Joyce StevenHon STEVEN JOYCE (National): Well that was an interesting contribution from Minister Willie Jackson where it was not only a history lesson in fact for much of the first half of the speech it has to be said—I think it is now dealing with issues that are 27 years ago which is about as current as Willie is—but it was also a history lesson in attitudes. It's ironic that the party that spent so much time discussing the future of work is now spending so much time on the history of work when actually the world has changed. The current Minister of Finance who was the former shepherd of the Future of Work Commission professed that he understood that but this bill has absolutely no understanding of how work has changed how people approach workplaces in the 21st century and it just goes to show actually because it can't even divorce workers from unions.Unions now literally have just 10 percent of private sector workers and yet all we hear about—all we hear about—from this Government in regards to this bill is unions. Well actually 90 percent of workers don't belong to unions any more. Let's talk about those people for a minute. Let's talk about those people and let's talk about the New Zealand economy and how it's been helping workers. Over the last two years 245000 more people have got jobs in this country. That's an average of 10000 new jobs a month. We've never had a job creation streak like this. And we now have as further evidence of that job creation streak the highest proportion of adults in New Zealand in work today or at least in the last household labour force survey—we'll see in the next one. But it is the highest ever. More people have the opportunity to work and be paid than they have ever had before as a proportion of the adult population in this country. On top of that we have the third-highest rate of adult employment in the developed world. Think about that: the third highest in the whole of the developed world—in all those OECD countries the third-highest rate of employment.So with the greatest respect for the incoming Government there is a high bar for change. Now they rightly will talk about wages because that's an important part of the story as well. Wages have been rising at twice the rate of inflation in this country over the last several years. Everybody wants wages to go higher—everybody. That's important. We want to see New Zealanders become wealthier and more prosperous and it's been proceeding under the current employment relations settings better than it has for years—better than it has for years. So we have the highest rate of employment we have the highest rate of job creation we have the highest rate of wage growth we have some of the best-performing statistics of our labour market in the developed world. That sets a very high bar for change—a very high bar for change indeed.So let's now look at what those changes mean. The first change is to take something that New Zealand small and medium sized businesses are using to give new workers workers on the edge of the labour market workers who've been unemployed for a significant period of time—giving them the opportunity to take on those people and lowering the risk a little for them and for those people and giving them access into a job for the first time with these 90-day trial periods. And it's working. I've read that Motu report and with the greatest respect to the people at Motu the problem is they didn't talk to the employers about how important it was for them. If you talk to any small business and medium-sized businesses you'll find that most say to you that they—Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: You'll listen to the anecdotes but not the real research.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: It's built on a false premise Mr Lees-Galloway. It doesn't compare a counterfactual; in fact it says it can't compare a counterfactual. That's the problem with the research. But anyway the more important story is these small and medium sized businesses. And the bit I don't understand which I hope a Government speaker is now going to explain—and perhaps the New Zealand First speaker might be able to that for us—is how to make a distinction between 20 employees or more and 20 employees and less. If 90-day trials work they work. If they don't work they don't work.Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: You did it.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: You've got to actually land on it—and to walk away as Mr Lees-Galloway said and say Employers of over 20 people: you'll be fine because you're a big company." Well with the greatest respect companies with 20 staff are not big companies. Companies with 20 staff are generally under massive pressure. You'll generally find that those—you know they've got lots of work to do they want to bring on more people they don't have the systems of a really big corporate; they just want to hire somebody and give somebody a chance and see if it works out so they can be added to the team. And it's been so successful in bringing people from the margins of the labour market into the labour market. And we know because we have the highest rate of employment that New Zealand has ever had. So it's working. And the test is on the Government to prove that it needs to change.Then we have the rather interesting set of shall we put it politely and say "initiatives" for the union officials who support of course and campaign for the Labour Party. This could perhaps be charitably described as some sort of quid pro quo for their help with the election campaign. These are a grab bag of 10 things that shift the balance in favour of union officials. Not workers—nothing to do with workers; it's about union officials. Remembering that only 10 percent of private sector employees now choose to belong to a union the bar is high for saying to those people—the other 90 percent—that you must now be linked in to the union as these changes do.Then we have with the greatest respect the misleading suggestion about meal breaks. The law was changed to allow meal-break timing to be negotiated. That's what the change was and it was in response to concerns in particular about air traffic controllers but also other industries. It was a simple change. It did not remove meal and rest breaks. It did not do that and anybody who stands up in this House and says it did is simply being factually incorrect.One of the reasons this economy and this country have been going well and been delivering higher wages more job opportunities and growth is because we have all been working together. We haven't gone back to the old-style union tub-thumping approach that we have seen from Mr Jackson here in the House this afternoon harking back to 1970s-style trade unionism.Jamie Strange: 1990s.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No 1970s—which is now nearly 50 years out of date. We have got together and moved ahead because we have encouraged our small businesses—and virtually all of New Zealand businesses are small on world standards—to get out there work with their people take risks and get ahead. And that has been successful for workers because of that information I provided. That has been very successful. And we know these businesses are worried. I hear it all the time that this is one of the key things that is driving business confidence lower. We have improving international economic conditions. Our businesses should be as confident as right now. They should be just absolutely going nuts with confidence and yet their confidence is down dramatically. It is negative. And small-business confidence is the worst it's been since the height of the global financial crisis.How does that make sense? It can only be because of something that the Government is doing. And this is one of the things the Government is doing that is upsetting New Zealand businesses that are striving hard to succeed striving hard to hire more people pay more people and make a success of life—working in New Zealand. This bill is bad. There is a high bar. The Government must demonstrate why it should proceed."