Woodhouse Michael: Employment Relations (Probationary Period Repeal) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Woodhouse Michael: Employment Relations (Probationary Period Repeal) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:665;Page:13039] 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 There is a great scene in the Monty Python movie  
Life of Brian 
. It starts—do members remember—with the question: “What have the Romans ever done for us?”. A few things are named—the aqueducts sanitation roads irrigation medicine wine and public baths—but the question is asked: “What have the Romans ever done for us?”. That is pretty much what we have heard from the Labour Opposition members with all these questions about the Government and whether there is a plan; they cannot see the wood from the trees. The list is so long that I do not have time to go through it. Those members are either asleep at the wheel or they truly believe there is one big lever that we can pull. In fact they would believe that because they spent 9 years pulling two large levers: tax and spend. 
But we know that there is not a big lever to pull; it is about things like cycleways oil and gas exploration lower taxes increasing free-trade agreements and it is certainly about moderate changes to our labour laws. One would think that every worker had been chained up and sent to the salt mines when very moderate changes were announced such was the over-the-top reaction from our friends on the left. 
But amongst the din of disgust there was one voice of left-wing reason. That voice said: “I don’t have huge objections to these changes affecting the fourth week of a holiday as long as the decision is freely arrived at by the worker and the worker is not pressured into it. If somebody chooses to do that I am quite relaxed about it.” Who said that? It was the Leader of the Opposition Phil Goff—a lone voice of reason while the rest of the Labour Opposition were so happy to jump on the bandwagon and flog what were very moderate proposed changes. They said when the 90-day legislation came in that they would name and shame. They have had opportunity after opportunity. Miss Fenton told us terribly sad stories but not a single workplace has been named by a single member of the Opposition. 
I want members of the Opposition to take a call to say why they think so little of the workers of New Zealand why they cannot be trusted to make up their own minds about trading in the fourth week of their holiday or why they do not want to give workers a chance—the marginalised workers the immigrants who are saying “give us a go”—because that is what the flexibility of the 90-day probation period gives us. Better still why do Labour members not dust off their bus? Do members remember the bus that had “Axe the Tax” written on it—the tax that they would not commit to axing? Why do they not get the bus out get out their guitars and sing their “Ging Gang Goolie” songs all the way to the vineyards of Marlborough the electrical companies of Christchurch the salmon farms of the Mackenzie and the biotech companies in Dunedin and say why they are so down on employees? Why will they not give hard-working workers a chance to say “give me a go”? Better still they could take the bus all the way to Tiwai to the aluminium smelter and tell the 725 workers there who are not members of the union who contribute hundreds of millions of dollars into the Southland economy whose workplace health and safety record is as good as it gets in that industry and whose electricity is almost entirely renewable why they are so down on employees. 
There is a plan. It is about having flexible labour law it is about less regulation and it is about enabling employees to enjoy tax cuts that leave 82c in every dollar in the pockets of 73 percent of workers. 
Darien Fenton 
: What’s the plan? 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: Can members hear them; they are still asking “What’s the plan? Where’s the plan?”. They are too busy yelling and nobody is listening. It is about those things. It is about lots of little things and it is definitely about giving employees a chance to be flexible—a chance that is given in 29 out of 30 countries in the OECD many of which are run by left-wing Governments. I think that is not a bad model to follow.