Brown Peter: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Brown Peter: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11574] 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 This bill is correctly named. I think that the title reflects what it is all about. The Status of Redundancy Payments Bill basically provides for employees who have signed a redundancy agreement with their employer to have a higher status in the pecking order if the firm wants to needs to or does go belly up. [ 
Interruption 
] I cannot see exactly what the member is doing. I wish he would stop echoing like a sparrow at the back. 
Over the years thousands of people have been made redundant in this country. I listed them before from press cuttings I got from the library. They are people from the meatworks the sharemarket the clothing industry the car industry the airline industry the stevedoring industry and the shipping industry. Thousands of people have been affected and without exception every one of them went home feeling quite distressed and in quite some anguish. 
In many cases when these firms have gone belly up contractors have lost some money and some as a result have gone into liquidation—but not always. In the main small businesses that service large businesses survive because they have their eggs in many baskets. When I was the manager of a stevedoring company from time to time I was offered the chance to tender for a stevedoring contract from an organisation that was perhaps a little suspect— 
Richard Worth 
: Dodgy. 
PETER BROWN 
:—or dodgy. I would put in a tender but then I would ask for a financial advance to lessen my risk. Nine times out of ten I would receive such. Occasionally a company would be reluctant to give me one. I then evaluated whether the risk was greater than I first thought and it was my choice whether I took the contract. 
Small-business people are not dumb. They know the wiles of the world and the way things operate. I hear National Party members in particular talk about employers as if they do not have a clue how to do anything. I wonder whether any National Party members have had any experience in real business operating at the coalface with people. 
Richard Worth 
: I have. 
PETER BROWN 
: A lawyer says that he has had experience in real business. It is encouraging to know that a lawyer has had hands-on experience in real business where he has been dealing with staff in sufficient numbers. 
Employed people are entitled to some protection. They go to work daily and rely heavily on the employer to do things correctly to look after them and to offer them some security of employment. This bill moves the redundancy payment one step further to give them that protection. Nobody wants companies to go bankrupt nobody wants to see liquidations nobody wants to see people made redundant and nobody wants to see contractors lose in these sorts of circumstances but when those events occur there needs to be a priority order. This bill changes the current priority order in a fair-minded manner. The cap is $15000 which embraces holiday pay wage entitlements and a redundancy payment. I think that is quite reasonable. I think it offers protection to working people who have signed a redundancy agreement—they get no redundancy if they do not have a signed agreement. There is no gun to an employer’s head to agree to a redundancy agreement. I think that this bill is appropriate and that the title is appropriate.