Bennett Paula: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 I rise today to speak in opposition to this bill and it absolutely appals me to hear yet again the sort of language coming from the other side of the Chamber when Government members talk about protecting vulnerable workers. We have to realise that it suits Labour members to have workers feeling vulnerable. It suits them to have them needy and in a lesser situation so that those workers feel indebted to the unions and those workers do not have the means to be able to speak up for themselves and say what they really need. This bill is just another example of the sort of language coming from the left that likes to see everyone in a position of neediness and vulnerability as if we cannot help or look after ourselves. What an absolute load of hogwash that attitude is! 
One need only look at the unemployment figures these days to know that there is an across-the-board level of unemployment relating to cleaners and those affected by this bill. Those who have the means and are doing a good job will move into other work with no issues at all. 
I can see some understanding and logic around the district health boards’ position which was aired during the select committee process. I personally have not had much to do with the district health boards and the workers involved with them. We heard arguments from them and I certainly heard the argument from Labour members about those workers who are going under six different contracts and who have their terms of employment changed six different times. Without a doubt Opposition members have some sympathy for those workers and we felt that that issue needed to be addressed. But as usual we have the big stick and the blunt instrument from the Government for a problem that will now affect all other small businesses and we certainly have a high level of concern about that. 
Small-business owners often family-owned businesses will be affected detrimentally by this bill and the Labour Government simply does not care. It is not interested in those small businesses and does not grasp the concept that they too will be affected by this bill. It is as simple as that I tell Labour members and they just need to listen to the argument that family businesses will be affected by this bill. 
Sue Moroney 
: They deserve decent wages too. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: The member is right and they deserve to be able to employ their own people and their own family. It is as simple as that. If those businesses are tendering for a contract and they win it then they should be able to employ their own family members in that business—not be obligated to take on another family that had the contract previously. It is as simple as that. If what the Government proposes in this bill happens then that business will have to make their own workers and family members redundant. That is what will happen with those small-business owners and family-owned businesses which is most of the problem with this bill. During that select committee process there was no way that any Government members on the committee were willing to listen to the concerns that came out about that issue. Those members were not willing even to acknowledge them or even to listen to what effect this legislation would have on small businesses. 
I think National members were the ones who put up our hands and saw that through the district health boards and the examples given with those large cleaning contracts we identified and agreed with them at some level that there was actually a means for it. That process is called listening and learning. But in no way with Labour’s left-minded ideology about vulnerable workers were those members prepared to go in and actually listen to what small-business owners had to say. They were not prepared to hear the effects those business owners struggle with day by day in addition to all the other obligations that are placed on them and this requirement will become yet another level of obligation that those businesses simply will not be able to handle. 
This is—and I would like members to listen to this—the 15th amendment to the Employment Relations Act that this Government has made. In 2000 the Government rushed that legislation through when it came into office after promising to pay off the unions and telling the unions that it would do something. We have had to fix that Act 15 times and Government members cannot tell me that doing that is a good use of this House’s time. They cannot tell me that there are not other things out there that they have stuffed up that we should be looking at fixing because goodness knows there are. There are enough struggles going on out there that this House should be spending its time on fixing up. The Government rushed through with that legislation. It is now seeing all the mistakes and the stuff-ups it has made that we are repeatedly having to go back to fix.