Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Chair. Well the member in the chair Kieran McAnulty has got one thing right and that is that this bill the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill is nothing like the bill that was introduced and first drafted by that trade union stalwart who came from the trade unions who did her compulsory parliamentary service here in the Labour Party and then returned back to the trade union movement: Darien Fenton. She drafted a piece of legislation back in I think it was 2009 or—Dan Bidois: 2007. Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —2007—way back then—that was designed to do nothing other than grow the strength of the trade union movement. So Darien Fenton's no longer in the Parliament. Kieran McAnulty picked this up probably without reading it and signed it off and then found that it was drawn from the ballot. Then it went to select committee and it was found wanting in every single regard. It was wanting so much that at the Education and Workforce Committee the entire bill was rewritten apart from two things one of which was the title. The entire bill was rewritten at select committee. Now we on this side of the House do still oppose it but we acknowledge that it's a much better bill than it was when first introduced at first reading and the select committee I have to say did some good work not the least of which was convincing the sponsor and promoter of this bill that the union-friendly stuff all about collective agreements was utterly unworkable totally unnecessary and not worthy of pursuing. To his credit he saw the logic and the good intent of that and took it out. But still we have a piece of legislation that seeks to over-define an arrangement that works really well in almost every employment situation. It's topical at the moment because not the least of which are things that are going on within this precinct at the moment or that have been topical and newsworthy just this very day. So I want to just refer in Part 1 to the definition which will be in section 5 of the principal Act when this bill gets passed—if it gets passed—which is the definition of a controlling third party". Many people out there in the real world I think don't actually understand the meaning of a triangular arrangement. So for many people they will understand a triangular arrangement as maybe one where if a reception person goes on leave for a few weeks the employer will go to a temp agency and ask a temp agency to provide a temporary reception person for that period of time and in due course what happens is that the temp agency sends an invoice to the company that is hiring the services of the temp for that period of time. The relationship exists between the temp agency and the temp who is doing the work and it's a financial transaction between the engaging firm and the temp agency. Now that's not dissimilar to thousands of employment situations all around the country. Doctors on locum for instance are in triangular employment arrangements. Indeed staff employed by members of Parliament or engaged by members of Parliament in their offices—technically those staff are in a triangular employment arrangement. They report on a day-to-day basis to the MP but they're actually employed by the Parliamentary Service and that's why these matters are topical today. So the definition that we are confronted with is quite unwieldy because what we've done is now change the definition to define a "controlling third party"—a "controlling third party"—because for the Labour Party it's all about control. The definition in clause 4(a) is someone "who has a contract or other arrangement with an employer under which an employee of the employer performs work for the benefit of the person; and (b) who exercises or is entitled to exercise control or direction over the employee that is similar or substantially similar to the control or direction that an employer exercises or is entitled to exercise in relation to the employee". Now that is a definition that will be lost to almost all employers to almost all labour hire and temp agency organisations and actually to most people out there in the real world. This is a complicated piece of legislation and unnecessary in every respect."