Lees-Galloway Iain: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9500. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I think the comments from the previous two contributors to the debate raised the issue of casual work and the casualisation of the workforce.I agree with a comment the Minister in the chair made some time ago which was that casual agreements do have a place in the overall framework. In fact when employers came to submit on this legislation many of the employers—perhaps after a little bit of questioning from the Labour Party—agreed that if they have got permanent agreements casual agreements and fixed-term agreements then there was no need for zero-hour contracts. And it is great because we are not going to have zero-hour contracts but we are going to have permanent agreements casual agreements and fixed-term agreements. Only one of those is defined in our legislation.This is actually a debate—this is a live debate about whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing to define casual and permanent agreements in the legislation and to perhaps tag to those casual agreements some casual loading of the type that Clayton Mitchell is proposing with his Supplementary Order Paper 150. I do not want to necessarily express a firm view one way or the other on that except to say that it is a live debate but I do see some merit in defining casual agreements. I think that by defining casual agreements we would deal with a lot of the issues that Clayton Mitchell is trying to deal with by including the loading.One thing that the loading does—or at least it is one thing that is the intention of including the loading—is for it to be a disincentive. It is not intended to be an incentive to put employees on a casual agreement but actually it is intended to be a disincentive to employers to put people on casual agreements or to at least make them stop and think about whether it is in their best interests to have people on casual agreements or whether they would be better off having them on a permanent part-time agreement with guaranteed hours. Obviously there are other aspects to the loading as well that Clayton Mitchell has raised in terms of equity such as just what casual employees are entitled to and we already have that 8 percent loading recognising annual leave.I think there is a lot more to it and that may very well be one of the next things this House needs to think about such as permanent agreements being for permanent work—so where work is permanently available that should not be provided through a casual agreement. I also think that there is a lack of understanding amongst many employers about what the appropriate use of casual agreements is. Although we have case law and although we have a degree of advice from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment we do not have them in law and that makes it very difficult for many employers to actually use them properly.We are going to support the New Zealand First proposal. I suspect it is not going to get up tonight but this is an issue we have to come back to. I am very keen for members from around the House to address some of these broader issues around casualisation and how we make sure that the range of employment agreements that we have available to us are being used properly.I just want to make one last comment since we are ranging over all the remaining parts which includes the title. The title of this legislation is the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. That seems a very bland title for a bill that extends paid parental leave eliminates zero-hour contracts—after we have finished here tonight—and improves employment standards. Of course that is actually because this started off dealing only with employment standards. After the Labour Party and Sue Moroney and the 26 for Babies campaign ran that wonderful campaign the Government realised it had to act on paid parental leave. And after the Unite union and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and the Labour Party and other Opposition parties ran our campaigns around zero-hour contracts the Government realised it had to act on that too. It threw those two issues into this legislation hence the Employment Standards Legislation Bill deals with those.Do you know what? We are happy. We are going to be celebrating after tonight. We have made huge advances tonight. We have also identified the next tranche of work that this House needs to consider in employment relations and I hope that the cordial approach that we have built around employment relations might continue and we might actually start to reverse some of the damage that has been done in recent years and make some real progress.