Adams Paul: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2) Human Rights Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Adams Paul: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2) Human Rights Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
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PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to speak on this employment relations legislation which we will not be supporting. It is interesting to think of the many things that we say will happen and the things we say will not happen. It was not that long ago—probably 7 8 or 9 years ago or maybe a little bit longer than that—that we were starting to say to people that one of the biggest challenges we were going to face in the days ahead was that we would not have enough hours to work. We were going to have the 35-hour week then the 30-hour week and we were beginning to think about what people would do with all that leisure time. I think the people listening tonight will be wondering whether that leisure time is even on the horizon. 
Some of the speakers today have said that this legislation is very pro-union legislation and I tend to agree; it is definitely pro-union legislation. But I would not be able to speak strongly enough to say that I do not agree with having unions. If one says that one does not agree with having unions then on the other hand one has to say that one cannot agree with having an association like an employers’ association. Any association that represents members has to do the very best it can for its members. This is clearly payback time for the unions and the unions have been trying to get far more out of this legislation. 
I do not like the term “good-faith bargaining”. What is good-faith bargaining and who defines it? I think those are very good questions to ask. My understanding has been that when people get into a dispute only one group actually has to pay to get a decision and that group is normally the employers. The dispute will without fail end up in some type of employment court and employers will have to pay to get a result. As a consequence of that fact employers will often look at the cost of fighting a dispute and decide whether it is better to pay out. I do not like that sort of trend coming into our legislation. Workers unfortunately will always receive different rates of pay for different types of jobs. For one thing there are different profit margins in different things. Therefore we can never get to a situation—unless we go to communism—where everybody gets paid the same amount of money. 
We seem to be deregulating everything these days—except that in this legislation we are not deregulating people. We are not giving people the free right to choose. We are finding that forces are coming—whichever way we want to look at it—on to employees to toe a certain line. That is why United Future does not like this. I do not think it is a good thing to have disputes that cost one side more than the other. There is no doubt that this legislation will cost employers more than before and United Future cannot support that. 
There is much in this legislation about employers having to divulge information to employees when changes are coming in a company. I think that is a very challenging situation. There may be changes in a company—changes that an employer or a company owner is aware of—that will affect staff but it may not be in the best interests of the staff for that information to come out into the public arena too early. Firstly that could affect the very viability of their jobs and secondly it could mean that the business could degenerate because the employer does not have all the facts together about the proposed changes. Therefore I think employers must always have the ability to keep some information that may be commercially sensitive out of the sight of their employees until they get to a stage when they have some concrete evidence or a concrete process whereby they can go to their employees and say: “This is actually what’s going to happen and these will be your various options.” 
Under this legislation if one is going to buy a business in some industries one has to take on the staff who work there. That may sound fair enough but what if those very staff are the reason why the employer is having to sell the business? The poor person who takes it over will be stuck with the same problem and therefore the business will not be able to progress. I think most business owners today always say that their staff are their strongest asset. Therefore they need to have the ability to make business decisions by weighing up all the factors involved including the staff. 
I have also mentioned that I understand the principle of contributing toward collective agreements but what if an individual signing an agreement faces costs of his or her own that have arisen out of the process of putting their case to the employer? Will they be able to go the union and ask for a share of that cost? Maybe because of that individual agreement the whole of the collective agreement came up a level because that person had been able to convince the employer to pay them a little bit different. I do not think that person would have any chance of getting any contribution towards that cost. United Future will not be supporting this legislation.