Macindoe TimHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I invite Marja Lubeck the member who's just resumed her seat to come to my city of Hamilton and come with me to visit a whole range of small businesses and light industry and meet with people who are working in jobs in Hamilton. I think the thing that she will find that is most clear is that the vast majority of employers recognise that the greatest single resource they have is their staff and they do their level best to look after them to ensure that they are valued because they know that it is a huge cost to any company to any business when staff change. Therefore to suggest that all employers—as she seems to think—are these appalling Draconian characters who are determined to deprive the workers of their rights is just utterly fanciful. It is so divorced from reality. I can't believe we're still having to listen to that sort of argument in this House.Today we've heard an extraordinary range of speeches. The Minister who introduced the bill gave a very sort of measured declamation largely because he was able to read his speech but essentially what he was saying was that this is a bill that reintroduces compulsory unionism by stealth.That was followed by one of the finest speeches I've ever heard in this House and that was delivered by the Hon Amy Adams who gave a very very thorough analysis of some of the many deficiencies of this bill including the fact that it will cost jobs including the fact that it will increase cost and disruption within business. If it is now so appropriate—and even Willie Jackson argued this—to retain 90-day trial periods for small businesses it is totally illogical to suggest that those who employ more than 20 staff should not have the same opportunity.She made the point that the bill forces businesses to become union recruiters and if I have time I'll return to that but that very fine speech was followed by one of the most appalling speeches I've ever heard in this House: the extraordinary incoherent totally contradictory and largely irrelevant contribution of the man who calls himself the Minister of Employment. It was as I say one of the worst speeches I've ever heard and to show how appreciative I am in one sense of that I ask the Labour Party to send a transcript of that speech or maybe a video link to every business every employer every small-business operator in this country so that they can see what the Minister of Employment actually said supposedly to justify this bill. He likes using the word disgrace" a lot. Well that speech was a disgrace. That contribution was utterly incoherent. Seldom has a Minister demonstrated greater ignorance of his portfolio than the Hon Willie Jackson did about half an hour ago.Well this bill is a recipe for a return to the regular industrial disruptions of the 1970s which New Zealanders overwhelmingly don't want to revisit and I am old enough to be able to remember just about every Christmas when it seemed right on Christmas Eve the Cook Strait ferries were suddenly on strike and families who were looking forward to a holiday on the other island from that in which they lived suddenly couldn't travel because union power was asserted in a way that destroyed their holidays.And I'm sure some of us of a certain age all remember the Māngere Bridge and how long it took for construction of that particular major piece of infrastructure to be completed. Far longer than the time actually spent progressively working on building was it held up by disruption and business productivity in this country was regularly negatively impacted by that sort of union activity. This bill will take us right back there. That is why it is so serious. That is why the National Party is petitioning for the protection of workers' rights which supposedly members opposite care about but which in fact this bill will put at risk. It will damage productivity; it will damage the employer-employee relationships.So while this may well be Labour Party payback for the great union support that they got at the election it is unbelievably retrospective and negative and it will cause major major problems. I oppose it with every fibre of my being."