Pugh Maureen; Twyford PhilClause 4 Section 67A replaced (When employment agreement may contain provision for trial period for 90 days or less) CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members we now come to clause 4 Section 67A replaced (When employment agreement may contain provision for trial period for 90 days or less)". The question is that clause 4 stand part. Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to speak to my amendment to clause 4 which is that after new section 67(1) it would insert "An employment agreement cannot contain a trial provision if the employee identifies as Māori or Pasifika or as a woman or if the employee is under the age of 30 or is disabled." In the classical liberal view of the world—and I raise that because the ACT Party often style themselves as great advocates of classical liberalism—that particular world view sees humanity as just a collection of atomised individuals and Margaret Thatcher very famously said or is often quoted as saying that there is no such thing as society. Now she said that she was terribly misquoted as people often do when their words are quoted back to them but she was in fact expressing a view that was influenced by Friedrich Hayek who some people in this Parliament including some ACT members claim as a great—Dan Bidois: Relevance. Hon PHIL TWYFORD: —philosophical influence. Well I'll get to the relevance. The relevance will become very clear. CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Soon I hope—soon. Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The view does not allow that we have collective interests and that we are part of communities or that it is the role of Government to regulate our affairs. It also doesn't allow for the possibility that how we get on in the world is determined often by things like social hierarchies or where we sit in the process of production in the economy and that's where this amendment comes in because there are people in our community and in our country—women the young ethnic minorities the disabled—who actually are at the bottom of the economic hierarchy. They are the people who figure most disproportionately in low income and in poverty and it's not just ethnicity and gender; it's often the history of those people and their place in the country and in the way that power is exercised—not just political power but economic power. The view that I'm talking about pretends that we're all individuals and we're all able to negotiate our interests and contract with each other on a level playing field. For example a 17-year-old Pasifika woman who turns up applying for a job with a multinational fast-food operator that has hundreds of millions of dollars of capital behind it—it pretends that she can negotiate on an equal basis with that company with that prospective employer. That is why we have rules for collective bargaining and protections built into our employment systems like the restrictions—or what should be a ban in my view—on 90-day trial periods. This bill which extends the 90-day trial periods to all companies and to all employees and all employers in our economy is a perfect expression of this view and I want to ask the Minister: does she believe that there is a power differential between the job seeker—the young 17-year-old Pasifika woman turning up to seek to apply for a job at a multinational fast-food company—and the employer? I'd really like to know whether the Minister thinks that they are in fact negotiating on an equal playing field. Further to that I would like to ask in line with my amendment whether or not the Minister believes that the young women workers the disabled and Māori and Pasifika experience disadvantage in the workplace and whether or not they should be protected by labour laws like the law that currently restricts—significantly restricts—the use of 90-day trial periods in workplaces. This bill is an echo of a view that is also expressed in this coalition Government's desire to bring back no-cause terminations in rental housing. It's based on a view that working people the young and the least powerful people in our society don't deserve due process and they don't deserve the protection of the law and it is contrary to the idea that we are all individuals living together on some kind of level playing field. It is a brutally hierarchical view of humanity. It says that one group of people or a whole bunch of people in our society simply don't deserve the same protections as other people."