Bennett Paula: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bennett Paula: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:633;Page:4822] 
PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 I rise on the Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill and find just so many problems with it. Having read Darien Fenton’s letter about it as well I find—a little like Peter Brown—that it is just so hard to understand exactly what she is trying to accomplish. I suppose what it fundamentally comes down to for us in the National Party is that it is about freedom—freedom of choice and freedom for people to manage their own work to suit themselves. In many cases that is why people choose to contract. They choose to go under a contract. 
Let us take the example of pamphlet deliveries because that is the one example I have heard Labour use. Under that example we have people who will choose to take their time who will choose to do the job at their own will or whim who will stop and start who will call into houses and who actually like the freedom to be able to do the job without having to be under an hourly rate—or as it would be an hourly contract to someone. So they choose merely to be paid for what they deliver and they are quite happy with that arrangement. I am in agreement with that because I have yet to hear of someone who is unhappy with the arrangement after talking to them and hearing of the freedom they enjoy. 
It will be people such as older people who will find themselves out of a job because employers in that situation will think that the push from the Government is to put people on an hourly rate. So they will put them under an hourly rate but that will not be an ideal situation for many of them and they will choose not to do the job. They enjoy the freedom that comes with the work they can do. 
A classic example was a contractor I was speaking to with a very small business who was contracting to go out and do gardens and things like that. He did not sit down and think about how long it would take him to do the job; he worked out what he felt the job was worth then he put a price to it accordingly. Under this bill it seems to be the case that depending on the time it would take it could actually cost a heck of a lot more for people to get their lawns or gardens done. So how can that be fair for anyone because they will not then get the work? In the case of the person with the small business he enjoys the freedom to work when he wants to and to get the work done in the time he does it. 
Under this bill I am wondering as well how that would possibly work. Would people have to clock in for every 10 minutes they worked and clock out for when they did not then have that recorded? It is talked about that it will be legislated and investigated. Will we have labour investigators going out to look at how long jobs actually take so that we can then decide? It could all be sorted out at the select committee of course. The bill is about regulating the market even more when it is the freedom of the market that works for people. It is as simple as that really. We will be regulating because we do not wish to let those people have a choice. In many cases it really is about choice. 
The other thing concerns the reason why people choose not to go into the contracted hourly rate of an employee. More often than not when people are being paid by the hour they feel as if their time is owned. As such when I am an employee my time is owned for the period of that job and I am obliged to do the job at the pace required by my employer—and at the rate required by the employer. Again that is taking away that choice. 
I have concerns about another issue and let us use the example of someone cleaning carpets. Like the member from United Future I would go out and get different quotes for the job that is to be done but then when that job is actually done I might look at it and think that it has not been done satisfactorily. The carpet cleaner then has to go back into the house and do the job again. So the cleaner has had to do twice the time for what the service had been contracted out for in the beginning because the job had not been done effectively in the first place. So what does that mean? Because the job has taken the contractor twice as long all of a sudden he or she may be outside the minimum hourly range and as a consequence the rate has to be cut. 
It can be the same in the case of pamphlet deliveries if we want to use that example. Occasionally a job is not done properly so the contractor is told to go back and do it again how to do it and everything else. Because contractors are not doing jobs effectively in the designated times they agreed to themselves and because they are having to do jobs twice when they have not been done properly we will have labour inspectors coming along and having a look at that. It is just absolutely ridiculous. I cannot see how it will possibly work and it is for that reason that National will most definitely be voting against it.