Goldsmith Paul; Wood MichaelHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I suppose at the last reply the Minister did make the point that where I was worried—or you know there didn't appear to be much of a threshold before any employee could lodge a claim under a breach of the fair pay agreement. He points to clause 200 which does the things that the authority must take into account in determining the amount of penalty and paragraph (c) was whether the breach was intentional inadvertent or negligent …". Now I think most people in this House would have some sympathy with some sort of penalty for a breach that was intentional you know that an employer went out and intentionally tried to diddle the system and get around and pay less. So yip we can understand that. Negligent if you're just—well I don't know what is—well it comes to the point that the previous National Party speaker Penny Simmonds was saying. The Government seems to think that business owners have nothing else to do all day but to sit around studying the latest effusions and emanations from this Parliament as to a hundreds and hundreds of pages of stuff that they're supposed to keep on top of.I was driving on the weekend and once you get out of town you actually have to pay a hang of a lot of attention because the speed limit keeps changing all the time. It goes from 50 to 60 to 30 to 70 to 80 and then next minute it's 100 and then it's back down. That's no excuse if you happen to be going along thinking that you're in a 100-kilometre zone and it turns out you're in a 70-kilometre zone. The police officer doesn't say "Oh well yes you didn't understand poor chap." No. They give you a ticket. That's the sort of thing—it's the same notion that we're dealing with here not having sort of spent the last three weeks studying the legislation the poor business owner has made a mistake and it may well indeed be inadvertent. But this legislation doesn't say "Oh if it isn't an inadvertent mistake there will be no penalty."; it just says that—well it implies—it may be slightly less of a penalty if it's inadvertent than if it was intentional.If it was negligent well tough luck. You're going to have to pay up because you're expected to know everything about everything. When it comes to immigration law when it comes to the rights and responsibilities of all the employment law when it comes to whether or not you're fixing up with the Commerce Act and then not to mention the IRD and whether you've done all that right. So there's so many things to worry about. It is a small wonder that the backbone of our economy the small entrepreneurs are starting businesses taking the risk having a go that part of the economy is spluttering at the moment. One of the reasons is because it is so risky and so difficult. I'll make this point once more and I won't make it again I promise but this legislation is just another example of every week this Parliament passing more legislation—under Labour with the support of the Greens—to make life more difficult.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! We are considering Part 9 which on my reading of clauses 196 to 203 is very specific to penalties. I am looking for targeted debate. If members care to stray in to general comments more in the nature of a third reading speech then it's up to them but I am looking for targeted debate.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I appreciate your admonition Madam Speaker. The only point is that we're dealing with the penalties we're dealing with the punitive side of the bill and the punitive side of this Government when it comes to businesses that don't get it perfect when it comes to all the regulations that are passed. That's the only point I'm making—it's punitive.Yes of course the Minister will say "Well if you're going to pass a bill you need to have penalties to ensure people do that." and it's quite right. But the piece of logic that he's missing is perhaps you don't need to pass the bill in the first place in order to pass the penalties. It is the addition of regulation requirements fish hooks and potential areas for mistake that inevitably require the penalties; otherwise there's no point. So yes you've got to have the penalties—but do we need to have the whole rigmarole that leads to the penalties in the first place? And that's where I would've thought a very good guiding principle for any Government should be regulatory restraint.The first question that any good Minister should ask when a proposal is put in front of him or her by enthusiastic party members by officials by people coming up with bright ideas is: is this really necessary? Is it really going to make it easier for people to make a living?Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): In as far as the member's comments relate to the penalties covered in this part of the bill again I draw the member's attention to clause 200 which provides clear guidance to the authority to adopt a reasonable approach to any party be it an employer a union an individual employee who does end up in that situation the authority is guided to consider whether the breach was intentional inadvertent or negligent and a range of other factors. Bearing in mind this process will usually unfold after lower-level dispute resolution processes have already played out which is usually where things actually get resolved before they get to the authority.Furthermore I note that the wording in clause 200 is almost a direct lift from the wording in clause 133A of the Employment Relations Act which has been in place for the best part of 20 years and I think has generally speaking provided pretty good guidance to the Employment Relations Authority to act in a proportionate way in these matters."