Peck Mark: Companies Amendment Bill Insolvency Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Peck Mark: Companies Amendment Bill Insolvency Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:616;Page:11938] 
MARK PECK (Labour—Invercargill) 
: 
 I move  
That the Companies Amendment Bill and the Insolvency Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. Initially I want to point out what the bills do not do. The bills do not say to employers that they have to have a redundancy agreement. The bills do not require 80 percent of New Zealand employers who have fewer than 15 staff members working in their workplace to have a redundancy agreement. The legislation does not say to employers who do not have a redundancy agreement that they must have a redundancy agreement. 
What has been extraordinary during this debate as the legislation has progressed is the misinformation that has come from the other side of the House about what the legislation does. If there is one thing I want to do for the employers of this nation it is give them one simple message—this legislation imposes nothing upon them that they have not already agreed to. 
I shall spend a moment at the commencement of my speech thanking Mr Peter Brown for the way in which he has conducted himself during the course of this debate and for the way in which he has attempted to educate the National Party and the ACT party in particular on what the legislation does. The best defence the National Party has put up against these bills as they have progressed through the House is that employers do not have the strength to stand up to the might of the unions. Prior to coming into this place I was a union official for 17 years. One of the things I know is that employers never gave anything away lightly at all. Mr Brown said on numerous occasions during the debate that if the employing class of this country has lost so much gumption that it no longer has a backbone then he when he retires from this place will be quite happy go back and steel it again. 
I want to tell the House what the legislation actually does. I thank my colleague Rick Barker who drafted the original bill in the first place as a result of the way in which workers were treated after the closure of the Tomoana Freezing Works in the Hawke’s Bay. Those workers got not a cent of the redundancy payments that had been agreed between the employer and that particular workforce—not a cent. The only group of people who got anything out of the closure of Tomoana were the banks. The farmers missed out on their stock and the workers missed out on getting the redundancy payments they were entitled to. The effect on the Hawke’s Bay economy was $35 million. When I first moved the legislation the wife of a former freezing worker came to my office to thank me. Her husband out of desperation as a result of the loss of his job and income had committed suicide. Nothing would bring him back. Nothing could bring him back. That was the effect of the loss of that man’s job security and of his inability to provide for himself and his family. The stress got so much for him that he was unable to deal with the issues that we would normally deal with on a day-to-day basis. That woman was delighted that at last somebody was doing something to recognise that particular problem. 
What else does the legislation do? It does not attempt to do a lot of the work that the Government is still working on through its reviews of insolvency law. Indeed in working this matter through with my colleague Lianne Dalziel the Minister at the time it was made very clear to me that there were areas we could work within such as the idea of raising the cap to $15000 to bring it to a more realistic level. The particular level of wages and holiday pay and we now add in the issue of redundancy payment that had been protected in the case of an insolvency had not been amended for a number of years. Fifteen thousand dollars the level at which the cap is now set simply recognises the fact that there has been inflation over time and that things have moved on as far as that is concerned for workers. There is nothing magic or new about that. Most certainly it will not provide those workers who lose their jobs with a pot of gold. However it is a little bit of recognition of the fact that they were employed in an industry they had negotiated a redundancy agreement with their employer and by doing so in the consideration of that they had probably given up a percentage or so along the way in their pay increase so that the employer could make provision for that particular evil day. 
Something else we need to be aware of is that those provisions in these bills kick in only in the case of a company that has negotiated a redundancy agreement becoming insolvent. Nobody wants to see that. Nobody wants to see companies becoming insolvent but whether or not we like it there are industries within New Zealand that will in the course of time become sunset industries. We have seen it with the introduction of new technologies and new work methods and the classic example of the meat industry is quite clear. There are no longer the numbers of chains processing that there were in the 1980s and the 1990s. We no longer need those numbers of chains. Now at the Alliance freezing works in my electorate there are two 12-hour shifts operating. Southland has the shortest season it has had in generations. People have had a 10-week season this year; they have now got through the lambkill in Southland. We know that those industries are not seeking protection—far from it. The meat industry is one of the most competitive industries in the country. It is not seeking protection. The workers are entitled to a level of dignity and consideration as their industries do restructure. Therefore we are raising the cap. 
The second thing we are doing in this situation is saying that redundancy payments should be treated like wages and holiday pay. I come back to that—by including them as wages and holiday pay those particular amounts of payments get the same consideration as wages and holiday pay. There is nothing new about that. It simply means that the way to work out the employee entitlement now includes a new component the redundancy entitlement at the time of an insolvency—I come back to that; at the time of an insolvency—so that the workers get something and the banks do not get everything and so that there is a little bit of consideration for those workers and their families as they struggle to put their lives back together and try to get into some form of gainful employment in the future. 
The legislation does one final thing which I think is important as well. It will future-proof the figure. We will not sit back and wait another decade or so before we revisit the figure of $15000. This figure will be reviewed on a 3-yearly basis and it will be increased in line with cost of living adjustments. I come back to the things the legislation will do. It will provide a cap at $15000 it will ensure that that cap is regularly reviewed and it will raise the priority status. When others stand up in this House and say this will be an impost on all employers—as they will do; they will say that banks will no longer lend for employers to get set up—people will understand that for what it is—just so much cant. This is a modest bit of reform to give a level of decency to workers. I say to the workers of Tomoana and others who missed out on their redundancy payments as a result of restructuring that this should have been done decades ago so that as they tried to put their families’ lives back into some order there was at least something to help them—not a grand sum of money but a small nest egg that could be used to pay a bit of the mortgage perhaps or pay a few of the bills or help with their job search. These are two good pieces of legislation and I commend them to the House.