Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Chair. Well here we are—here we are. We're at the stage of the committee stage when we get to look at the amazing or substantial changes that New Zealand First has managed to winkle out of this Labour Government to this Employment Relations Amendment Bill. You will recall Mr Shane Jones the Minister. He wandered around the countryside and the regions and talked about trying to grow the economy of the regions of New Zealand and then as he went around with his wad of cash—handing it out hoping to get lots of applause—he was confronted. He was confronted by many of the employers that he was talking to with rage and anger in relation to this legislation because it might be OK for the Government to hand out money to businesses around the regions but if they're making it more difficult for them to engage in their normal work through changes to the industrial relations setting then they were making that view very powerfully. So we had Mr Jones standing up saying Oh don't worry we are going to fix all this. We're going to dial back because actually I'm the real boss in this Government and I'm going to sort it all out."And what have we got? What is the outcome of it all? Well it's a very very thin Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 153 here from the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway. This piece of paper I think would be easily interpreted as "Up yours Shane Jones". That is how I would describe this paper because it's basically "We're going to carry on doing exactly what we were going to do in the first place. We're going to carry on and we're going to make a couple of little tweaks here and there." There is one sort of semi-important tweak which I'll come to at some point but ultimately there is nothing substantial in the changes.If you look through what this legislation's going to be doing—I mean I could take for example clauses 21 to 23 in Part 1 about partial strikes on full pay. So you know you're out there in Westport trying to make a living in a tough business trying to keep the doors of the business open and we find out that now employers will be forced to pay the full salary or wages of someone even if they've broken their employment agreement and are on partial strike. So you're on partial strike you've decided that you're only going to turn up for half the day or you're going to go slow or you're going to go off and have meetings all through the day—don't worry the employer will pay for it all as a result of this. The purpose of this is to give unions an advantage when dealing with businesses by allowing them to disrupt the business without any cost to unions.So this is just one example of the many things that are going on and carrying on through this legislation notwithstanding all the promises. You know it might be a bit unkind but people would say this is why Mr Jones is being regarded as two-faced by some people in the business community. The message has come through that "We're going to help. Don't worry help is on the way. We're going to amend the worst elements of this legislation." and then finally when we see the SOP there's virtually nothing to it.When we look at the actual changes that are made they're pretty minimal to be honest. There are a few things here and there in relation to reinstating the original bill provision that a union representative must request and obtain consent only if the workplace has a collective agreement or they're bargaining for a collective agreement. So yes it tweaks the arrangements of people just turning up at businesses and without notice a little bit and yes there is this idea that it's not compulsory to conclude a MECA—a multi-employer collective agreement—provided that the opposition is based on reasonable grounds. But of course there are so many businesses up and down the country who are not clear what "reasonable grounds" are. It doesn't define what they are so it's still compulsory to come to the table even though—you know we're not talking about just an employer dealing with their employees that they know and that they respect. It could be an agreement in relation to cleaning for example that might be relevant to Auckland but might not be at all relevant to the realities of the West Coast or Ōāmaru or around Taranaki and all these different parts of the country where there's so many different economic situations in place. This Government is ramming one straitjacket on to all of them and expecting the employers to be able to cope with that. So I just think this SOP is a great embarrassment to both this Government and New Zealand First."