Mallard Trevor: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled 
Mallard Trevor: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled 
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Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I think it is interesting that for a bill that is so important and so vital to the economy we have sitting in the chair the Hon Maurice Williamson a junior Minister from outside Cabinet someone with very little experience in this area and one for whom there is so little respect that the officials have not even turned up to support him. I think it is a sad state of affairs when the Minister of Labour herself not the sharpest pencil in the National box is replaced by Maurice Williamson who I think it is fair to say although he has opinions on lots of things would not claim to be an expert in the labour relations area. He does pretty well on statistics but his talent is relatively limited. 
This is the first substantive part of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2). There will be some more substantive parts as time goes on and extra parts start to hit us here in the Chamber. But Labour for starters has tabled a set of amendments that we will be working through in order to attempt to make this legislation—I will not say palatable but— 
Sandra Goudie 
: He doesn’t even understand it! 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Sorry? What happened there? That is the woman with the brain of Paul Quinn and the voice of Judy Keall. But I am not quite sure what she said— 
Chris Hipkins 
: You’re not going to be invited to Judy’s for dinner again any time soon. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Good. We have a number of amendments here that are designed to make a bill that can never be palatable in being part of legislation that itself is unpalatable slightly better than would otherwise be the case. We have attempted to get the support of the Maori Party and the Greens for some amendments that are reasonable. They are not radical; most of them do not have the substance necessary to turn the legislation round but they would make it slightly better. 
The first amendment for example would put in a clause that would require the employer to provide access to information about a decision to dismiss an employee—and that to me seems just a pretty basic human right. It is part of the fairness that is ingrained in New Zealanders about their relationships at work. If someone gets the sack that person has a right to information about that decision. 
There is another amendment on the issue of the 90-day trial period not being advertised as a condition of employment. I think that is pretty important because at that stage it shows an absolute lack of openness on the part of the employer about whether that will be a condition. One of the things I say to my colleagues is that I think we will get to the point at some stage of good employers doing the opposite. I think that over a period of time we will find that good employers will put in their ads that they do not use the 90-day trial procedures because they trust their own ability to recruit and they trust the processes that flow. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: That’s just what I said. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: That is exactly right. The member “Michael Woodcock” has just accepted that good employers will not use this system. 
Chris Tremain 
: Point of order— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I think I can anticipate the point of order—that is that we use correct names. The member did not say “Woodhouse” so I ask him to pay just a little more attention to that in future. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I think members on this side understand that members opposite come and go and I get them mixed up over a period of time. Although the member is considerably more talented than the average member on that side it is not a particularly high test. I acknowledge Mr Woodhouse whom I have sat on a select committee with and who regularly supplies me with bottles of wine as his team loses to Wellington-based teams. I acknowledge his name. 
But I want to emphasise what Mr Woodhouse said. He said good employers will not use this system. I go one step further and say I think good employers will make it clear that they are not using this system in order to attract better employees into their workplaces and to give people some security. As I indicated earlier if someone is a talented person who is being well paid has a family to support and maybe has a mortgage such a person does not want to go into a situation even if it is worth a few thousand dollars a year more where he or she could be sacked next week without a reason and without the income necessary to support a family. 
There is another area of amendment for which we are suggesting that unjustified dismissal and personal grievance remedies may be sought when good faith has been breached. I agree with Michael Woodhouse that most employers are good employers. The vast majority of them are good but you know there are some who are not. There are some who are dogs that self-respecting fleas would not sit on. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Hotel workers union. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Tau Henare used to be on the workers’ side against those— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: The hotel workers union was the worst employer in Auckland. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: There have been a few sacked since Tau Henare’s time. In those days Tau Henare used to go toe-to-toe with employers—in fact he used to go toe-to-toe with union officials too except that he just hit some of them from behind with bottles. Tau Henare knows that it is important to have procedures when there is unjustified dismissal and when good faith has been breached. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: What good faith? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: That is exactly the point; for some employers there is no good faith. When that is the case there must be a process for their employees. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Feeling the pressure of Unite union are we? How’s Matt? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I understand that Matt McCarten is not very well. I want to say nothing more than that Matt is not very well; that is something we all know. 
There are amendments about communication through collective bargaining because this bill does not require good faith to occur on the part of employers. This bill takes away the requirements for good faith on the part of employers during collective bargaining. 
I ask members opposite what sort of country they want to live in. What sort of New Zealand do they want? Do they want one where we can work together as wage earners and salary earners and employers or do they want to go back to the Allan Peachey approach—the class war? I was trying to work out the analysis that Allan Peachey was giving in relation to this measure when he was speaking in the House and it was actually a Marxist analysis. His analysis was that of someone whom I think has spent quite a lot of time looking at  
Das Kapital 
 and not enough time looking at the way—[ 
Interruption 
]—well Marx and Engels—Kiwis work and what Kiwis’ values are. The cooperation the loyalty and the approach of working together as a team which we pride ourselves on in New Zealand is something that members opposite are trying to destroy from the basis of their outdated ideology—the sort of ideology that now exists in very very few countries that are succeeding. We just do not see that ideology in northern European and Scandinavian countries at the moment and in other countries that are growing. Actually this legislation is just so much worse than that of the Australians and National members want to try to close the wage gap between the two countries. We know that they cannot do that.