Mallard Trevor: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Mallard Trevor: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
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Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 Thank you for the call on this particular matter and I must say that it is good to see the Minister in charge of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) Kate Wilkinson in the Chamber. It is good to see her here preparing to defend for the first time in the Committee stage what is an outrageous piece of legislation that is being pushed through under urgency and that had a shortened select committee process which was very very badly run. 
There are two elements to this bill and together they make April Fool’s Day the implementation date for all but section 10 an appropriate date for the bill to be enacted. Legislation is coming into force on April Fool’s Day from a Government that has worked really hard to fool the public of New Zealand. This is the nasty vindictive part of National coming out. It is the part that hates wage and salary earners and hates people who earn low incomes and that is determined to drive their conditions down to stop their representatives from meeting them and to ensure they have no job security. This is the sort of legislation that National Party people go to their branch meetings for. This is the sort of horrible stuff that the people who really like ACT—the far right of National—are promoting. I say that it is the ugly side of National— 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: It’s the only side. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No I disagree with my colleague. She said it is the only side. I think that over the years there have been some more reasonable more centrist approaches to legislation. I know that Jim Bolger as Minister of Labour would never bring legislation into force on April Fool’s Day. We used to disagree with him quite a lot but I do not think he was seen as the devil incarnate in the way that this Minister is in the way that she acts. 
Clause 1 states that the title of the Act is the Employment Relations Amendment Act (No 2) and I wonder whether that is an appropriate title or whether there could be some other titles. It could be the “Stop the Sexually Harassed Worker Getting Her Representative into the Workplace Act” or the “Fire the Low-income Worker (Without Giving Reasons) Act”. Would they be more appropriate titles for the bill? This legislation is designed to drive down the working conditions of ordinary Kiwis. I am certain there is a better and more appropriate title for this legislation than the one that currently exists. 
Clause 2 provides a commencement date of 1 July 2011 for part of this bill and the rest will come into force on 1 April 2011. Clause 3 states the bill amends the Employment Relations Act 2000. The one bit I cannot disagree with is clause 3. I do not disagree with the fact that the bill does amend the Employment Relations Act. I will not vote for it because I do not think the bill should be amended in this way but it is factually accurate and probably appropriate given the content of the bill. Although the content is inappropriate it does go to the Employment Relations Act 2000. 
Mr Chair I am sure that over a period of time we will have a number of amendments come to you on this particular issue and some of them will go I hope to the title. I am sure some of my colleagues have views on alternative commencement dates and they might currently be having amendments drafted in order to defer the implementation so that whether or not union officials should have access to workplaces when people are being sexually harassed is deferred until after the next general election in order to have an approach that is fair.