Hamilton RyanRYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a great privilege to speak on this and I commend the member for getting a member's bill drawn out of the biscuit tin. I look forward to that day as well. But unfortunately as has been said we can't support this tonight. As the great chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee said earlier in the evening does this make the boat go faster? What is the problem that we're actually trying to solve? I read through the bill notes and the purpose of the bill but I still struggle to actually see how is this is moving the needle how is this going to help employers or employees. In fact it says here the difference is that there is a perception that the employer is not when a total remuneration package is utilised." It is a perception. There are no actual facts here.What is the percentage of employers that are abusing or discriminating? Do we have that information? No there are no examples. It's yet another compliance burden. So while on one end of the House we've got one of the leaders of the ACT Party Brooke van Velden working on streamlining things for employers around payroll around software around the Holidays Act and all that complexity here we are trying to add another level of complexity for employers.Who are the employers? Well 95 percent of New Zealand is made up of small businesses that employ that take risk and that pay and look after their staff well. Why are we trying to penalise employers again and again and again? This is one of the great challenges between left and right politics where the left think they're doing the right thing by looking after the employees and lifting the minimum wage and lifting all these things but what they fail to understand is all that means is more cost more compliance for business and they've got to lift their prices up and provide goods and services at a higher price. And who's going to pay for those higher prices? The very employees and all of the people that they're trying to help. It's a complete false economy.Both sides of the House actually talk about the benefits of a more productive economy more productivity how do we do less with more; whether it's a tech company whether it's agriscience or the agricultural industry or the horticultural industry or improving the apple supply out of Tukituki or the farmers around the great Waikato or the beautiful restaurants in Hamilton East how do we increase productivity? Well I'll tell you how we don't increase productivity by putting more complexity and compliance costs on employers.In fact one of the things that the bill proposes to do is make it easier to take out a personal grievance. Well that's the way to build the economy—more personal grievances! Let's penalise employers with more personal grievances because that's a win-win! The personal grievance industry has only grown under the last Government. Let's give an example: if an employee complains and they have to go to mediation there's no win for the employer. They're generally going to have to write a cheque for $5000 for what? Just to make the problem go away. More cost to employers. What does that do? It makes them less likely to want to employ new employees. It makes their business stay small and makes them risk averse. And thank goodness we got rid of 90-day trials for big business as well because it opens up the ability for people to take risk and take on new employees and it's such a key thing.But that Government's really keen to reduce productivity to stymie it to make it more stodgy to slow it down to dampen it. Let's look at the relativity element which hasn't really been discussed in this bill. What if someone has got existing employees and they take on a new employee and they say "OK we won't discriminate. We won't use your added advantage of the employee compensation scheme so we'll build it into your package." And they talk to the colleague beside them that says "Well how come you've got that? You're $3000 better off than me. Mr employer he's $3000 better off. I want a pay raise—I want a lift." So what does the employer have to do? He's got to adjust all the pay rates across all his organisation so everyone feels better. And what's that done? It's just lifted the costs for all the employers and those costs get put on to the end user—and round and round we go. It's a really important thing but it's a red hearing.On this side of the House we've actually got these things called values. And one of them is less government personal choice and responsibility competitive enterprise and reward for achievement. Here's a thing that works really well if you want to better your employee wages and things: turn up early stay late work hard get paid more. Thank you Mr Speaker."