Brown Peter: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Brown Peter: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:633;Page:5308] 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I say to the member who has just resumed her seat Paula Bennett that if she did make any reference to the Employment Relations Amendment Bill at all I missed it completely. She did not know what she was talking about. She sat on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and listened to submissions yet she does not have a darn clue what the bill is all about. She was talking about the Holidays Act Air New Zealand and goodness knows what else. 
This bill is about vulnerable workers—people who are on the bottom rung of society. They need some help—legislative help. For the member’s enlightenment the Government passed the bulk of the legislation that helps vulnerable workers 2 or 3 years ago. The Minister recognised and acknowledged that. This bill is but to close a loophole—and the member did not even understand that. This bill relates to the  
Gibbs and others 
 v  
Crest Commercial Cleaning Ltd 
 case in Dunedin but I will not go into that now because I do not have enough time. But I urge the member to read a little about what she is meant to be talking about because she is not only letting herself down but also letting the National Party down. 
Three important aspects of this bill went through at the Committee stage and they all went through after a strong effort was made by my party New Zealand First. The first one is that we put the whole thing up for review within 3 years and the Minister of Labour Ruth Dyson and the Labour Government agreed. So if the legislation is wrong and does not deliver what it is meant to deliver it can be relooked at and restructured accordingly. 
The second aspect is far more important. The bill states that there will be full disclosure. I should explain that this bill deals with a contract that has expired and is then up for tender. People tendering for that job will be obliged to take on the workforce of the initial contractor but when they submit their tender they will have access to somewhat detailed information. They will not know every individual’s wages and what have you but they will know the total bill. So they will not be tendering blind and that is fair. Why is it fair? It is because the employees who retain their jobs will retain their conditions. They worked darned hard to get those conditions at a reasonable level and it is not fair by shifting them from one contractor to another contractor that they lose the lot. 
We have heard many examples even tonight and certainly we heard them in the Committee stage of this bill and at the select committee of cleaners—who principally are the people we are talking about—being told they could keep their jobs but they would have to clean more rooms and their hourly rates would go down as well. New Zealand First said we had a low-wage society as it was and we asked what we would be doing for New Zealand society if we kept knocking the guts out of the lowest-paid workers. So we accepted the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 54 which amends the legislation to provide for full disclosure. Had the Government not come up with that there was a question mark over whether we would have supported the bill. 
Another Supplementary Order Paper in my name came as a result of a National Party representation to me. I spoke to the Minister on behalf of the National Party. Those members did not speak to the Minister directly; they came to me. They asked what would happen if the disclosed information changed—for example if the employer increased or doubled the pay after the information had been disclosed. Those members asked whether that would be fair. I said to Mark Blumsky that he might have a point but I read the bill again and I said I did not think that situation could occur. I asked the Minister whether that was a realistic possibility. She agreed with me; she could not see how that situation would occur. But we both thought there could be some devious employers out there who on thinking they would not retain their contract might double the wages of the staff just to make it absolutely difficult. So I produced Supplementary Order Paper 55 in response to the concern expressed to me by Mark Blumsky along those lines. 
One would think that the National Party would have supported that Supplementary Order Paper. Even if it did not support anything else one would think that it would support a Supplementary Order Paper that came about from an idea of one of its own members. But no it did not. However the Supplementary Order Paper got through and it amended the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper. 
As the Minister divulged tonight she received a representation from members of the northern division of the Employers and Manufacturers Association about introducing a Supplementary Order Paper that would provide for disclosure. I thought those were the guys whom the National Party thought it supported. But National members voted against that Supplementary Order Paper. As I say that amendment was very important to New Zealand First. We would not have given our support to this bill had that amendment not been in it. But it is in the bill; thus we are supporting it. 
I will spend the last few minutes I have on the National Party’s amendment. Those members wanted to exclude small employers from this legislation. How dumb can they get? That would have meant that the small employers who employ 10 or fewer employees would be excluded and if their contract was up for tender their employees would not go along to the new employer. If they worked for a big employer they would go over but if they worked for a small employer they would not count. They would lose their work—they would lose everything. They would have no protection whatsoever. 
New Zealand First members are very straightforward people. We said that everything had to be obvious it had to be fair and it had to be in the long-term interests of the people we wanted to protect. It is a sad commentary on New Zealand that vulnerable workers need some protection in this society. They cannot fight competitive market forces; they need to be protected by some legislation. 
This bill closes the loophole in the earlier legislation. It should have been done 2 or 3 years ago when the Employment Relations Act first came in. For that reason and for reasons of fairness New Zealand First will support this bill. Thank you very much.