Mapp Wayne: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:5124] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 This bill if ever a bill was is truly legislation for money. Here it is and this Government gets money from the trade unions. It knows that and it delivers legislation—cash for policies if ever there was such a case. A lot of people would say that is corrupt. When we pay money to a Government and get legislation there is no other way to describe that than as a corrupt practice. We are getting used to that. 
I want to say something to three Labour members sitting across the Chamber on the Government benches. They are all new and at least two of them will be gone at the next election. So I say to them they should enjoy their 2 years or more accurately suffer their 2 years because today’s question time is merely an example of what they can expect. We are angry and the public are angry. They are saying to this Government it should be honest with the voters and pay the money back. The Government should listen to the 81 percent of the public who say that because the public have no patience at all with a Government that would basically take money and deliver legislation. 
 The policy behind this bill is in any event fundamentally flawed economically because the Government is trying to get new business owners to take on old employees under the same terms and conditions they had previously or else to pay them redundancy. That is the choice. This Government obviously has not heard of the last 20 years of economic reform. Do those members not know how greater productivity is actually achieved? It means that we have to get more work—more productive output—from each employee. That is the only way productivity is increased. It may mean providing more capital or it may be a case of adopting better management systems but whatever it means it means change. We do not end up doing exactly the same job in the same way it was done before. We heard submitters say: “Woe is me because in the last 20 years my job has changed.” I would say to those submitters that they should get real and come into the real world because work does change. There are more efficient systems new technology new machinery and new management systems. Actually that is how the economy was turned around over the last 20 years. 
Government members have some fatally flawed idea of paying the unions back and adopting until the point of bankruptcy the ideology of their trade union mates. Here we have in the Chamber two members of that Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—trade union officials—delivering to their unions policy that the unions paid for. That is my definition of “corruption”. They are delivering here not just corrupt ideas around Government but also bankrupt policies as well. 
National is fundamentally opposed to this bill. We even suggested—and my colleague will talk about this—some modest changes to the bill in our minority select committee report. We said that we should at least exempt smaller employers because we are faced with an absurd proposition. A small firm probably consisting mostly of family members will tender for a contract. It intends of course for its employees and team to take over the contract. But what does the Government say? It says the firm should forget about its own business all the capital it has at risk and all its new initiatives because it has to take the old people on. Well the very reason the contract is being changed is that the person who is changing the contract wants there to be a new team: the team presented to the person who is changing the contract by that new small employer to do the work—to do it more efficiently effectively and cost-effectively. My colleague David Bennett will talk on his proposition as to why the proposed change to the bill to address that issue is so desirable. 
I do hope that New Zealand First is sympathetic today to the ideas and values of small businesses particularly of family businesses. The New Zealand First member on the select committee Peter Brown well knows—because it was discussed in the select committee—that the proposal is aimed precisely at that group of people. I hope the New Zealand First members will stand by their ideology and support small business.