SpeechCHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): I rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the first reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill and there are certainly going to be two sides in this debate. It will come as no surprise that ACT will be opposing this bill and making it quite clear that it will be gone after the next election.This bill amounts to unionism by stealth and will simply make it tougher for businesses who have struggled to keep trading through a one-in-100-year pandemic and who continue to struggle with the never-ending costs imposed on them by this Government. New Zealanders are free to join a union if they want to. It shouldn't be forced upon them by Labour's blind ideology. It's anti-democratic and anti-freedom. The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment has warned against fair pay agreements saying they'll reduce productivity and make it harder for employers to grow especially coming at a time of another minimum wage increase collecting the youth tax and another statutory holiday.What we heard from Minister Wood earlier on today intentional or not was just not correct. The race to the bottom" rhetoric is very disingenuous. The fact is that after declining through the 1980s employees' pay and conditions have improved substantially since the introduction of the employment contracts agreement in 1991. We're going to constantly hear from Minister Wood about how fantastic these agreements are in Australia but everyone especially hard-working employees should be very sceptical. Despite what Jan Logie just said union membership in Australia and throughout the world is declining as workers prefer to be treated like adults who are more than capable of working out their own conditions for employment.This legislation will take us back to the 1970s as has been alluded to a couple of times this afternoon. I was in my teens in the 1970s and they were great times. The Benny Hill Show was one of the most watched TV programmes. How do you think that would go in today's times? Banned from TV—we've moved on. Caning and getting the strap was common in schools. I think it's widely accepted that it probably didn't do much of us too much harm but I don't think it improved productivity that much at all. We've moved on. Computers were something we saw on The Jetsons and now people even work from home—unheard of back then.Unions were also dominant in the lives of many New Zealanders in the 1970s but not for a good thing. I grew up with a father who was a staunch union member. He was a marine engineer on the Cook Strait ferries and I vividly remember the constant talk about "the award" which at the time seemed like a union version of the Bible. Strikes always seemed to occur just before the school holidays—maximum leverage to get their demands. But even as a 12-year-old I couldn't help thinking that going on strike because your beds weren't being made just wasn't quite right.I know that a lot of the current Government have not experienced this time but it wasn't all roses. Does the Government seriously believe that the fair pay agreements would've helped New Zealand get through this one-in-100-year pandemic? We're in an environment now where employers and employees work things out to cater for their own situation. Sealord has a parentship from 9 till 2 so their workers can work while their kids are at school. COVID showed us and continues to show us that we need a flexible workforce one that can pivot—that's a popular word. Or is it so popular now? Because these fair pay agreements will make things much more difficult. How do you think organising workers to work from home would have gone with the bureaucratic nightmare of fair pay agreements?This Government uses COVID every time it suits their agenda when their incompetence is shown and the blame needs to be laid. Poverty: blame COVID; homelessness: blame COVID; inflation: blame COVID. Just today the Prime Minister said that these are trying times. Grant Robertson said they're extremely challenging times. But from the start of this pandemic they've kept attacking businesses. Two weeks into it they put the minimum wage up. It's just bizarre. Hard luck—just deal with it: "COVID doesn't matter you guys. No excuse." And we find out today that Michael Wood wanted a higher minimum wage—just amazing. Let's make the minimum wage $50 an hour and everyone's problems will all be over! The Government must realise that businesses that do survive are doing so in spite of the Government not because of it. The small business Minister should hang his head in shame. When Business New Zealand refuses to have anything to do with this bill you'd think it would be cause for some concern.New Zealand's workforce has improved from the 1991 introduction of the employment contract agreements and fair pay agreements are a backward step. One of my employees said to me last week "What else are they going to do to business. Do they want us all to end up on the dole?" Good employees will suffer. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard a leader from the Public Service Association recently say that they didn't believe in performance pay meaning everyone should get the same. Hard-working New Zealanders should be very concerned about this legislation. Everyone benefits from your hard work.ACT believes that New Zealanders are more than capable of talking to employers and working out pay and conditions that suit both parties and most importantly are affordable. The mechanisms in place in employment contract agreements to support employees have worked fantastically over the last 30 years. Labour just doesn't understand business—profit is a dirty word; productivity a misunderstood concept. This bill will go to select committee and we'll get lots of submissions. Consultation will be seen to be done and it will be very interesting to see if this will be another example of Labour's very specific definition of consultation—namely "Thanks. Now we'll do what we want." For the sake of hard-working New Zealanders ACT will be campaigning to dump 19th century compulsory unionism immediately after the election."