Fenton Darien: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fenton Darien: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7196. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 First of all I want to acknowledge the Catholic Social Services agency which has done a lot of the background work on this. To be honest with you I found that member David Bennett’s contribution embarrassing—extremely embarrassing—if not to say ignorant because this is— 
Phil Twyford 
: He’s a fellow member of the committee. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Yeah he is a fellow member of our Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—when you think of the opportunity that we would have had to examine what is a really really important issue. New Zealand is a country that prides itself on how we treat our most vulnerable and our most vulnerable are our children. Our children under current labour laws have very little protection. They have no minimum wage and so some of the work that was done by  
Fair Go 
 for example found that some of these children are being paid as little as 25c an hour. I want to hear from the National members whether they think 25c an hour is fair. 
The most ridiculous thing about the current law is that young children can be employed as contractors which means essentially that they are being told that they have their own businesses. So they set up their own businesses where they have to pay ACC levies and where they have to pay tax. [ 
Interruption 
] Yes and they can employ subcontractors. We are talking about children who are as young as 10. I want the National members to get on their feet and tell me that children as young as 10 11 or 12 are capable of working— 
Hon Member 
: Do you think they’re not capable? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Mr Speaker I would like to be heard if I could please. I am sorry if the National members are going to demonstrate their ignorance in that way. Of course young children are capable but they are not capable of negotiating with adults on the basis of an equal footing in an arrangement that is a commercial arrangement and that is what this bill is about. It is about protecting our children. 
New Zealand has signed up to international child labour conventions but we have a child labour problem in New Zealand. In fact we have been criticised for that not only under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child but also by the International Labour Organization. Also at the International Labour Organization we have been repeatedly criticised for doing nothing about children’s employment. 
As I said great research has been done on this by Caritas. There has been great research done on this by the Department of Labour. As I said at the beginning it is simply ridiculous to have a law to have a situation whereby our children are expected to be engaged as independent contractors in their own business to be paid 25c an hour and to be responsible for their own health and safety responsible for contracting and responsible for their own ACC. It is a ridiculous situation and I am ashamed to be in a country where we have a Government that is so arrogant and smug about the situation that it thinks it can sit there and mock when we have people in the gallery who have done serious work on this issue who have studied it for years. They have studied it for years and yet the National members want to mock and not take it seriously. I feel very very ashamed actually to be in this debate after my colleague Rino Tirikatene presented such a very very good case. 
I want to give just one other example if I may about what sort of contracts kids of 10 11 and 12 are signing up to. Here is one: “The Contractor is an independent contractor and as such is free (in addition to the Contractor’s freedom to engage sub-contractors and others to use carrying equipment …) to select the Contractor’s own means and methods of performing the services … The Contractor shall bear all costs and expenses incurred by the Contractor in connection with the performance of the services.” That is a contract for a 10-year-old. How shameful is that? 
As I said I am ashamed to be in a Parliament where we have a Government that does not care about child labour and that is not prepared to support a simple measure like this which would examine the exploitation of children being employed as independent contractors and employed on 25c an hour—shame on the Government.