McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It gives me pleasure to speak on the Employment Relations (Allowing Higher Earners to Contract Out of Personal Grievance Provisions) Amendment Bill. Well that was quite a mouthful in itself. I want to firstly congratulate the member Scott Simpson who drew this bill initially because just to draw something out of a ballot takes a bit so I guess from that perspective he needs to be congratulated on that.I also want to congratulate the member Brett Hudson who picked this bill up from Scott Simpson took it on took it through the select committee—a select committee ironically that no longer exists funnily enough. So whether they did such a poor job of this bill or what happened Huddo"—whether you destroyed them I'm not sure; but the very good Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which was at the time chaired by Jonathan Young no longer exists. But none the less the bill got through the select committee and has now come back to the House for its second reading.I guess there are a few points I want to make. One is that I think it's disappointing that the members on the other side of the House have chosen to misrepresent what the bill's intentions were. Whether I agree with those intentions or not is irrelevant. I think the point is that if you're going to speak on a bill in this House you really should represent what that bill is about. So I think—sorry Madam Assistant Speaker I didn't really need to bring you into that at all. That was very bad. But I do think that it's necessary to at least address the factors in this bill.This bill for me is really about personal responsibility and enabling those people who feel they are capable of I guess addressing a situation of arranging their own employment relationships—it's about giving them the opportunity to do that. One of the conditions of that bill is if they're paid over $150000 a year which I think is pretty significant. Ironically when you look around this House and we're all paid that amount I wonder whether we'd all be capable of negotiating our own contract. I have come to the conclusion—probably not. But we don't have to. As Andrew Bayly says we don't have to because this bill was entirely voluntary. It allowed people on a voluntary basis to enter a contract in good faith with an employer.I want to get to a few points that were raised by some of the Government speakers or I guess the speakers in opposition to the bill in a moment. As I said it seemed to me that $150000 was a lot of money. Ironically it's raining out there tonight. It's the first time it's rained since this Government has come to power and I think that's quite interesting. But from the farmers' point of view there's not too many of them that get paid $150000 a year. They may well be pleased with that rain. Hopefully it's raining in some other parts of New Zealand.I want to speak about some of the points that Iain Lees-Galloway mentioned. I guess I take exception to the way he addressed this side of the House and spent his whole speech basically accusing this side of the House of undermining workers' rights. I heard the last speaker Jo Luxton talk about the fact that she's an employer. I've spent my life—and I don't call myself an employer—working with people in all sorts of industries. I don't recall a time for a start where I've ever paid someone the minimum wage so I'm on her side on that. But I also think that most of the people that I've worked with in my lifetime are quite capable of negotiating their own contracts. They're also quite capable of being looked after. I think it's an employer's responsibility—if you call yourself an employer—to look after workers in whatever environment they're in.I guess I don't believe for a minute that I would call myself a worker if I was on $150000. I'd be calling myself something else. Andrew Little spent the whole of his speech talking about workers under instruction. Well I don't think workers as I know them are under instruction. If you've got a successful business workers are going to work with you. They're not going to work under instruction all their life. If you've got people under instruction they're eventually going to rebel. I don't blame them frankly. I think that's how the world works. So I take exception to the fact that both of those Ministers spent their whole speeches basically accusing this side of the House of undermining workers' rights for the last nine years that this Government was in office. That's certainly not the case.An interesting point about the last nine years is that in those nine years those workers incomes or household incomes ironically increased by 50 percent.Dr Duncan Webb: Rubbish! Flat line.IAN McKELVIE: It's not a white lie. That's a fact. You should read the paper as well as the bill. So that's a very interesting point. They haven't even read their own information and I think that's a bit of a tragedy too.Whether you agree with this kind of legislation or not I think is irrelevant. I think the point is that we all have the same aspiration in this House and our aspiration is to create a better life for people—give people an opportunity to grow in whatever they do in life. If some people voluntarily want to accept a contract where they can negotiate their own terms their own entry and exit and I guess their own life to some extent then I think we should give those people that opportunity.That for me—and I had no part in the select committee or in the early debates on this bill—I think from my observation of this bill is what it was intended to create. It was certainly not compulsory. I think it's people's right at a point in life to negotiate and the point in life that's been picked in this bill—and whether you agree with that or not is another thing as well—was $150000. I think it's essential that we allow people that right. We're not compulsorily making them do something. We're not trying to as Andrew Little and Iain Lees-Galloway both said undermine the worker or take workers' rights away. The whole intention of this bill is to try and enable people to get a contract together that allows them to work in an environment that they could enjoy and have some control over. It's ironic isn't it that when you're in charge of your own destiny you've actually got some control over your life. You're not relying on someone else to control it for you.I think the comment of Jan Logie was that this legislation is designed to suck the lifeblood out of the workplace. That's absolute nonsense. I think that clearly that's a misrepresentation of the intention of the bill. It's a misrepresentation of the intention of the two people that brought this bill to the House. I think they did an outstanding job of putting the bill together. As I said earlier it doesn't necessarily mean you have to agree with the principle of it or agree with everything that happens in it. In this place we don't always get to have a say on every part of the legislation that we end up passing. That's just how a democracy works.The scale of the job is far too big for us as MPs to be enabled to participate in every part of the putting together of a bill. So some things will always come through in the course of a bill that we don't necessarily like but that doesn't matter. It's the job of this House to pass legislation for the betterment of as many people as we possibly can.Earlier in my life I spent some time as a mayor. Ironically you find a lot of the challenges or the biggest challenges that I've seen in the workplace relate to Government departments to public entities. Interestingly as a mayor you have a chief executive who employs people and a lot of them are on this sort of a salary. But you have a chief executive who employs people who then can't get into the arbitration because they're directly conflicted. As a mayor you can often end up in arbitration around contracts like this. I frankly didn't enjoy it that much. I think it's a very difficult situation to be in.So I can see the point that Brett Hudson brought when he brought this bill to the House. If you have a contract between two people it's very easy to resolve it; the moment you get to arbitration it becomes extremely difficult and I think actually quite challenging. So I think the intention of this bill was to give workers as Iain Lees-Galloway and Andrew Little called them—I call them something different; probably people—going into employment an opportunity to negotiate their own place in life.I think to sum it up Mr Speaker—I see we've had a change since I started. I guess we get to the point where—I think there's two things. I support the intention of this bill. I object to the fact that we've been accused of undermining workers' rights for the last nine years. I think that's certainly not what's gone on. As I said earlier we've got a 50 percent increase in household incomes in those nine years so we haven't done too badly. I personally object to the fact that we're tarred I guess with undermining those rights of workers. I think that's very unfair. I think the previous Government has done a pretty good job in relation to a lot of these things and created an environment where both employees and employers can enjoy a pretty reasonable sort of a life. So that's my contribution to this bill. I commend it to the House. May it go wherever it goes."