Simpson Scott; Mallard TrevorHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's often said about politics that a week is a very long time. If a week's a very long time then a winter of discontent is an even much longer time—a much much longer time. So we've come back to the Parliament after the recess of three weeks where some of us have been out working hard in our electorates visiting businesses talking to employers talking to employees and talking to people and listening to their worries their concerns and their issues with this current Government. And what do we find on the eve of our return to Parliament? A very telling poll. I've not ever seen in recent times so many scared faces sitting on the Government benches. Most of that back bench will be gone by the time the next election rolls around because they have lost connectivity with middle New Zealand and they know it. There's nothing like a bad poll result and a case of the political seasonal sniffles to give a party a bit of a wake-up call and this Labour Government seems to have not yet heard the clarion call of the voters of New Zealand that their time is on short fuse.So as I've tripped around the electorate of the Coromandel and I've talked to employers and I've visited other parts of the country talking to chambers of commerce and the like employers' groups I've been talking to them about Labour's so-called fair pay agreements. And what I've heard back is that there is an awful lot to fear about Labour's fair pay agreements. Often I talk about how these were centralised closed-door agreements between big trade unions and big employers made in Wellington and they were a hallmark of the industrial relations landscape in New Zealand all through the 60s the 70s the 80s and they were finally put to rest in the early 1990s. Since then of course we've had an opportunity to have enterprise agreements where individual employees and individual businesses get down together and they talk about wages and they talk about conditions and they talk about terms of employment. Labour want to take us back to those bad old days. There are a lot of people my age and older who remember how bad that was not just for employers but for employees and our total economy.But what's been fascinating as I've been listening to younger business people and employers around the countryside is that they too are fearful of Labour's fair pay agreements. They're absolutely scared witless because they say Well where's the democracy? Where's the fairness? Where is the equity in what Labour are proposing to do?" And they understand that the real risk is actually just a return to union based negotiations that will dominate the industrial relations landscape. But the younger business managers and owners and operators and the younger employees who don't remember the bad old days they say "Well we want to have democracy in the workplace. We don't think it's fair. We don't think it's fair or reasonable that just 10 percent of a sector of a whole sector can decide the negotiated wage agreements for the other 90 percent." And in some sectors it's going to be as few as a thousand people in one sector group. So just think for a moment about a large sector of the employee groups; let's say sales reps for instance of which there are probably about 100000 in the country. They are probably going to end up being unionised because it won't be too hard to probably find a thousand sympathisers who will say "Oh yeah you know we want a fair pay agreement." But the other 99000 people who don't want it are going to be forced into a negotiated agreement that is decided by big unions and big business behind closed doors in Wellington.It's part of a theme about centralisation about ruling this country by proclamation from the Beehive issuing decrees from Wellington. We've seen it in centralising health centralising education centralising the water arrangements and now they want to take us back to the bad old days of a centralised—well it's not really a negotiation. It's not a negotiation at all. It's a system that will be decided behind closed doors and the only thing that's really different between now and the period back in the 60s 70s and 80s is of course those closed rooms are probably not smoke-filled any more.We know on this side of the House that one size doesn't fit all and actually employees and employers all around the country know that one size doesn't suit all. There's another often quoted rule of life and politics and history and that is: if it ain't broke don't fix it. There is nothing broken with our employment relations—SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired."