Twyford Phil: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Twyford Phil: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 09 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2120. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 I just say to that member Simon O’Connor that there is just about time to get to the airport and get a plane to Auckland to the public meeting in his electorate at which about 300 people will condemn and abuse National for its destruction of the community in Glen Innes. So Mr O’Connor you have got just enough time to get to the airport and get to that meeting. I urge you to get there; there will be a lot of your constituents there who are very keen to see you this evening. 
It is generally a good idea and it is generally an accepted principle in this House not to make up unnecessary legislation for imaginary problems but sadly that is exactly what is happening in this House tonight. The lion of Te Atatu—I think of him more as the sphinx of Te Atatu; he has got the energy levels and the productive output of a sphinx—comes down to this House tonight with the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill. 
What is this bill about? The  
New Zealand Herald  
reported that the bill’s proponent the Hon Tau Henare says that “the idea came from his time as a union organiser in the 1980s when he stood before workers before a show-of-hands strike vote with a presence that ‘would have made them think twice about voting no’.” So the sphinx of Te Atatu comes to this House with a bill that is setting out to solve a problem that is 30 years old from when he was an organiser in the Clerical Workers Union when he was a bully and a thug for the Clerical Workers Union as reported by the  
New Zealand Herald 
. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! I do not know whether referring to a member as a thug is acceptable.  
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Can I speak to the point of order? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No. I know in the context of this debate it is robust but I think calling someone a thug is unparliamentary. I will just ask the member to continue. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: As the  
New Zealand Herald  
pointed out what motivated the man who brought this bill to the House was his own behaviour of intimidation and bullying 30 years ago as he told the  
New Zealand Herald 
. There is no evidence that has been put before this House or the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that there is any kind of problem to be solved here other than Mr Henare’s own behaviour 30 years ago. 
This is an unnecessary bill in response to an imaginary problem. Dozens of hours—dozens of hours—of this House’s time have been wasted debating a bill that should never ever have been brought to this House. We have got record numbers of New Zealanders heading across the Tasman we have got 160000 people unemployed we have a faltering economy and we have dangerous levels of private sector debt. And what does this National Government think is a priority? What does it think is an important matter to be brought to this House? A ridiculous bill that is looking for a problem to solve.  
 We have been talking this evening about the fact that this bill is based on a blatant piece of discrimination. It tries to impose on workers’ organisations a cumbersome and expensive compliance mechanism that interferes in the running and the constitution of workers’ organisations. Why? There is no good reason. It imposes on unions the obligation to have a secret ballot. It sets in place the opportunity for employers to take frivolous and vexatious legal claims against the unions. But it does not place the same kind of obligation on corporate governance structures. 
We have heard tonight dancing on the head of a pin from that side of the House. We have heard a pathetic lecture from David Bennett about corporate governance theory. Each one of them Jami-Lee Ross Simon O’Connor and David Bennett have utterly failed to justify why this bill places the obligation on workers’ organisations and nothing like it for businesses either for shareholders or for boards of directors. That simple contradiction exposes why this bill is based on blatant ideological prejudice from the National Government. That is what this bill is about. There is no good reason for it and it is a waste of this House’s time.