Beaumont Carol: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3633] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak in favour of new Part 10 which is about the personnel provisions for the Auckland Council and the Auckland Transition Agency. This is a very important new part and I hope the members across the Chamber will listen to the debate on it. It is about personnel provisions that affect 6300 workers and the treatment of those workers also affects their families. We are talking about a very significant number of Aucklanders who as one can imagine are feeling very nervous and insecure at the moment given that the major structural change is occurring in a time of high unemployment and major economic crisis. I hope that there will be a fair hearing across the Committee of this issue. I am sure that Nikki Kaye—the new friend of the worker—will support this new part. The party leaders across the other side of the Chamber are not here but if they were they would recognise the value of these sorts of provisions as well. As I understand matters recently they have understood the value of working with unions in trying to look at employment matters. 
New Part 10 proposes a number of important general principles. First and foremost those general principles include the idea of being a good employer—that is a very important principle. It also requires that policies developed under that principle are available to employees and that the Auckland Council would report on its compliance with those policies. We have outlined some of the things that good employers might do including the fair and proper treatment of employees providing good and safe working conditions providing equal employment opportunities recognising the aspirations of Maori and making sure that employees of the Auckland Council maintain proper standards of integrity conduct and concern about the public interest. I reinforce that point because the people who work for councils provide public services. These people care about the public services that they provide which are very very important things that affect the day-to-day living of people in Auckland. So we are very aware that those workers will want to be in a position to provide good-quality services to the public. 
The context of this part is very important and we talked a little about that last night. Workers are feeling very insecure at the moment. Council employees—employees of the different councils and of the regional council—are feeling very concerned. Why is that? The royal commission said some very important things about the staffing issues related to this important change that is going on. It said it expected current council staff to form the nucleus of the new organisations. One of the royal commission’s reasons for adopting its proposed model was “to maintain stability in the council workforce to minimise both the personal impacts of reorganisation on council staff and start-up costs for the new organisation and to enable key services to be delivered as usual during the transition”. 
The unfortunate thing is that although that statement provided a degree of certainty to the affected workers on the other hand the Government has decided that there will be a rationalisation of council staff which will start to occur immediately. That means there will be job losses. The Government is disregarding not only many of the other recommendations of the royal commission but also the recommendation about providing security for council staff. In the current economic environment that is very very difficult for people to deal with. 
If one looks at how workers in the Public Service are currently being treated by the Government one would understand why council workers in Auckland are feeling insecure. I ask members to look at the level of job cuts that is going on at the moment in the Public Service. I ask members to look at the fact that those workers are being treated as second-class workers and are not eligible for example for provisions like the 9-day working fortnight—not that that has actually made a great deal of difference yet. But Public Service workers are not even eligible for it. 
We have already seen a number of attacks by the Government on workers. We have seen a number of workers lose the right to challenge unfair dismissal. The Government is now looking at the provisions around holidays. The Minister of Labour has put up a zero percent increase in the minimum wage and actually does not agree with pay equity for women workers. I could go on but I say those things also mean that workers are feeling very insecure and nervous.