Harawira Hone: Employment Relations (Flexible Working  Hours) Amendment Bill — Consideration of Interim Report of Transport and Industrial Relations Committee 
Harawira Hone: Employment Relations (Flexible Working  Hours) Amendment Bill — Consideration of Interim Report of Transport and Industrial Relations Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2726] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 The Maori Party is pleased to support Sue Kedgley’s bill because it is a genuine attempt to help people to balance their work and family life—although if I were to go across the road to my marae back home and ask my aunties how they were handling their work-life balance they would probably slap my ears and tell me to stay out of their business and get back on the taumata. Work-life balance is not something that people in my neck of the woods have even heard about yet although they certainly understand the need to work when there is work to be done and to stop to smell the daisies when the work has all been done. Yet trying to juggle the pace of life that is becoming more and more frenetic in today’s evermore complex world requires us all to consider that balance. 
Maori are used to doing things like holding down a job while at the same time helping at the marae running kids to sports and wananga organising gear for the school kapahaka running the batons up looking after the mokopuna fund-raising for school trips paying the bills cooking for nephews and nieces who drop by every day and keeping the home safe and they still have time to worry about how their kids are doing and about where they are who they are hanging with what they are getting up to and how come they are too tired to do any work around the house but they always have time to loaf around town doing nothing at all. It is those kids we are thinking about in supporting this bill. 
I think of the way kids text one another instead of talking—even when they are in the same room. In my day it was kanohi ki te kanohi or face to face and that is how we got on with one another. In today’s world it is konui ki te konui or thumb to thumb. It is a whole different way of relating to people and it is hard for parents to understand because we are so locked up in our world of work work work. We just do not have the time to see what the kids are doing. I can see how this bill will benefit working parents and their whanau as well as their workplaces. In giving employees with young children the right to ask for flexible working hours and requiring employers to take these requests seriously this bill is what we like to see. 
Yesterday I challenged this Parliament to hear the May Day signals and recognise protect and preserve parents’ rights against the onslaught of society’s drive to force mothers and fathers into the workforce. I made that challenge because I think this nation has had enough of the mean-spirited attacks on parents and their responsibilities including the marginalisation and exclusion of beneficiary parents from the Working for Families package and the bizarre shut-down of one of this country’s most cherished parent support services PlunketLine. 
I just note for Dr Mapp in case he has forgotten that the reason why unions are not so strong is not that workers do not feel the need for them any more; it is that National passed legislation that smashed them. To Labour’s everlasting shame it did nothing to return that power. 
I made my challenge yesterday because I think of the need for us to move forward and I have to say I am greatly saddened in reflecting on the Working for Families package to note that Labour’s Maori MPs not only sat by but actually voted for that legislation which denies vital support to more than 100000 Maori children. Thankfully the Greens have heard that call and I am happy to note that within 24 days of my May Day alert we have a bill before the House that supports parents in the workforce and challenges the culture that discriminates against employees with families. 
I also take note of the report of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples which recommends that “Social delivery services … should continue to be specifically targeted and tailored to the needs of Maori requiring more targeted research evaluation and statistical data bases.” The rapporteur’s comments are important because we need to have the proper data to hand if we are to clearly identify the needs of the sector of society that is most affected by trends in employment and unemployment—Maori. We need to develop proper education programmes to ensure workers are best able to take advantage of flexible working hours. The situation of Maori workers is important. Because many Maori in the workforce are employed in vulnerable last-hired first-fired jobs their right to request flexible working hours is very likely to go untested for fear of losing their jobs. Having the proper information to hand then is very important but this could become a problem given that this Government has decided to shelve the gathering of Maori data. Again this is a matter of huge concern for Maori and one about which Labour’s Maori MPs have been strangely silent. 
The Maori Party is mindful of the greater whanau obligations of Maori employees. The fact that Maori are more likely to undertake voluntary work is an ever-growing reality of the increasing number of solo parent employees. The tension from balancing paid work with family responsibilities is a huge issue for everyone in Aotearoa and at a time when pressures are increasing on whanau a little flexibility has to be a great idea. As a parent and a grandfather who has raised his mokopuna for the last 11 years I see heaps of benefits for flexibility in the workforce. As an employer I have always operated on the basis that my staff members’ personal time is as valuable to me as their work time and that if I can help to enhance their personal situation the benefits will be felt in the workplace as well. My stories are anecdotal of course but the official research confirms that view. If we give families a break everybody wins. There will be lower absentee rates better morale less staff turnover and recruitment costs and of course that all translates into greater workplace productivity. 
For all the technological advances of the last half-century we do not for some strange reason seem to be working any less. In fact the opposite seems to be the case—we are overworking. Overwork threatens our health. It leads to fatigue and accidents and injuries and it forces us to eat fast food and have frantic relationships. It means less time for each other for our kids for our whanau and even for our elders. Overwork also reduces employment. Fewer people working longer hours reduces the number of workers needed and it adds stress and burn-out to those who are working. With higher unemployment employers feel comfortable about pushing back working conditions and pushing down wages. So we are finding that the low paid are on a frenetic Ferris wheel—needing to work longer and longer hours just to earn enough to get by. Higher-paid people often feel trapped into working more hours than they want to in order to keep pace with their own station in life. 
The Maori Party congratulates the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions on speaking out against this spiralling pattern of stress and burn-out and on its campaign for work-life balance called Get a Life! Its national secretary Carol Beaumont recently said: “The Government must make sure that laws which set out the minimum code for workers’ pay and conditions take into account the need for balance between work and life.” A few years ago a poll conducted by the Center for a New American Dream showed that 60 percent of Americans felt too much pressure to work and more than 80 percent wished they had more family time. More recently  
Time 
 magazine featured a New Jersey initiative called Ready Set Relax! which was described by one local businessman as a citywide sanity check—to slow down and to persuade frazzled families to put down some speed bumps in their fast-paced lives. So this bill is consistent with positive working trends from all around the world. 
In the same way that a Government has the authority to ensure proper working conditions it also has the authority to empower workers to negotiate flexible working hours. Another intriguing question of course is how we would spend that time and energy if we had those hours. We might cancel something hectic in our calendar—maybe even change our children’s schedule as well to spend a bit of quality time with them. We might take the whanau out to lunch switch off the TV talk to one another go and watch the kids play sport or just go to the beach and enjoy the sun. It is all a question of how we choose to balance out our lives. This bill is a moment in time to say: “Stop get a life get ready to relax take a nationwide sanity check take back your time and reclaim your life.” This is a good bill and on behalf of all whanau in Aotearoa Maori and non-Maori we stand to support it wholeheartedly.