Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I just want to give Minister Lees-Galloway a round of applause for that. That was a fantastic contribution and the last time we were in the House a fortnight ago listening to this bill—I've never heard my name called out so often. It was a Clayton's bill as it was so eloquently referred to which forced me to come down early to listen to the nonsense that we were hearing on that side of the House.This is a bill that I can gladly say will be voted down tonight. I'm pleased that it's waited until the 52nd Parliament to make its way through the House. We had the displeasure of listening to the absolute nonsense as it was going through the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The vast majority of people that came in to give their advice in the select committee had a very very strong opinion on this bill. It was described by one person as a solution looking for the problem and I think that is an understatement. It was also described as a bugger's muddle. Seriously—yes it was. It was considered and spoken to and called a bugger's muddle."Now it's interesting to say the Employment Relations (Allowing Higher Earners to Contract Out of Personal Grievance Provisions) Amendment Bill—goodness me that's a mouthful; if it ever went through it'd have to be changed—really is a problematic bill. The purpose behind it—we haven't quite got to substantiate as to why this has even made it as far as it has.I understand Mr Hudson adopted this bill from Scott Simpson so you'd sort of think that you'd be humble on it but he actually seems to be getting right in behind it and it reminds me of a Jordan Belfort movie—like The Wolf of Wall Street. It's there purely and simply to look after big city money. In no way does this bill look after the workers and their rights and at the end of the day—Hon Members: It's not about workers.CLAYTON MITCHELL: It is about the workers. It's always about those workers and this member in the House has the audacity to talk about something that's going to benefit workers when it actually doesn't do a single thing to benefit workers.Look I would like to consider a renaming certainly in line with The Wolf of Wall Street—maybe "The Worm of Wellington". He could be the "Brett Belfort" of Wellington and certainly of this House with a bill like this.And to suggest that people that earn more money are in a better place to negotiate doesn't make any sense at all and I can give you this example. We have had members of this House earning over $300000 a year go overseas to negotiate on the behalf of and in the best interest of New Zealanders an agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) and they said "This is the best agreement we could get. This is the best negotiation that we can come up with and no changes can be made." Now this is the epitome of negotiators according to the National Party over there and yet despite their rhetoric of saying that the bill couldn't be changed in four days we had the Deputy Prime Minister the Rt Hon Winston Peters—Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Come to the bill.CLAYTON MITCHELL: —the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern—Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is the second reading. Can you come to the bill.CLAYTON MITCHELL: —this is about negotiations which is part of this bill and it's about people that earn higher earnings—Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Bring it to the bill.CLAYTON MITCHELL: —that can actually negotiate those bills. This is exactly the bill.Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Speak to the bill.CLAYTON MITCHELL: My point being that they were a bugger's muddle when they came to negotiating that with the higher earners. They couldn't—Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: If the member doesn't speak to the bill I'll curtail his speech. Will he come back to the bill please. CLAYTON MITCHELL: The point is that people don't always get themselves into a position to negotiate their way out of a wet paper bag and that has been clearly articulated by the lack of negotiations that we've seen with the TPPA and the new agreements that have come through.My point is this: this bill will have a negative impact on doctors who are in part captured in this organisation of higher earners. We have heard from their medical practitioners' union who are extremely concerned. Doctors concentrate on people's well-being and their health and they should not be having to worry about whether or not their personal grievance can be negotiated out of a contract.This bill's intent is 100 percent designed purely and simply to look after the best interests of big city money multinational corporations and those people that aren't always in the best position to negotiate themselves.We're talking about and looking at problems that all businesses face around this country. We talk about workplace bullying. Now it doesn't matter what age wage or where you sit in the scale of things workplace bullying is a serious problem and it doesn't matter who you are; you are susceptible to that. And if somebody is going to harass you or henpeck you or bully you in your workplace you must be in a position where you can take a personal grievance against that employer or the situation that you're finding yourself in otherwise what is the purpose of having workplace relations in the first instance?And I have to say when somebody is negotiating their workplace relations with the current rules and regulations it puts a lot of power in the negotiating process onto the employer. With the 90-day work trial obviously if somebody refused to sign out of their personal grievances clause that actually gives the workplace the power to let them go after 90 days without actually addressing the problem that may or may not be and that is something that I'll be discussing with the Minister later on this evening.We as New Zealand First opposed this at the first reading. We opposed it through the select committee. We had a number of people on the select committee some of whom I can call out who were there to eat their lunch or the lovely biscuits from our chair Jonathan Young who I thought did a great job of trying to mediate this. As far as David Bennett was concerned he really was there for the free biscuits. We would hope to see and I'm sure we will see this bill get shot down at the end of this debate. Thank you."