Connell Brian: Employment Relations Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Connell Brian: Employment Relations Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:16141] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 We first heard it here—the New Zealand First Party is a pro-union party. Is it any wonder that the word on the street is that a vote for New Zealand First is a vote for the Government? Can they fix it? No they cannot. 
This legislation is about as draconian as it can possibly get. This is a step back to the 1970s. This will do more to impact on our international and our domestic competitiveness than any of the hare-brained schemes that “Swainy and the boys” and his Government mates have dreamt up to date. I see us going back to the huge industrial unrests of that period and I would have thought that any clear-thinking person would want to avoid that. But no not this Government. This is payback time big time. This is reward and recognition for the 24 members of the current Government who served as union officials. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Including the Minister. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: Including the Minister in the chair Paul Swain as one of my colleagues has said. No wonder he is out there saying one thing to business but quietly and in a sneaky way he is doing dirty grubby deals in the lobby of this House with the boss of the union movement. In fact he should declare whether Ross Wilson is in the precincts tonight. I would not be surprised if he is. 
Simon Power 
: He has a room in the lobby. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: Does he have a room in the lobby? Is he paying rent? He probably has a permanent place in the Minister’s office because he is really the guy who is driving this legislation. 
Hon Roger Sowry 
: He’s in the Department of Labour head office. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: He probably does have his own office there. This legislation is about compulsory unionism. The Minister can beat it up any way he likes but that is what it is really about. 
Dover Samuels called out before and said it is for those hard-working members and for the hard-working people of New Zealand. Well it has already been pointed out to him that 79 percent of the hard-working people he has referred to do not actually belong to unions at all. I say to the member and to the Minister that if unionism is so damn good why does it need to be made compulsory? Why do they not just let people come to it naturally? The same argument was run with communism in East Germany. If it is so good why did they have to build a wall to keep people out—or was it to keep them in? I suspect it might have been the latter. 
I want to talk specifically about the restructuring provision in Part 6A inserted by clause 30. I have personal experience of having led a management buy-out of a large business here in New Zealand in 1990. This kind of nonsense was in existence then until there was a change of Government. A company that had assets of approximately $12 million only got the value of $5 million because the company was broke and the people who were buying it knew there was a contingent liability on the books for $35 million. They said that if they could not restructure the business the way they wanted then they would not pay fair market value. Do members know what? The Government did that deal because it knew it had no option. The same thing will repeat itself now. 
It is a dumb Minister and a dumb Government that cannot learn from previous mistakes. Here we are repeating the same stuff again. This will have an immense impact on the value of businesses when they are up for sale and purchase. The first thing a purchaser will look at is the terms and conditions that the company has or that the employees enjoy. If the purchaser is buying the business because it is in trouble why on earth would anyone pay top dollar or take the risk in the first place to purchase that business if there is no flexibility to restructure it according to the purchaser’s own needs? It is not rocket science. The Minister should have been able to work that out. If he had not been listening to Ross Wilson and company he would have.