Franks Stephen: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2) Human Rights Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Franks Stephen: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2) Human Rights Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
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STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party to debate in this third reading the final stage of the three bills that came out of the employment relations amendment package: the Human Rights Amendment Bill the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2) which is a very small one and the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2). 
Listening to debates on labour legislation is always painful because we literally have to listen to fools—people who reason from their intentions and their wishes but not from the way people actually work and from what actually happens. We have seen an explosion of lawyers in this area. When I started legal practice I do not think that the relations between employers and employees were noticeably any worse than they are now—in fact relations were possibly better than now—but the notion that any lawyer could make a living out of employment law would have been just unbelievable. There might have been a couple of academics and a few people who practised before the Arbitration Court. 
This bill is a guarantee of profits in boarding school fees for generations of lawyers. I think it was Dr Mapp who said that this is a Government that has been so badly burned by the vague statements in law like Te Ture Whenua Maori Act and the treaty principles yet it would then go and stick into employment relations law—which affects even more people—phrases no less probably more stupidly vague and deliberately ambiguous. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Including treaty clauses. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: I have just been scanning the legislation. I have not come across it but if the member can tell me where it is I would like to have a look at it. The equivalent of the treaty clauses is the “good faith” clauses. They sound as vague and silly as the treaty clauses that the Government has been sprinkling into legislation. As has been mentioned the Government has decided to introduce what is effectively compulsory unionism at least as far as the workers who object to unions—because they think they are a waste of money—are concerned. The bargaining fee arrangement means the union can have the best of all possible worlds for a lazy interfering union official. They can get paid by people who do not want to join the union and they do not have the bother of those people having votes. They can have this arrangement where they might have only 10 percent of the workforce. They can collect the fees and they do not have to provide any service. It is a perfect outcome. 
Of course the Government probably likes that too because not having to provide the service means there is more surplus left for these people to devote to their political campaigning. It would allow unions as the Engineers Union did in the last election to put up billboards that walk carefully around the electoral law restrictions on election spending. They use money supplied by members—many of whom no doubt would find that they absolutely detest the policies of the Government particularly in relation to its politically correct areas and treaty law. These people whether or not they wanted to funded the Labour Party’s political campaign. The bargaining fee arrangement is plainly a thank you and a promise that enables the union movement to fund more contributions to the Labour Party for the next campaign. 
Nobody else in this discussion has addressed the effect of the amendment to the Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Amendment Bill that came out of the select committee process inserts new section 79A in the Human Rights Act. It provides that employees get a choice. Where they have something they can dress up as a human rights complaint they get a choice of taking it through employment grievance procedures or to the Human Rights Review Tribunal or to the Human Rights Commission. As far as I can see the committee did not think that was a very significant change but employers ought to think about just what that means. The Human Rights Review Tribunal is the body that decided that one of New Zealand’s most vicious criminals deserved $1200 for his hurt feelings when the prison service omitted to supply him with a copy of a letter from one of his victims or a letter from the father of one of his victims complaining about or setting out the damage that criminal had done to his daughter. 
Taking a complaint to the Human Rights Review Tribunal will now be a choice—one or the other—for an employee under the Act. The employer has no right to object. The employer cannot insist that it go even to the discredited processes of employment law and to that court that mock court—the Employment Court—which does not apply law but instead applies the political and ideological preferences of the judges of the day as they allocate what they consider to be the right distribution of rewards for business and for enterprise to the people they consider the subject of unequal bargaining power. 
To give employees the right to elect to go to the Human Rights Review Tribunal illustrates how unrealistic this Government is. The whole Human Rights Act jurisdiction is inflated by a body that is absolutely determined to turn every possible area of conduct that it can reach into a matter for judges and lawyers to finally decide. It is a body that does not believe there is anywhere that the law should not touch—that there are things that are just matters of good manners of ethics of custom of morality that the law should avoid. It is a body that does not understand the wisdom in saying that there cannot be a remedy for every wrong; that for many things it is simply spilt milk—get over it and go and find a better relationship. Instead that body assisted by this part of this bill can now hold out the false promise to employees of a remedy for every grievance. In this case harassment—sexual harassment and racial harassment are expressly mentioned—but any ground of complaint under the Human Rights Act whether fanciful or bogus can be taken through the Human Rights Review Tribunal process. As I mentioned that is the body that had such deep wisdom that it thought the hurt feelings of a vicious criminal were worth ordering compensation for. 
The employment relations fiddling that we are seeing is characteristic of a Government comprised of people who have never paid anyone out of their own money. This is a bill that is designed—allegedly by “Swainy and the boys” although I think it was actually “Swainy’s” predecessor but he has loyally marketed it—to ensure that the unions got a little closer to what they thought they got 4 years ago when the Employment Relations Bill went through. The Minister now for example gets a chance to gazette safety courses without having to put them in the  
Gazette 
. 
These bogus safety issues and courses are a monstrous waste of money. They are another part of the victim culture the Government is encouraging throughout New Zealand where people do not take responsibility for their own actions or for their own conduct. They always are encouraged to feel that someone somewhere is always to blame if there is an accident or a problem. Of course they are a godsend to a union when safety can be used as a trump card in negotiations where nothing else will do. The union can claim that failure to comply with the detailed requirements of safety is enough to bring a shop out or to bring down an employer who has been a little bit recalcitrant. The principles of good-faith bargaining do not apply and can be set aside because who will dare to go against the safety god—that trump card that is so often used when people do not want to argue the merits but instead want to bring in an argument that is incontrovertible as far as the PC mob goes. This bill is a bad bill and ACT will be voting against it.