Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's with pleasure that I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party at the third reading of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. It's been a bit of a tumultuous journey to get to this third reading and the mismatch between the actual legislation and what we've been hearing from the Opposition that this legislation does is as wide as the gulf between the parties in this House it seems to me.Before I get into some of the detail of the bill I do just want to address one of the points around how this bill is about improving collective bargaining and union access. That's true and I will make no apology for that. I hear from the Opposition the view that this is for the benefit of the union as if the unions are an institution separate from people in their workplaces who are trying to get by. That suggests to me that the members in the Opposition actually may not have been members of a union and may not have seen the benefits of coming together with their colleagues and actually considering how to create a productive thriving healthy workplace. That's been my experience being a member of a union where we've made significant changes and improved productivity in our workplace by coming together and having those discussions. The times where I've been an employer I've taken huge benefit from my staff being able to provide me with the information and provide a check on my management practice through those conversations in union with their colleagues.So the evidence is pretty strong around the benefits of unions and that's domestic evidence—it's also international evidence—that it's a benefit to those workplaces and productivity but also that coming together with your colleagues to be able to negotiate for pay and health and safety is actually a really key factor in reducing inequality. The International Monetary Fund who's a conservative organisation—they've acknowledged that. So this isn't about going back to some historic time of conflict; this is actually about bringing people together in union. That's not about conflict; that's actually about trying to create some harmony in our workplaces for the majority of the people in those workplaces.I do just want to acknowledge that very recently the New Zealander of the Year Kristine Bartlett—this is a woman who fought and put equal pay back on the table for this country through her union. That wouldn't—and she says it continually—have happened without the support of her union. Coming together with others and that union access was a really significant issue for those caregivers in being able to get others involved in that case. So it's really pleasing to see an improvement in the ability for union organisers to be able to start those conversations in workplaces where they haven't known about unions.Actually a lot of our young people in this country don't really know what unions are and the fewer members that we've had the harder it has been to have that conversation. While union rates are going up which is contrary to what the previous speaker Jacqui Dean said that's on the back of these amazing examples of what joining a union can deliver for those workers but also us as a country. Actually we know that we need to restore some balance here that it's been tipped against colleagues being able to come together and support each other and bargain for decent conditions.One of the other points I would like to challenge where there's been some misinformation has been the point that this legislation treats employers as if they're all bad and we can't trust them. Actually I challenge that. I do not see that in this legislation at all. In fact to my mind the balance is still a little towards a distrust of the unions and working people. In the provisions around passing on of information about the union we've had to build in here an ability for the employer to check that information which is coming from an assumption that actually they're not going to trust them that they would be trying to do something that's dodgy through that process as opposed to just letting people know the benefits of joining a union. So I challenge that assumption or assertion as well.We've been hearing that this bill is also about restoring minimum standards—so that's around rest and meal breaks. It's been annoying for me—I'll be upfront—sitting and listening to the Opposition assert that now nobody will be able to have an arrangement with their employer to take their rest and meal breaks when it suits them and that it will remove flexibility for working families in terms of arrangements for their children when that is very very clear in the legislation that it's possible to have an arrangement between the employer and the employee of when those breaks are taken. It's very very clear and if the Opposition hasn't gone to the effort of reading the legislation then I think we're in trouble and they really do need to question their role in this House.I also want to point out that we've been hearing as well that there will be no choice for people around actually being pushed on to a collective rather than an individual contract. They'll get the conditions of a collective but until they choose to join the collective they will not be on a collective. It's just to give people the experience of the conditions that they might get from joining together with their colleagues. They are different things and this bill does not remove people's agency at all. It in fact enables people to have more choices and to know what their choices are.There's another point in the bill I want to touch on briefly that hasn't particularly been talked about which is that the bill removes an exclusion for employers with fewer than 20 employees when there's a business transfer—so when a business sells to somebody else that their staff will now have the option to be employed by the new employer. This is a really really important provision particularly for women and Māori and Pacific workers who are most affected by these changes in ownership of businesses. This was something where New Zealand under the last Government—they were telling the UN that they'd done really great work around providing this protection and they didn't mention that they'd created an exclusion for businesses with fewer than 20 workers. So really it did look to me when I was looking at that that they were misleading the United Nations on that. It is a very important point around the security particularly for women workers. So it's great to see that addressed in this legislation.I also want to just finally touch on the 90-day rule provisions in this bill. It is a compromise for the Green Party. We're willing to see it move forward because it is progress for those who are on a collective contract but really the idea that nobody would give anyone a chance particularly if they were Māori or a woman or young unless there was the ability to fire them without any excuse whatsoever is frankly ridiculous and I would argue offensive.