opportunities and we have worked to enable workers to have the right to choose—secretly or otherwise—how to use their fourth week of leave. I think it is important to put this debate within that context.  
But I come back exactly to where I started from: that this really is a bill of principles. It is a principle of democracy. It is the ability as an individual to vote as you see fit freely and secretly and to take the success that the Opposition has spoken of in the New Zealand Amalgamated Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union and others and say: “Hey let’s codify this into practice. Let’s celebrate what is a good way of working in order that people will make their right decisions.” [ 
Interruption 
] I am going to stop there just before there are more interjections because you know we want to get down to the real business of getting this passed. Thank you.