Turner Judy: Employment Relations (Breaks Infant Feeding and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turner Judy: Employment Relations (Breaks Infant Feeding and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18208. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to support the third reading of the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill but I start by explaining making very clear and putting on record why we have opposed Supplementary Order Paper 229 which amends the KiwiSaver provisions. We have done so for three reasons.  
The first and perhaps the most important reason we are opposing the amendment is that it represents extremely shoddy process in this House. I think the National member Wayne Mapp articulated that particularly well in this debate. This amendment put up by the Government is important but it should have enjoyed a full submission process and full parliamentary consideration. To bring it into the House under urgency in this way we consider completely unacceptable. Our second objection to this amendment is that we believe the Government is trying to solve a problem that it may well have created itself with KiwiSaver. We believe that the Government has been the author of some very mixed messages that were contained in speeches during the introduction of the KiwiSaver legislation and that could well have created the concerns the Government is now seeking to address. The third reason we are opposing the amendment is that we currently remain unconvinced that it is necessary and would go so far as to say that Labour by moving this amendment has disadvantaged some of the lowest-income wage earners in New Zealand—the very people whom this Government heading into an election campaign would say it is there to advocate for. United Future would have liked the opportunity to see this amendment go before a select committee and to hear the arguments both ways— 
Craig Foss 
: And the costings. 
JUDY TURNER 
: —and the costings making sure that it was the right way forward. This amendment is not just a little technical change; it is an amendment of substance. 
However we see the overall bill as reflecting family-friendly practices. The Department of Labour has put out a rather interesting document for employers on the issue of breastfeeding and I notice a section called “Frequently asked questions” which covers some really good points: what it will cost employers to comply and the amount of space they will have to make available if their employees require breastfeeding considerations. There are some really good answers to questions about potential issues for employees who are Maori or Pacific or from a different religious background in terms of the need to breastfeed discreetly with cultural considerations. There is a section called “Is this good for business?” which I think is the most relevant question that the department traverses in this document. I want to reinforce the answer given because I think the benefits to business of having good employment practices and of being family friendly are very clear for business and are very good for employees. It is certainly clear in this day and age when we have a very different employment environment from even one or two decades ago that employers need to realise that the benefits of increased productivity staff retention and a number of other very tangible benefits of these types of family-friendly policies will be make-or-break issues in terms of the ongoing success of their business.  
United Future thinks this provision is long overdue. The Labour member Sue Moroney traversed the issue very well when she talked about the fact that many of us had always understood that breaks were an entitlement that the law covered. We like others in the House were quite surprised to discover that this was an area of law that needed strengthening and we certainly support the strengthening of that provision. United Future thinks this bill is timely but we are disappointed in the Supplementary Order Paper amendment that has gone through today. We will be interested to see how history will judge this amendment and whether it creates its own set of unexpected and unintended consequences that a future Government has to work on and fix but we certainly want to make it very very clear that we support the third reading of this bill. 
Bill read a third time.