Jones Dail: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — First Reading 
Jones Dail: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:606;Page:4036] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 On behalf of New Zealand First I say that this is one of a group of bills that seem to have found their way into the House at about the same time. We had Margaret Wilson’s bill on holidays and the way in which payments should be made for holidays which we supported to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. Mr Matt Robson recently introduced another bill about holidays and we also supported that being referred to that select committee. 
This bill has been touched on insofar as its position in relation to the Companies Act 1993 is concerned by the previous speaker Mr Sowry. In terms of that Act as he said the liquidator gets paid out for all his or her costs first and then according to this bill the wages and salaries of employees are to be paid out before holiday pay is paid out. As I read the bill—and I tell Mr Peck that I stand to be corrected because sometimes that happens when a bill is being picked up for the first time—I see that that is an amendment to clause 2 of the seventh schedule of the Act that is being inserted as paragraph (ba) so it would be inserted after paragraph (b) and before paragraph (c). That is how I would read it. 
Therefore this bill states that redundancy payments should be made before amounts due in respect of any compensation or liability for compensation under the workers’ compensation legislation. I really find that extraordinarily strange because one of the most hard-fought things that any Labour movement ever achieved was workers’ compensation. Here we have in today’s economy a minority Labour Government saying that redundancy payments which are paid to a few will take priority over workers’ compensation which is paid to many people as of right because of the hard-fought actions of the trade union movement in the 1910s 1920s and 1930s. I find it quite strange that redundancy pay which is available to a few workers in big powerful unions will get priority over workers’ compensation. 
As I said at the beginning a number of these bills have been introduced in the last couple of weeks and it is interesting that if this bill does go to a select committee we will now have a group of bills that will cause a great deal of concern especially to small and large businesses. I would be interested to learn from the promoter of this bill or perhaps from a Government Minister whether it is proposed that that committee will travel. I believe it would be very useful for the select committee to travel to Auckland Hamilton Christchurch Dunedin and to one or two other major towns like Tauranga in order to get the view on the spot of small and large businesses. That is needed in order to expose Labour members of Government—who are mainly trade union officials—to the views of people who are involved in business. 
I gave Mr Peck the courtesy of listening to him but obviously he does not care about the views of other members of Parliament as he stands in the House speaking to the Minister Lianne Dalziel with his back to me. Obviously he has no concern about what is being said about this bill although I treated him with respect. That shows the degree of respect that Labour members have for this legislation—that they are not interested in other members’ views on it. 
In the case of this legislation if we have a plumber working for a freezing company and another plumber who is a self-employed businessperson the plumber working for the freezing company might be paid redundancy but the plumber in business on his or her own would get nothing and would also lose the money that had been put into the job. The plumbing contractor having received no money and having put money into the job would then not be able to pay his or her staff holiday pay if he or she went broke. This bill is anti-paying out holiday pay in the event of a plumbing contractor going broke. 
As there is a raft of bills currently before select committees New Zealand First will support this bill going to the select committee but members can see how sceptical we are about it. We would really like to see all the business groups in the country going along to the select committee and telling the trade union officials who make up the Labour Government and its select committees just what a nonsense this bill could be. As I have shown in that simple case we will be doing the worker in the eye for holiday pay and possibly even for wages so that those workers who come under a big union and who have negotiated a redundancy payment can get paid first.