Bennett David: Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett David: Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18196. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 As regards the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill my colleague Kate Wilkinson has made some very pertinent points about it. A number of amendments take into account the views of specific industries that felt the bill did not accommodate the practicalities and the realities of how they actually do business. The transport industry was one of those whose representatives came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—with special reference to the nature of the bus industry. They made it quite clear that the bill would have a detrimental effect on the way that they run their operations. I think all the members of the select committee saw some relevance and some practicality in what they were saying. The amendments put forward in that regard take into account the need to make law that is sensible where we can do so. 
But in looking at the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill in a general sense I think one of the big things about the meal break portion of it is to consider what it actually means for a lot of employees. A lot of employees negotiate meal breaks within their employment agreements. During the course of the select committee process it was found that some employees would actually lose rights under this legislation proposed by a Labour Government. Many employees have better rules in regard to meal breaks than what this legislation was originally going to provide and in this case still provides. We saw that in the medical field especially with nurses who in certain cases had negotiated much more comprehensive arrangements for their meal breaks. The legislation was going to take away some of those advantages. The select committee looked at the legislation and came to the conclusion that we needed to make sure that workers would not be in a worse position than they were in before this legislation had been proposed. 
That was one of the key requirements that the select committee made some progress on and we saw amendments made to the bill to take into account the nature of the work arrangements. Members will see that the words “so far as is reasonable and practicable in the circumstances” have been added to clause 4. That is one of the opportunities I guess to provide some flexibility within the legislation to take into account individual circumstances. There is a bit of debate about what the wording actually means; “reasonable” and “practicable” are quite legalistic terms but they are common terms that are used throughout our legislation and in our courts. They open up the way for interpretation and that should be done in a meaningful and progressive way for all concerned.  
When we look at the timing of rest breaks we see that one of the major considerations was to get those timing requirements right—not too prescriptive but not too restrictive either. The bill needed to take into account the nature of work arrangements and also employment agreements in the sense that some speciality of the work or the nature of it may require negotiation on the timing and the nature of rest breaks. 
In essence the legislation in trying to deal with breaks dealt with some things one would find in normal employment arrangements. The legislation needed to account for that and in most cases that has been done through the Supplementary Order Paper that has been put forward or through the select committee process which looked at the practical realities of what the legislation could provide to make sure we had sensible legislation going forward that could provide those kinds of meal breaks in the future. 
The National Party supports this legislation. Some changes have been made to it in the past couple of days that probably are not in the best interests of this Parliament. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Peter Brown to clause 5 be agreed to: 
to add to section 69ZH the following subsection: 
(2) Despite subsection (1) where an employee is a person who is required to take a rest break by or under another enactment the requirement for a rest break defined by or under the other enactment applies instead of the provisions or entitlements for rest breaks or meal breaks provided under this Part. 
Amendment agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 229 in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to Part 2 be agreed to.