Peck Mark: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Peck Mark: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11546] 
MARK PECK (Labour—Invercargill) 
: 
 I want to go through Part 1 quickly but take the opportunity at this stage to thank my colleague Rick Barker the author of the original bill for the work he did in the initial stages on putting this legislation together. I am sure he will be as delighted as I am that we have reached the Committee stage in the House where we can scrutinise the provisions recommended unanimously by the select committee which we are seeking to progress today. 
I also take the opportunity to thank New Zealand First for the support it has given to this bill. In particular I acknowledge the contribution of Peter Brown to the debate. Peter Brown is a well-known employer in the shipping industry in New Zealand and he certainly does not deal lightly with industrial relations matters. He is a man for whom I have considerable respect and I certainly want to pass on my thanks to him for the very careful way he has worked through the issues in this bill. 
Part 1 deals with the changes to the Companies Act that are required and with some definitions in terms of the meaning of “director” and amends the seventh schedule of the Companies Act to bring about the changes that are necessary. When one goes through the changes that are being looked at in this particular bill one sees it is about raising the cap on redundancy payments that can be claimed in the case of an insolvency from $6000 to $15000. If one goes further one finds that the amendments to the seventh schedule are about ensuring that that particular sum of money keeps pace with inflation. 
Employees face this particular problem where a company goes belly up—that is employees who have negotiated a redundancy settlement. I do make that particular point clear to the Committee now. We are dealing with a situation where employees have bargained to have a redundancy provision within a contract of employment. In the process of doing so they have probably traded away other things. In other words there has been consideration along the way that redundancy provisions will be included in an employment contract in exchange for other things. Often there can be a lesser wage increase as a result of that. 
By and large one is talking about large industries that have the capacity to be sunset industries. The freezing industry is a classic case in point. This bill picks up on the collapse of the Weddel freezing works in particular but this matter was an issue in my own electorate with the reorganisation of the Alliance freezing works back in the 1980s the move of Southland Frozen Meat to PPCS and ultimately the Alliance and the reduction of the number of chains necessary the change in work methods and things of that ilk. So we are talking about industries where redundancy deals have been negotiated. This bill seeks to ensure that the sums negotiated do not lose their value over time through inflation. 
I do not want to say much more about Part 1 other than that but again I say to the Committee that these particular changes bring this part of the law up to date and recognise the amount of money that people need at a time like that as they try to put their lives back together. It is a sad thing that when a company goes belly up and there are problems with the payment of compensation workers get badly hurt in the process. This bill recognises that and ensures they are entitled to claim a rate of money over and above $6000 which was the previous maximum. 
It is about time the House addressed this particular matter. I know that the Government is doing further work on insolvency law and will send a bill to the House at some time in the future. I am looking forward as the chair of the Commerce Committee to receiving some of that work so that our committee can get on with it. 
I think Part 1 deals with those particular matters quite well and I thank the members who contributed to that during the debate in the select committee.