Logie Jan: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionLogie Jan: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 03 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9407. Text is subject to correction.]JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a call on this the Employment Standards Legislation Bill on its second reading.As stated previously by my colleague Denise Roche we are unable to support this bill at this stage because the bill that is in front of us which has come out of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee does not do what we were told it was going to do. I do understand that negotiations are happening at the moment behind closed doors and there is the possibility that something will come to the Committee of the whole House. It is disappointing that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety and the Government were not able to hear the submissions made by the 10000 submitters and to see the reason at that point of the process to return a bill to this House based on that evidence and that there has to be a process behind closed doors—which means we cannot support this bill at this stage.At the heart of our position is the fact that the Minister when this bill was introduced told us that this bill would prohibit zero-hour contracts. In actual fact what it does is etch zero-hour contracts into our legal and social landscape. There is at the moment a question over the legality of zero-hour contracts and this bill will establish them as valid in our laws.I do want to point out in this context that the Government is currently a really large part of the zero-hours problem because it allows those non-jobs to be listed through Work and Income and it has not ruled out cutting somebody’s benefit if they refuse to take a zero-hour contract. When welfare legislation was going through this House last year and submitters raised concerns about sole parents with young children being forced into these insecure zero-hour jobs the Government said and the advice back was that “Well we’re not going to rule those jobs out and say that they’re unsuitable in this legislation because that’s going to be dealt with through today’s piece of legislation.” And then what comes back to the House is something that actually enshrines that.So that has a cascade effect right throughout the system and these contracts are a disaster for most people. They mean that people go from week to week not knowing how much will be in their pay cheque. If you imagine trying to budget—to pay your rent to be able to put food on the table and to make sure your kids have got what they need to get to school and be at school—and not knowing how much money you have coming in I think you can understand why so many people are passionate about this issue and want to make sure that our law clearly prohibits these zero-hour contracts as promised by the Minister when it was introduced.This situation is particularly bad for sole parents and people with mental health issues who are trying to get back into work. So when the Government is saying that its main response to poverty in this country is to get people off welfare and into work this kind of legislation becomes critically important because actually their welfare and the meaning of work hinge on the quality of the work. Work does not provide benefit if it is that insecure; it actually causes harm.It was interesting—I got to sit in on some of the submissions on this bill and heard from some security guards who are currently working outside Work and Income offices contracted by Armourguard—to hear that their hours are deeply casualised to the point that they may get only 3 hours of work one week and then potentially they are working full-time another week. Their employer Armourguard is on record as saying that was due to the “unpredictable nature of workflows.” Work and Income offices are open for set hours; there is nothing unpredictable about that. But that is the balance of power in our employment situation at the moment.It is workers and families who are paying the real cost of this. We need legislation that makes it absolutely clear that that is unacceptable. At the moment this legislation will require those workers to take a case to court. That is not good enough and we cannot support it at the moment.