Little Andrew: Financial Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Financial Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 04 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16276. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): It is a privilege to make a comment on the report on the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and to talk about productivity which is an issue that the ministry ought to be concerned about and have at the front and centre of its role. It is interesting that in the days past we have been debating publicly and in this House the issue of KiwiRail and the fact that it has locomotives—recently purchased locomotives—that were made using asbestos. That in many respects typifies the very problem that the New Zealand economy has and that this Government promotes and perpetuates time and again and that is moving down the path of cheap and nasty. Every opportunity that this Government has to do something to invest in New Zealand businesses to encourage investment by New Zealand businesses in their future and in workers what does it do? It plumps for cheap and nasty. It did it with the locomotives purchased by KiwiRail.If anybody is under any illusion let us just understand the risk with asbestos. It takes only one microscopic fibre to lodge itself in the lungs of a worker for that worker to be condemned for life. When they get ill and they succumb to that single asbestos fibre that is it. They have a life of misery until they die. That is why civilised countries around the world ban the use of asbestos—Australia has done it for many years—and it is why it should be the subject of considerable public outrage that we even allow it. The question of course to KiwiRail is where was its procurement manager? Sitting in China with the manufacturer providing day-to-day supervision to make sure that the goods we do not want here were not used in the fabrication of those locomotives? What was their approach? Or did we just sort of sign the order and wait until they came across the wharves and have them here causing their problems?The other issue about productivity is this. It is a labour market issue. It is an employment relations issue. If there is one area where this Government is taking us down the track of cheaper and nastier and worse and less effective it is in the area of employment relations and employment relations law and our labour market regulation. This Government has on its agenda and is not afraid to introduce it this side of Christmas and before the election a set of laws that will once again deteriorate the rights of workers and hand even more power to employers to do what they like. It will once again dismantle the checks and balances in the employment relationship that we have become used to.Here is the problem we have. We have a dumb enough labour market policy at the moment and this Government wants to make it dumber. We have gone from dumb to dumber. Our problem is we suffer low productivity in this country. I can tell the Committee this. It is not an issue about the quality of our workforce. We have an outstanding workforce in this country. It is not the workforce; it is the management as attested to by the Productivity Commission in its report that it released around about 23 December last year. It tried to explain and account for the difference in productivity between New Zealand and Australia. The commission found that two-thirds of that productivity difference is not workers it is not the capital investment and it is not the technology we use. It is the quality of our management. Every time this Government passes a law like the hated 90-day rule like abolishing workers’ rights when it comes to collective bargaining it hands a licence to our poor-quality management to act in even worse ways and to reduce our productivity even further.We need a Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment that is on top of those issues and is giving policy to Government giving policy to Ministers that is about lifting our performance in the workplace and when it comes to productivity. We know the equation when it comes to productivity: if we want to pay better wages move ourselves up the value chain we have to lift productivity. But everything thisGovernment is doing—everything that it is doing—is suppressing the ability and the potential for this country to improve its productivity performance. It is a disgrace.Report noted.