Mallard Trevor: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
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Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 The first point that I would like to make just quietly is that I think it shows a certain lack of taste on the part of the Government to promote the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) today. If the Government had thought carefully about appropriate legislation to promote while we were having an unfolding situation on the West Coast it would have gone for legislation that was not in the industrial relations area. I think it is sad that it has chosen to do so because it is inevitable that we get into the sort of debate on this sort of legislation that divides us on the very issues that are important to the miners who are stuck there. 
This bill is just a continuation of the National Government’s attack on the rights of wage earners and salary earners and their conditions. Most of the amendments are unfair. They are very unbalanced mainly unnecessary and certainly ideological. We can see that from the fact that they were announced at the National Party conference. These amendments are breaches of undertakings made by the Prime Minister and they were brought forward without proper consultation. They are being made for political reasons and they will not help our economy. Really they are an attack on job security. It is the opposite approach to that being taken for example in Australia which is the country that the Prime Minister lauds as the one that we want to catch up with. The amendments weaken processes around job security. They extend the range of reasons for dismissal. They restrict substantially the right to appeal. They restrict the right to reinstatement which is the primary remedy. 
Once again the Government used urgency to push through industrial relations legislation. It took the original 90-day fire-at-will bill through under urgency and did not even have the select committee process. In the case of this bill it did have a select committee process. I might say that it is one of the first occasions where I have seen the chairperson of a select committee having to write and apologise for the behaviour of a senior Government member at a committee hearing. It shows that the committee was not well organised and not well chaired and this is a contrast to the committee on which I normally sit the Education and Science Committee. I probably have deeper divisions with the individual who chairs the Education and Science Committee but I have no doubt about his competence and his ability to safeguard the parliamentary process in a way that has not been done with this legislation. 
The fact that the Minister chose to progress this bill under urgency and push it through—even though the House probably took longer over it than would otherwise have been the case—is a sign I think of mismanagement. John Key has tried to sell these changes as being part of his plan to grow the economy but he has done so without any evidence whatsoever that they are wanted needed or are likely to be effective. Frankly the fact that these are the ideas he is promoting proves the fact that there is a lack of a real economic plan on the part of National for the recovery of our economy. One only has to look at the report from Standard and Poor’s yesterday afternoon which also highlighted the lack of an economic plan and the lack of a recovery plan on the part of National to the extent that the Government is making moves that will effectively increase interest rates and make us poorer. This is not because of anything that has occurred in the past but because it does not see a future for New Zealand going forward. This sort of attack drives down wages. 
To be fair to National—and to Bill English in particular—it has long been of the opinion that wage and salary conditions in New Zealand are too high and should be driven down especially at the lower levels and this is a tool that it is using to do that. This approach is consistent with the accident compensation changes the holidays legislation—which I will not anticipate because it is on the Order Paper now—the removal of rights to unfair dismissal and the changes to meal breaks. There are a lot of things that over a period of time have become important to New Zealanders and are part of their core arrangements and National has decided to run them down. 
John Key announced—and the Minister Kate Wilkinson is implementing this for him—a restriction on union access. This means for example that a woman worker who is being sexually harassed by an employer has to ask that employer whether the union representative can come to talk about taking a case or getting union protection for that worker. The idea that one has to work through the harasser in order to get protection is something that I am surprised a woman Minister would be prepared to promote. What this bill does is increase the choice for employers by taking away the right from employees. 
Kate Wilkinson’s policy options paper dated 15 May last year states: “There does not appear to be widespread evidence of union representatives exercising their current rights to enter workplaces in an inappropriate way resulting in disruption for business operations or adversely impacting on the employment relationship between employer and union members.” It is fair to say that even Business New Zealand has said that restricting union access is not a priority for it and that it does not receive complaints from employers in this particular area. Yet the Prime Minister says that keeping union officials out of workplaces is likely to make the economy more productive. As someone with some experience of this area I tell the Prime Minister that getting union officials in early in disputes getting them in at the beginning and using the problem-solving methods that union officials these days are much more likely to employ makes our economy more productive while leaving areas to fester and to get worse is likely to cause lower productivity going forward. 
The Government has chosen to extend the 90-day fire-at-will scheme and I find that so hard to believe. People believe in trials and people can accept trials but people believe that if someone is dismissed even within a trial period that person has a right to a reason. It is pretty simple: it is a matter of honesty and it is a matter of directness. If someone is to be fired no one is even suggesting that they should be given a good reason or an adequate reason but most Kiwis believe in fairness. Fairness at work involves a person who is being sacked having the right to know why. 
I finish with the point that I made right throughout the debate on this legislation and this point probably comes more from my own economic and economic development background. I believe that this legislation will result in a sticky labour market. It will result in highly qualified people who should be shifting jobs—those who might be earning $100000 to $200000—and who can be more productive in another job and can contribute more to the economy and more to society by shifting jobs choosing not to shift as a result of this legislation. They will not want to put their families at risk and they will not want to put their houses at risk. As a result of this change I think we will have worse productivity not better.