Sowry Roger: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2) Human Rights Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Sowry Roger: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2) Human Rights Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
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Hon ROGER SOWRY (National) 
: 
 It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Hamilton East because she puts so much work into her speeches! She does an enormous amount of work on important issues before the House and that is reflected in her contribution which is always incisive and sometimes to the point. 
The employment relations law reform legislation is a disgrace. It is legislation that delivers to the trade union movement all the things that the Labour Party could not deliver during the winter of discontent in the year 2000. At about the same time as Mr Tamihere was receiving his cash payout the Labour Party was delivering through the winter of discontent a bill for the trade unions; and at about the same time as Mr Tamihere got caught it followed that up with the sequel to this issue. The Labour Party has delivered to the trade unions all the ways they can get the funding that they need to pump back into the Labour Party campaign. That is what the legislation is all about. It is effectively compulsory unionism. It is a levy. Employees who do not belong to a union have to pay a levy to the union if they want the same pay and conditions as union members and that levy of course is a ticket-clicking exercise for the Labour Party to help fund its campaign. 
I hope that the trade union movement declares to this House how much money it is putting in the Labour Party coffers unlike the Waipareira Trust which put a whole heap of Government money into Mr Tamihere’s campaign that was not declared during the process. I hope that we do not see the same sort of tactics used by the trade union movement with this legislation as we have seen with the Waipareira Trust and Mr Tamihere in relation to Government money. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: We will. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: The prediction is that we will and unfortunately I am inclined to believe that. 
The most insidious part of the legislation is the part that says to workers that if they do not join the union they cannot get the same terms and conditions as staff who belong to the union. I ask the Greens in particular as they have supported this measure but Labour members as well how they say to the checkout operator in the supermarket who is a solo mum and is working part time—and whose benefit starts to abate if she earns over $80 a week—that unless she joins the union she will be paid a lower hourly rate. How fair is that? Why is she not able to negotiate her own rate? Good God we trust her to raise her kids on her own and to do a whole lot of other stuff on her own but we do not trust her to negotiate her wage. 
Mike Ward 
: She can. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: The Greens say that she can. But the employer cannot pay her the same can they? The Greens will not answer that. 
Mike Ward 
: If she pays the fee she can. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: Mike Ward says that if she pays the fee she can get the same. I ask the Greens whether they stand in the organic line at the supermarket and say to the part-time solo mum on the checkout that she will now be up for a union fee otherwise she will get a lower rate than the person in the next aisle. Do they say that? Because that is the effect of it and they know it. They do not say it because they are not straight up enough to do so. Why do they not say that? Why do they not tell the staff what they already know? I say to this House that I fronted in a supermarket staffroom last week and the question from the butchery department was: “Why would we get different rates of pay for doing the same job just because one of us belonged to a union?”. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: How did you answer that? 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: I said: “Go and ask the Government.” It is no good asking the Greens. They do not eat meat. They do not know where the butchery department is. It is just not fair. The good old Labour Party is saying that it trusts a solo mum to raise her kids but no way will it trust her to negotiate a wage. It is saying: “We do not trust the man in the butchery department to negotiate his own salary and damn it if he does he will be paid a lower rate than someone who is a member of the union. We’re going to write and pass a law of the land that says that if you negotiate your own rate of pay for doing exactly the same job as someone in the union you are prohibited by law from being paid more. The union will put a cap on top of the wage and we will say that you cannot even be paid the same.” Well how fair is that? It is very fair for the union because it will get a captive group of people who have to belong. 
Mike Ward 
: They don’t have to belong. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: They do not have to belong if they want a lower rate of pay. That is right is it not? The thing about this debate is that the good old socialist argument for collectivism is more important than individuals being trusted to do something for themselves. Goddam that we should ever trust people to do something for themselves. This Government hates that. It says that we must not empower people or trust them. It says that we must not encourage them to do something for themselves and that we must make sure that the union by law is given the best rate. Why would members opposite not support it the other way? Why would the Greens not vote the other way? Why would they not vote to say that anyone can negotiate anything but the union must not negotiate the same as an individual and it has to be less? Why do we not vote for that? What is wrong with that? They do not say anything about that. It is OK for the collective to have the advantage but my gosh we must not give an individual an advantage. 
This law is crazy. This law will be breached all over the country and some poor employers will be fined $10000 for paying their staff the same rate. I know—and other members if they are honest know it as well—that employers have said: “In my workplace everyone will get the same regardless.” They are going to ignore the law. The Greens have come to Wellington to vote with the Government for a law that will be ignored. Only a few will get picked off by this. Someone who stands up to a bolshie union official will be picked off and fined. At the end of the day who loses? It is actually the person who is the most vulnerable. It is the young part-timer—or the young and the part-timers. Those people lose because they have to pay a union fee that in many cases is more than any increase they will get. They lose. They have to belong to an organisation they do not believe in. They lose. They have to have money taken from their wages to pay for Labour’s re-election campaign just as money was taken from the Waipareira Trust—from kids’ vaccinations—to pay for John Tamihere’s election campaign. That is where the money came from. It was taken from kids’ vaccinations from reading programmes and from welfare programmes—money that was siphoned off for the Labour Party. That is what we are doing here tonight.