Brown Peter: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Brown Peter: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1480] 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I listened intently to that speech and though the member made some very good points I thought—fair points—he is wrong on one count at least. This legislation is not an amendment to the Employment Relations Act; it is an amendment to the amendment to the Employment Relations Act. 
New Zealand First has looked at the bill fairly thoroughly and we cannot support it. That is not to say we do not have sympathy for vulnerable workers. We have and that is why we are fighting very very hard to raise the minimum wage. We are very keen to make the minimum wage $12 an hour. We were going along— 
Lynne Pillay 
: What about the cleaners on the ships on the waterfront Peter? 
PETER BROWN 
: The honourable member can rest assured that I will get to shipping sooner or later in my speech. I will get to shipping and waterfront work sooner or later—probably sooner than she would care me to. 
Lynne Pillay 
: What about those simple sailors Peter? 
PETER BROWN 
: The member is looking at a simple sailor a very simple sailor. I claim to be nothing else. 
I want to go back to the roots of why this bill has been introduced. It has been introduced because Labour Government members did not in their eyes get the legislation right a year or so ago. I listened to Mark Gosche’s speech and it almost brought tears to my eyes but he did not make one reference—or maybe he made just one reference—to what this bill is about. He was talking about the bill that has already been passed and become an Act that protects vulnerable workers; he was not talking about this set of clauses that address what we might call the Dunedin kindergarten issue. 
I want to refresh members’ memories of what happened in Dunedin. The Dunedin Kindergarten Association engaged a cleaning organisation called Southern Cleaning Services. The association members were not happy with the service or quality of cleaning that that organisation gave—that is my understanding—so early in 2005 when the contract expired the association said thank you very much to the cleaning organisation and told it that the contract was being put out for tender. The tender was won by an organisation called Crest Commercial Cleaning. It saw no sense in having to employ—I hope I am not doing it a disservice here—employees of Southern Cleaning Services so it offered the work to contractors whom it called franchisees and I gather they have done the work very well since. Since that time some of the cleaners employed by Southern Cleaning Services have been made redundant because their jobs had been dependent on the firm having the contract to clean kindergartens. Those workers believed they should have been re-engaged by Crest Commercial Cleaning. They went to court and they lost. 
Should they have lost? Well I do not know the answer to that. Should they have had an automatic right to job protection—should they have been engaged no matter which company had the main contract? New Zealand First says that no we should not be extending that sort of protection to anybody. We do not extend it to normal occupations so why should we extend it to employees who are not delivering the service that the employer—the kindergarten association in this case—wants? 
 Let me be absolutely frank: competition is essential for the better economic well-being of this country. We need competition. Competition brings with it innovation efficiency and cost-effectiveness. To some degree it drives wages down but once one achieves the level of service that is worthwhile paying for the effect is the reverse. So New Zealand First’s position when it comes to vulnerable workers is that first and foremost we want the minimum wage increased. We want to give employers some tax benefits some tax cuts so that they can afford the increased wages but we want competition to remain a tool if one likes of employers to ensure they get the best service—the best bang for bucks. 
I come to the waterfront because sooner or later I have to talk about it. The waterfront used to consist of pooled labour. When I was a stevedore I had to engage labour from a pool of people. I could not bring in modern equipment any more than my competitor could. I had no say on whether the workers would use it or whether they would work different hours. The workforce determined the hours and determined the equipment that was used. As a result our ports did not keep pace with overseas ports by a long way. In Tauranga where I come from we prided ourselves that we had the best port in New Zealand but when it was compared with ports on a worldwide basis we saw that it was less than satisfactory. 
In 1989 all that was changed. We changed the method of employment—employees worked for company A B C D or whatever and were part of the team of that company. They were not part of a pool of labour. As a result modern equipment came in loading rates went up discharge rates went up wages went up to some degree and everybody was happy. I have to say that the then National Government then passed the Employment Contracts Act and that put downward pressure on wages which was most unfair to many working on the waterfront. 
So in essence New Zealand First will not support this bill because we believe that it could lead to protection of incompetence or less than quality service. That is our concern. I am not saying that it will do that but we believe that it will protect incompetence to some degree. It will not affect the big cleaning companies at all. They are already captured into the market by whatever. But it will affect mum and dad cleaners—the small people—and quite dramatically and it will put a number of small businesses out of business. The alternative is to ensure that cleaners—if we are talking about cleaners—and other people on low wages get a reasonable wage. That is why New Zealand First members are striving and fighting for a higher minimum wage. 
The other issue in this country that should be addressed is casualisation. Many many industries have moved to casual employment. We believe that there should be some rules around employing people on a casual basis. New Zealand First will have some ideas to present probably to this Government during this term on how that can be achieved. 
So in essence higher wages and controls on casualisation are the answer to the issue of vulnerable workers. [ 
Interruption 
] That member ought to take a call to make her view known. The answer is not potentially to protect incompetence. New Zealand First members are not prepared to do that. Therefore we will be voting against this bill.