Moroney Sue; Carter DavidSUE MORONEY (Labour): I rise to add my voice to the growing chorus of opposition to this poorly drafted and ridiculous bill which purports to actually improve employment relations but we know because of whom National chose to debate this bill that they are not serious about it at all. Of all the MPs—of all the MPs—they could have chosen to get up and speak about employment relations Paul Foster-Bell with his well-documented high staff turnover must have been one of the poorest choices that they could have made. Oh there could have been Todd Barclay I guess but he comes second—maybe—to Paul Foster-Bell. But I think that underlines the way in which this Government has no regard for workers' rights does not understand what is important about having fair and decent and honest employment policies and their involvement in this debate is set to underline that.I want to ask the question: what is it that the National Government has against workers and their rights at work and why it is that they are picking out this particular group to alienate? This is normally after all the group of workers whom the National Party would want to cosy up to. Those earning over $150000 are the ones they would normally want to protect so who are they after here? Well I am on the select committee that I expect will probably hear this bill if it gets through its first reading. On that select committee quite recently we have been hearing about the plight of whistleblowers in the Public Service and I think that they are going to be under serious threat by a bill of this nature.In the Ministry of Transport where a very large and serious fraud was committed against the New Zealand taxpayer it was the public servants who stood up for the rights of the taxpayer. It was the public servants some of whom would have been getting paid more than $150000 who did the right thing who went and reported the breaches that were being made by one of their senior colleagues a general manager second only to the CEO. She was defrauding the New Zealand public and many of her colleagues reported her. They reported her non-compliance and some of those people would have been earning over $150000. Those whistleblowers—those people—are the people whom we need to protect. They are the public servants who are there to protect the public's interest. Because I can see that at the outset it might seem OK if you have been offered a senior role at say a ministry like the Ministry of Transport to actually sign away your rights to a personal grievance. But then what if you are the whistleblower who acts in the public's interest and then gets dealt to as a result of that? That is exactly what may have occurred in the Ministry of Transport; if only the Minister of Transport would have an inquiry and find out whether exactly it did happen or not.But that is a very real example of the people who will be disenfranchised by this legislation. They are the very people whom we want to have security in their jobs and whom we want to be brave and whistle-blow when there are frauds of that nature being committed in places like the Ministry of Transport. We do not want them to have given away their basic rights to be protected at work if they are having to be put in a position as these staff members were of having to go and report against a senior colleague. We want and the New Zealand taxpayer needs people like that to have the full force of the law and the Government backing them to go and make those valid and just complaints. I think that this is one of the targets of this particular law. It is that sort of culture that has developed more and more under this Government of bullying at work. Bullying in the workplace is not just meted out to those on the lowest incomes; it is quite frequently meted out to people on higher incomes as well and it must stop.Finally I want to say how disturbed I am that the National Government would want to bargain away people's rights to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace and if it thinks that sexual harassment happens only to low-paid people then it is completely out of touch with what is happening in the modern workplace.Mr SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted and in accordance with the determination of the Business Committee I call on the Rt Hon John Key to make his valedictory statement.Debate interrupted.