O'Connor Simon: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
O'Connor Simon: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7203. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 It is delightful to stand up. I am actually in a jolly good mood now after my colleague Chris Auchinvole described me as “youthful”. Auchie people have not described me as that for quite a while. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Are you covered by the bill? 
SIMON O’CONNOR 
: That is right. My colleague Nick Smith raises a very good question—am I actually going to be covered by this bill the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill? As a youthful 36-year-old will this bill actually cover me and my rights or is this going to be age discrimination as we heard in our select committee today? 
Can I begin by acknowledging the sponsor of the bill Rino Tirikatene. As someone who has also put their first member’s bill before Parliament it is always quite the experience. Unfortunately in this case the bill is deeply deeply flawed. It begins with the very basic principle that you never argue from exceptions. And we have heard from everyone in the Opposition a whole series of very bizarre exceptions that might have turned up on  
Fair Go 
 that they might have seen in  
Mary Poppins 
 that they might have heard on the street and that they think came from the Victorian era to somehow justify this bill. You never argue from exceptions. 
We then heard this sort of rambling rhetoric—this rambling rhetoric—that somehow this is discrimination this is exploitation and again it is Victorian. The thing about rhetoric is that when the learned mind steps back for a second and thinks about it it does not really stack up. But they were so desperate too that the next step was to start saying “Well you know what? Actually this is like the White Paper for Vulnerable Children.” “This is about Pike River.” someone mentioned. What has the employment law for 16-year-olds and younger got to do with any of those things? It smacks of desperation. You see it does not take much to work out the absurdity of where this is going—the absurdity. What we are talking about here are young people under 16 going to school and doing those odd jobs that most of us in this House would have done and which have given us all the characters that we have today—not the characters of Charles Dickens. I realise Mr Little that you left out William Micawber—a fine character. The Labour Party could learn from the wisdom of Micawber. 
The absurdity of this bill is that we are talking about young people. These are the young people who deliver papers they deliver pamphlets they mow the lawns—like those of my Thames colleague Scott Simpson—they do babysitting they do cleaning and even I might suggest they might play music. In fact some of us were very pleased to be in the Banquet Hall earlier as we had a concert by performers from the Play it Strange Trust sponsored by my colleague Chris Tremain. They are young people with amazing talent—amazing talent—but under this piece of legislation before they could even turn up to a bar or café or anywhere to play some music they are going to have to go into full employment negotiations. They are now going to have to worry about sick leave they are going to have to worry about holiday leave and their employers are going to have to do ACC levies—all of this to deliver some music or to deliver a paper or pamphlet. These are young people who are already in school and already on holiday so let us just step back for a second. How does it look for a 14-year-old mowing the lawns playing some music in a café or delivering pamphlets to have holiday pay? How does that look? Are we now going to send them on school holidays and expect them to be paid as well? It is absolutely ridiculous and the word I would use for this is “absurd”. 
Really the flaw in this bill is actually right in the heart of it. The very fact that we have to even discuss a bill like this points to the very nature of the work itself. We are trying to protect young people around an array of work that is so simple. It is so simple. The fact that we do not need to protect it is for the very reason that at the heart of this bill are young people who do those simple basic jobs. Are we actually expecting that we are going to start paying a paper delivery boy or girl $13.50 an hour and levies and holiday pay and sick pay? Are we really expecting that? Are we really wanting to stop the creativity of our young people to play their music to mow those lawns and to develop that experience? 
I acknowledge the intent of the honourable gentleman who has put this bill forward but it is seriously flawed. The National Party stands in support of its young people. It stands in support of that entrepreneurial spirit. It stands in support of what I suspect is the experience that each and every one of us has had which is young people growing up earning a few dollars and having that chance to become the adults that we wish to be today.