Bennett Paula: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:5087] 
PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 I rise to talk to the title of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. I feel it is appropriate to come up with a suggestion myself for a title to this bill. Looking back to the year 2000 when the Employment Relations Act was introduced I see this is the 14th amendment to it since then. So my suggestion is that we call this bill the “Employment Relations Too Many Amendments Bill”. The reality is that time has been taken up by the Government on those amendments. There has been so much wrongdoing going on that we have to look at employment relations amendments because the Government could get them right the first second third fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth ninth 10th 11th 12th or 13th time. The bill should be called the “Employment Relations 14th Amendment Bill”. The reality is that this Government and this Parliament are having their time taken up by trying to continually fix the mess that was made the first time round. In fact how many times have we been trying to fix it? It is 14 times now. This is the “Employment Relations 14th Amendment Bill”. 
Of course the reason we are here to discuss the title of the “Employment Relations 14th Amendment Bill” is that we have a situation where employment relations are not being fixed at all. How can Labour members call it employment relations when what they are actually doing is to undermine businesses? When will this Government understand that by undermining a business it undermines its employees as well? The issue is about the employees at the end of the day just as it is about the business owners as well. 
The title of this bill makes a mockery of what we should try to accomplish for our people in terms of employment relations. When we look at what is happening in the relationship between employees and employers we see that they wish to talk to each other. Constantly through these amendments we have regulations that set in practice law that stops people from communicating. We have unions stepping up and saying they can do better than the poor employees can. The unions say employees cannot advocate for themselves and had better let the unions do that. 
We are about empowering people to have that obligation. On reading the entire bill—as I was unfortunately doing this morning in order to look at the amendments and at how the title would fit in with the bill—I was absolutely gobsmacked yet again to read the sort of language used about good faith and about the imbalance of power between employers and employees. I wonder what sort of world we are living in when we have unemployment levels at 3.9 percent and employees are in a position now where they can advocate for themselves and stand up and say what they are worth. But instead the Labour Government constantly turns round and says it knows what is best for them—that they do not know that. It says it knows where they should be working and what they are worth—that they do not know that. 
The National Party says yes employees do know that and they are actually worth a lot. National says employees have a lot to offer and a lot to give not just to business but to this country. We turn around and ask employees to let us empower them to make decisions that are right for them instead of turning around and saying they are too thick to advocate for themselves which is the constant message the workers of this country receive from the current Government. 
 So when we turn round and look at a title like “Employment Relations (This is the Fourth) Amendment Bill”— 
Hon Members 
: 14th. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: How many? 
Mark Blumsky 
: 14. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: There have been 14 amendments? I did say “4”. 
Mark Blumsky 
: Because you couldn’t believe it. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: I could not believe there have been 14 amendments. I had to sit there and count them up again. I had to get someone else to count them for me because I could not believe that we were on the 14th amendment to the principal Act. When we look at those sorts of amendments we have to ask how much we are going to continue to regulate a workforce that does know what is best for itself. There is room we say for the bigger employers—and we were looking at cleaning companies and so on—to have in place legislation that helps them to achieve what they want to do. We believe in employees’ rights. They do have a right to work in safe environments and to be treated fairly—all those sorts of things. But employees have strength now. They have strength in their numbers and strength in the fact that they are needed. No one knows that better than the business owner.