Dalziel Lianne: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Dalziel Lianne: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:651;Page:410] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I was sitting in my office a while back and I heard people waxing lyrical on the efforts of the Small Business Advisory Group. I know intimately the work of that group because I had the pleasure of being its Minister for a period of time. I have here three of its reports: one is from August 2004 one is from March 2006 and I have just got off the Internet the 2008 report as well. The only report of the Small Business Advisory Group that the Minister in the chair Kate Wilkinson referred to was its 2004 report. 
The Minister completely failed to note that the group responded to the fact that the Government of the day did not want to let employers off the hook in terms of their needing to understand how important it was to employ the right people for the job and to ensure that they had good-quality information so that they could make good employment decisions right from the outset. It is absolutely extraordinary that the National Government somehow seems to think that it is OK to let employers off the hook in this regard. We all know that if the expectations on both sides of the employment relationship are not well established right from the outset then no productivity whatsoever will be built from it. 
I cannot understand why National is holding to the first of the Small Business Advisory Group’s reports when we know that the group’s view changed. In the first report the group was very much in favour of the personal grievance - free period. In the second report it was also in favour of the personal grievance - free period but at the same time it wrote to me the Minister for Small Business and said that it was really important that we got to the bottom of the real problem. The real problem was that employers were paying out money to people they felt were not performing in the job because the employers feared the consequences of ending up in a personal grievance situation. They would rather just pay the employees off and make the problem go away. The Small Business Advisory Group sent a letter to me asking for a new mediation system that would enable mediators to listen to the essence of the issues before them give some guidance and make a decision when that was appropriate; the group also proposed that there would be limited rights of appeal. That was something that the Government of the day was having a look at. So an employment facilitation process was how the group responded. 
The Minister has completely ignored the group’s latest report. It might be worthwhile to table it because I do not think the Minister has actually read it. The Small Business Advisory Group in its latest report reiterated its “support for grievance-free probationary periods. However we would take a [much] more targeted approach than our predecessors and believe that whilst preserving human rights protections for all employees [the provisions] should apply to any businesses with 15 or fewer full-time employees.” I want to know why the Minister has chosen to apply this bill to firms with 20 part-time or full-time employees. She has made no differentiation. She has not actually looked at the group’s report. I want to know why National has not taken up that proposal. 
The Small Business Advisory Group further stated that the most important thing was to “break the cycle of misconception and destructive behaviours during employment disputes. Our recommendation involves making it easier for both employers and employees to get access to balanced and helpful advice relevant to their particular dispute.” The group’s recommendation was “That information on good practice in employment relationships tailored to small business owners and managers preferably endorsed by employer organisations be made more readily available and be better promoted.” That sounds like a very good idea to me because it does not let employers off the hook. We know that a lot of small employers are seeking an easy way out rather than addressing the real problem which is the failure to have really good processes in place in order to establish expectations on both sides of the employment relationship. We have heard members opposite say that Labour talks about one side of the employment relationship only; well I say that the expectations on both sides of the relationship are very very important indeed. I would like an answer from the Minister.