Simpson Scott: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Simpson Scott: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7201. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 This Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill is an interesting bill. It is interesting not so much because of its content but because of what it implies and what it says unspoken about where the minds and hearts of the Labour Party members are at the moment. I am a new member in this House and I came in at the same time as the member who has introduced this bill Mr Tirikatene. As a previous speaker in this debate has said he comes from a long line of superb heritage in this House. For him to introduce this bill— 
Chris Auchinvole 
: It’s sad. 
SCOTT SIMPSON 
: It actually is sad. It is a sad sad thing that he should be after his long lineage of history introducing a bill that is as shallow as this. I do not think he came to this House to unionise paper boys or maybe he did—maybe he did. That is perhaps what the game plan is. I think that this could be part of a cunning conspiracy on behalf of Labour to simply improve union membership. Union membership is really what all of this is about. We are going to unionise the youth of the nation and try to brainwash them into all that that sort of thing incurs. 
I know the member who introduced this bill. I know that he is an earnest sincere and thoughtful member and I know that his sponsorship of this bill is probably more by accident than by design. I fear that probably his name was simply allocated to it by the party whips. Indeed what happened was that once it was drawn from the ballot he did have to go and do some research he did have to go and find out what it was all about. So here we are confronted with a member’s bill in his name that stifles initiative that stifles responsibility that stifles entrepreneurism in our very young kids who actually should be at the very point that they are learning about the benefits of work the benefits of a work ethic and the dignity of work and entrepreneurism and profit and business. Those are things that we should be encouraging. Here comes a bill from the Labour Party that wants to do away with that. 
Well I say shame on the Labour Party for this. It is an undesirable relationship between reward and effort that Labour wants to somehow do away with. I cannot understand that as a National Party member because we are all about creating opportunities—creating opportunities for young people to make their way in the world to see what can be achieved by their hard work and their effort. 
 I have a confession to make. I am an employer I guess of a person under 16. He is a guy who comes in and he mows my lawn. I live in the very fine township of Thames in the Coromandel electorate—in the very fine township of Thames—and it is the lawn that grows. Other grass grows but grass on the lawn needs mowing. So the grandson of my neighbour negotiated with me a very fair price—a hard price I might say. In fact it was a price that was higher than the commercial going rate and he mows my lawn. I want to know from this member whether this person is an employee or a contractor because I pay him a fair and reasonable rate to mow the lawn and I do not know whether he in fact has other clients. He has maybe done a hard sharp deal with some other neighbours of mine around the neighbourhood in Thames and he is probably doing a very very good job in mowing lots of lawns. I would say that that is a good thing. That is a good thing that we should be encouraging in our young children. That is something that we should be encouraging the children of the nation to do—get off their chuffs and understand that with effort comes reward. I think that is a very very good thing. 
So what have we got here? We have got a Labour Party that is against freedom that is against enterprise and that is against initiative. This bill is nothing more than a leap back into 1970s and 1960s unionism and it is a desperate move on behalf of Labour to try to just improve union membership. The nature of a job is determined by what the job is not the age of the person doing the job. This is a better bill for being not supported and I do not think we should. So I oppose it—and I do so very keenly oppose it.