Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Earlier than I expected but nevertheless I am pleased to rise and offer the Green Party's support for the member Kieran McAnulty's bill the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill.I would like to acknowledge the member Kieran McAnulty for getting this bill back to the House and it seems with us standing that the bill has a majority and will be able to progress through which is good news for people in New Zealand. I also want to acknowledge Darien Fenton who devised this bill about I think over 10 years ago now after a trip to the UK I understand where she spoke to a member of Parliament there who was looking at the increased casualisation of labour and use of labour hire companies and was quite concerned at the impact that he was seeing on working people in the UK. So she got the idea to develop this legislation from starting to see the pattern of that happening here.And now we are 10 11 years later and indeed this form of employment relationship has grown significantly and with very mixed results if anyone is being honest about it. We know that this form of relationship really works for some people and we also hear consistently of stories of people talking about not feeling as if they have the stability or the certainty in their relationship in their employment status to be able to raise concerns and have them addressed safely and a concern about the undermining of the employment conditions of workers around the country through the overuse of temporary contract and labour hire workforces undercutting other workers. On that point I spoke with some workers from Vodafone earlier this week who were raising that concern with me directly—that they are in a very very uncertain position. A huge number of workers around the country fear that they are going to be losing their jobs that those jobs are going to be contracted out at reduced conditions and that vulnerable people will be left without support in our communities. Ultimately when I hear members from the Opposition describing unions as if they're kind of another form of drug dealer it really just does boggle my mind because the gap between the stories they must be hearing about the experiences of working people really struggling to be treated with dignity in their workplaces have safe work conditions be paid fairly and knowing that the unions often are the only mechanism that people have to be able to challenge those poor employment practices—it seems very strange to me that they would see that as a bad thing. However back to the point of this bill which originally sought to address two core problems: one to make sure that employees in the triangular employment relationship were able to take a personal grievance; and secondly to ensure that employees could access the same pay and conditions as direct employees. So the intent of that was really—the second point was to be able to address this kind of drive to the bottom in employment conditions that we have been experiencing around the country. We just hear terrible stories and there was a case that led preceding this of some workers in a triangular employment relationship who had been working for years over 60-hour weeks without any holidays without any ACC coverage without sick leave or holidays or KiwiSaver—extraordinary. It was some unscrupulous employers seeking to exploit the lack of clarity in terms of that relationship and it was good that the courts redressed that.But that gave an example of what this bill was initially intended to address: it was to remove that incentive for exploitation that exists through the lack of clarity and the ability to underpay people in this relationship compared to permanent employees. However through the select committee process the submissions it was discovered that the form of this bill wasn't the best mechanism for addressing that concern that the complexity would be very hard to manage especially with people potentially having multiple assignments there being multiple unions across different workplaces or multiple collectives. So it wasn't manageable and was removed from this piece of legislation.I will say though that this is outstanding work that needs to be done. We have I believe a responsibility in this House to lift people up in this country and ensure that they are safe at work that they are properly paid for the work that they do and I take some encouragement from the work that's been started around the fair pay agreements as an ability to address that problem—that this bill sought to set some standards across industries through enabling people to access collective agreements. So that would have just been in a workplace. But our fair pay agreements give us the ability to do that right across industries and I think that is even better. So I am looking forward to that work progressing.I will also note that the Holidays Act Working Group that's going on at the moment with employers and unions—and I understand that those are very constructive relationships unlike the impression the National Party may give. It's amazing how often that business manages to work successfully with unions to resolve recognised problems. So that is also an area where people in more precarious employment have struggled to access their full entitlements as they've been intended by legislation and so that is another piece of that puzzle to make sure that working people in this country are treated fairly.I do also just want to note that the changes around the personal grievances that the FIRST Union who—we've heard from the other side that this was just a recruitment exercise for unions and that unions can't access these workers. Actually FIRST Union represents a lot of workers in these arrangements and they've brought to our attention a real concern around the prevalence of sexual harassment for workers in this triangular relationship. I think it's incredibly important that those workers have access to the same pathways for redress against the harassment as people in permanent employment. They should have rights to a personal grievance as they should have access to the Human Rights Commission to lay complaints and the Health and Safety at Work Act to ensure their safety in the workplace. This legislation gives them that right to access a personal grievance approach and I hope that that will help strengthen their protection in the workplace—that these employers who may be a bit dodgy will actually now realise that there's potential for consequences that they thought they were free from prior to this legislation. That is progress for the people of this country and the Greens are happy to support it.