Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): It is a great pleasure to stand on behalf of New Zealand First to strongly and I underline that—strongly—oppose this bill moving forward through the House. Hello Dotcom."—that was the first thing that jumped into my mind when I read this bill. "Is this member serious?"—was what came to mind. This is a shameful indictment on the fact that this member over here believes that this is in some way going to benefit New Zealanders. This is not going to benefit New Zealanders. This is going to benefit one group of people and that is the employers.It is an absolute schmozzle. I do not know where this crap got dreamed up from but I think it has come out of the multinational conglomerates' handbook because they are the only people who are going to make any sense of it and who will receive any benefit from it. I see this as being fascism at its absolute best and I think it is a disgrace. Any party that supports it moving forward in this House should be ashamed of itself because that is exactly what it is—it is dictatorial.Who is this bill going to benefit? I just said it before; it is not going to be of benefit to the workers. It is not going to be of benefit for the executives and the corporates. Government employees are going to have some serious problems. Council staff and executive leadership teams in the territorial authorities are all going to suffer at the hands of big-money big-city business which is going to dictate the terms on contracts when it is sitting down for them. This member Scott Simpson talks about the real world but it does not look like he has got any experience in the real world.How it normally works is the employer has the weight of control. The balance is in the employment contract. An employer who is sitting down to discuss the terms of a contract with an employee will simply say to them: "If you are successful with your application how would you feel about removing your ability to put a personal grievance towards the company?". Of course if that person wants the job they are going to agree to the terms and it is farcical to think that that person can then go and get independent advice which they pay for themselves and which they steer their lawyer into giving them the outcome that they want to make sure that they get that job—to give them the advice that they want to get so they can get that job.If you are talking about fairness and equity in an employment arrangement what differential is there with a person that is on a lower-earning income and somebody that is on a higher-earning income? You have jumped to a conclusion. You have made a huge assumption that just because you are a higher earner you have got more power or more gumption in your mind to fight your corner.Well you need to spend some time—I have to say Mr Simpson—in our select committee when we talked about the zero-hour contracts. We had professional highly qualified highly skilled people coming in and discussing their problems. They were forced into signing contracts that they could not otherwise not sign or fail to get their jobs or lose the opportunity to get their jobs. In fact I will give you an example: we had a very intelligent woman who was a lawyer who was given a contract to sign a zero-hour work contract. It was a "take it or leave it" opportunity that she signed because she was a solo mother qualified as a lawyer a hard-working intellectual person who got herself into a situation because the employer demanded it of her.This bill is fascist. We should not be allowing it to move through this House. It is exactly the sort of thing that erodes away the very fibre of our employment relations that we have built up over years. I think we have some serious concerns. This is an indictment on this Government.The other part that I would like to bring to the attention of the House is the fact that if an employee gets to a situation where they sign themselves into that contract to make sure that they get that job available to them the first thing that the employer has the power again to do is enforce the 90-day work trial. Now all of a sudden if they want to sign into that contract and have the ability to take a personal grievance against the person for a range of reasons—sexual harassment sexual preference whether they are married whether they have got children and all the sorts of things that bad employers would use against an employee—they would have that ability. And if they do not sign that contract despite them giving them the job after 90 days they can just say: "Sorry we don't need you anymore." There are no excuses just "See you later but next time make sure that you take away that provision."This is disgraceful and I absolutely would stand by the fact that any party that supports this just shows how fascist and out of touch they clearly are like this Government and like this bill has shown here today. Thank you."