Parker David: Employment Relations (Film Production Work) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Parker David: Employment Relations (Film Production Work) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:668;Page:14976] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 Well I will not make reference to who the dummy is around here. I think it is obvious that some people enjoyed a good dinner before they came back to the House given the mispronunciation of names that was prevalent in the early part of the previous speech. 
As I said in my address on the first reading of the Employment Relations (Film Production Work) Amendment Bill it is pretty clear that there has been a lot of brinksmanship around  
The Hobbit 
. There was brinksmanship by the unions there was brinksmanship by Warner Bros and there was brinksmanship by the Government. We all know that Warner Bros plays a hard game. It did it when Labour was in Government. It always tried to ratchet up the terms and conditions that it got so as to make its film enterprises more profitable and it has done it again with this Government. 
According to Mr Tau Henare what has happened here has cost nothing. “It cost us nothing” was the phrase he used. Warner Bros has had $34 million in extra money out of the New Zealand taxpayer— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Same as the private schools got. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Yes it is the same as the amount of extra money that went into the private school sector in the Government’s recent Budget—$34 million was at stake for Warner Bros. It is a lot of money even to Warner Bros and it played a game of brinksmanship. 
It is also true that the union movement had played a game of brinksmanship earlier. The union movement had pulled out by 18 October yet some parties to this debate have had the dishonesty to assert that after 18 October the union movement was still holding a gun to the head of the other parties involved. We had an email from one Warner Bros person to another on 18 October American time showing that Warner Bros knew by then that the threat that it perceived to be apparent from the union movement—the threat may have been overstated but it was whatever threat Warner Bros saw—had gone. Yet after that date we had the Government pretending that that was the reason it had to take this step in respect of this law change which has been forced upon us. 
We also heard Mr Henare say that what the Government is doing is making it clear that if people are contractors then they are contractors and if people are employees then they are employees. That is not what this legislation actually does. Phil Twyford described this legislation to me in his office before the dinner break as formalising a fiction. That is a very good description of what is happening here. It allows people to pretend that an employment relationship is a contractual relationship and even if it is an employment relationship they will call it a contractual one. It formalises a fiction. 
Why is that important? It is important because there are different rights and responsibilities depending on whether people have a contractual relationship or an employment relationship. Contractors do not get holiday pay they pay their own tax they are not entitled to the minimum wage and they are not entitled to sick pay. That is absolutely permissible under our system of law. I am not criticising that; people can choose to have a contractual relationship rather than a relationship as an employee. But the point is that they can already do that at law and we do not need to have this law which effectively formalises a fiction. 
People can under this law have an employment relationship but at law it will be a contractual relationship without employee protections. That is what this law does and it is completely unnecessary because the law relating to contractual relationships is already clear. It has been clear since the Supreme Court decision that was referred to in earlier speeches was delivered 5 years ago. That law has not been problematic since. The organisations that are involved in this multi-hundred-million-dollar enterprise have the very best of lawyers. They have the very best of systems. They can ensure already that they engage people through contracts as contractors rather than as employees. They do not need this legislation. 
The reality is that this legislation is a piece of political opportunism by the Prime Minister and the National Government. They played a game of brinksmanship in respect of whether they could get Warner Bros over the line. I am not blaming the Government for all this brinksmanship; Warner Bros always plays this game. 
The Prime Minister and the National Government were not sure that the $34 million they eventually paid was going to get them here. They thought that they might lose this deal to Ireland or some other film-making country so they wanted someone else to blame—despite the fact that the unions had already stopped their game of brinksmanship and despite the fact that the Labour Party has never been meaningfully involved in these negotiations. Indeed I can attest to that. I remember talking to Trevor Mallard who said that it would be inappropriate for Labour to be stepping into this space because that was the role of the Government and that if he had been the Minister—and he used to be the Minister—and a National Opposition had involved itself in those negotiations then he would have thought that that was inappropriate. That is why Trevor Mallard said that we should stay out of these negotiations and we did. So for the Prime Minister to assert that we are somehow complicit in trying to undermine the likelihood that  
The Hobbit 
 would be filmed here is absolute rubbish. 
I will deal with something that Rodney Hide said. Rodney Hide came down to the Chamber and said that Labour members were without principle. That little hobbit is the man who came to this Parliament and put David Garrett into the position of his law and order spokesperson after he had taken a donation from the Sensible Sentencing Trust. He put him in that position knowing that he had used name suppression to keep his conviction for stealing the identity of a young child for the purpose of passport fraud out of the public eye. That sort of double standard is what I call a lack of principle. That is a lack of principle. I say to Mr Hide that he should not come down here and talk about principle and neither should the Prime Minister because the Prime Minister described Mr Hide’s dealing with those issues as “well handled”. That is a lack of principle from the Prime Minister. That is a lack of principle from ACT. I tell Mr Hide that he should not come here and lecture us about principle because those are both unprincipled acts. 
This legislation is unnecessary. I agree with those people who say that it is not all the fault of the National Government that it had to pay more money in order to secure the Warner Bros films. I agree with that. We did it ourselves when in Government. However I would criticise the way that the Government has done it as it is funding an individual enterprise rather than changing the criteria for major films that could be applied to other enterprises. To me that is really just interfering in an individual contract too directly rather than using a principled approach. 
Paul Quinn 
: Come on David. You know about contracts—interfering in the Auckland Airport sale. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Paul Quinn asks about the Auckland Airport sale but actually I was exercising ministerial discretion. The member obviously does not understand the difference. National would have approved the sale of Auckland Airport to overseas interests just as National has allowed its tummy to be tickled by Warner Bros and allowed our labour laws to be changed as a consequence of this deal and just as it has ticked off every land purchase sought by overseas owners since it took office. 
This legislation is not necessary. It formalises a fiction. We see that the Minister of Labour with this rushed legislation has already had to put an amendment on the Table because she learnt from what Charles Chauvel said in an earlier contribution. Charles Chauvel was right and I see the Minister is nodding. I thank her for the acknowledgment that Charles Chauvel was right on the point that this law as drafted in this hastily put together legislation would not have even achieved the intent that the Government wanted to achieve were it not for the amendment that the Minister has now put forward. We will be voting against that amendment as well but no doubt National with the support of ACT and the Maori Party will ram it through under urgency. 
Paul Quinn 
: That’s a term you understand very well isn’t it? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Oh here we go! We have  
The Muppets 
 now. We are actually debating  
The Hobbit 
 not  
The Muppets 
. We have the two elderly puppets on the back row—Tau Henare and Paul Quinn—who are as ill informed as those elderly puppets in  
The Muppets 
. They cannot quite hear what is going on always get a bit confused and make inappropriate interjections. 
This is bad law. It is unnecessary law. It is driven by a political agenda on the part of the National Government which was so close in its brinkmanship that it wanted someone else to blame.