Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. The National Party does not support the Employment Relations (Restraint of Trade) Amendment Bill of Helen White. It's interesting that we've just heard a speech from the member talking about the United States and the experiences of the United States. One of the things that she might have looked at—one of the geniuses of the United States—is that there are all these different states more than 50 all with different approaches. What people see is that there has been a massive drift of population and investment away from high-tax states to lower-tax states and lower-regulation states particularly in the south of America. And that's great. People can decide what kind of business environment they want to live in and what sort of tax environment they live in and so they move. This is exactly the sort of legislation that would be encouraging a lot of people to move around because if there is an issue there—[Interruption]ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Sorry I'm just going—with apologies to the member—but man the noise is getting up a wee bit. Now I know this is going to be a vibrant debate; I understand that. But can we keep the interjections rare and reasonable and can I just ask members of the House that when they are full of excitement and passion if they wish to interject can they do so from their seat.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you. So there is a kernel of an issue here that the member raises around excessive restraints of trade for very modestly paid workers. But that's not what the bill is talking about. The bill includes everybody earning up to three times the minimum wage which in New Zealand is $141648 which happens to be about 95 percent of income earners in New Zealand. The bill will apply to virtually all New Zealand workers and so effectively ban restraint of trade agreements for virtually all New Zealand workers. And there is a reason why we have restraint of trade. It's not unreasonable for a business which has developed its own secrets and skills and trains up somebody in those skills and trains up somebody to have all the connections in a particular industry—it's perfectly reasonable for citizens to contract between those things and this bill bans that for everybody earning up to three times the minimum wage which is over $140000 in New Zealand and most New Zealand workers. We think that is extremely excessive. Then it requires half-payments if you do manage to be over that—half of weekly earnings for the six months if there was a restraint of trade which would be a very serious impost as well.The only point we'd make is that we've got two challenges in this country. One is that we're on the economic front facing extreme war for talent with Australia. We've just had the Prime Minister from Australia over here and he's got their hands out saying Come over here all your skilled workers. Come here and we'll take you all." And we're also struggling from a lack of growth. Now if the solution to that is higher taxes for those who move that's going to be difficult. It's not going to help growth. But if you continue to add costs and inflexibility into New Zealand businesses such as this and such as the fair-pay agreements and all the other additional rigidities that this Government is imposing on our workforces and the relationships between employees and employers that just makes it difficult for people to invest it makes it difficult for people to grow and it makes people think twice before they take on workers give all the trade secrets and understandings of your business to them in order to train them up with the sure fire knowledge that they can just walk off to the competitor the next day and take all those learnings with them.Yes there is an issue that Helen White has identified but this bill that's before us in the House is a sledgehammer to break a nut and it is just another example of legislation being pushed through to make our workplace environments less agile and less flexible. It's coming at a time when businesses are struggling with cost of living pressures with labour market shortages a barrage of thefts and ram raids and all sorts of other troubles that they have to deal with one thing after another confronting New Zealand businesses and then lo and behold along comes Helen White from wherever she comes from in Auckland somewhere with a brilliant idea to make their life even more difficult and even more difficult to maintain the things that they have developed in their business in a reasonable way.My only suggestion to the member would be to go back to the drawing board and think about this more carefully and when she has we'd be very happy to consider a better bill. But as far as this bill is concerned I'm afraid we will not be supporting it. Thank you very much."