Bennett Paula: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Bennett Paula: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 I rise to speak about the Employment Relations Amendment Bill and I would like it to be noted that this is the 15th amendment this Government has had to put through on the Employment Relations Act which was rushed through in the year 2000. The Government was keen to rush that measure through at that time but from talking to businesses in the uproar that happened I know that businesses spoke loudly and said no they could not have it go through. They said it would be detrimental to businesses detrimental to productivity and detrimental to what they were trying to do. 
For once Labour actually backed off because the polls started to go down and as we know that is completely and utterly how Labour is run. Labour is not run on the basis of principle or on what it is trying to achieve; it is run purely on what the polls say that day. So Labour backed off and said that it would not put this measure through. But now here it is a few years later deciding that it will not listen to businesses. Labour does not particularly care about productivity so it is trying to put this bill through now even after hearing time and time again of the effects it could have on small businesses in particular. 
I suppose this is an opportunity for me to speak on behalf of my colleague David Bennett who tried to put through an amendment that would have helped 2300 cleaning businesses. We have been hearing about vulnerable workers—and no one denies them their rights—but how about vulnerable businesses? How about those people who get up on a daily basis and struggle? How about the family-owned businesses—the very cleaners whom we were just hearing about—who have taken a bit of a risk and a gamble and who have taken on the contract themselves? They are not big businesses; they are not making a lot of money. But they are working for themselves and their families and they are going out there every night just as the other cleaners are. 
No one denies those people the opportunity to try to grow their business a little and perhaps to take on another contract. Yet under this legislation they will have to employ the workers from the previous contract. It is as simple as that. So a family business that wishes to employ its family members will not be able to employ them—and that is just wrong. During the select committee process the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee certainly heard from cleaners and we certainly heard from people who work for health boards as Mark Gosche the previous speaker said. No one in that room was without sympathy for what those employees had been through with six different employers and their working conditions being changed. We were pretty keen to see those wrongs put right. But when a big stick is taken to fix a very narrow problem that affects detrimentally many other businesses. How can that be good for New Zealand? How can that be good for the people whom we are telling to get out there and give things a go? 
Why would cleaners in one of those businesses actually take a bit of a gamble and put in for a contract themselves? Why would people get a bit gutsy and think of actually putting themselves out there trying to do something taking a risk and taking the next step when all that will happen is that they will be kicked down by this legislation and this Government? This Government tells people there is no point in their doing that because they will not to be able to employ whom they want anyway. They will not be able to run their business in the way that they wish to because the Government is Big Brother—Big Sister—and it knows what is best for them. This legislation will not work. 
I think we need to look back at the amendments to the principal Act and at what has happened since 2000 when it was passed. The effect of the Holidays Act has been to have businesses shaking in their boots. A survey showed that 74 percent of them said the Holidays Act has drastically increased their costs. Yet here we go putting through another amendment that will just make the situation worse for them. The Otago District Health Board for example said it had a $520000 increase in wages and employment costs last year. That $520000 did not go directly to the patients who needed it. It did not even go into the workers’ pockets necessarily. It merely went into the bureaucracy of running the health board and the provisions of the Holidays Act. Air New Zealand is another example. It said it had to put another $17 million into its costs with no hint of productivity increases at all. The Meat Industry Association said that 39 percent increases in sick leave and $17 million more on the bottom line mean the industry cannot employ more people cannot increase wages and cannot support the very workers whom this Government goes on about. 
How can this Government talk about productivity when there has been a 550 percent increase in lost workdays in the last 12 months? Over 32000 person-days of work have been lost because of industrial action. How is that an increase in productivity? I ask the Labour Government how that is good for New Zealand. How are we looking ahead and joining people together to negotiate and come up with answers that work in the best interests of New Zealand? That is the only way we can start to grow. It is the only way we can increase productivity and see New Zealand take the next step which it can do because it has the guts and the right people to do so. It is only mindless legislation that currently holds New Zealand back. 
How can we increase productivity? We can do that by joining people together instead of constantly segregating them under the legislation that we enact. We can say to employers and employees that they both have something invested in seeing a business go ahead. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: A win-win. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: It is a win-win for everyone. If productivity grows wages go up and there are more holidays. We cross over. But instead the Government is pitting one against the other. It is making it nigh to impossible for small businesses to get ahead and accomplish what they want to do for the workers out there. It constantly says to them through legislation like this that it will make their work more and more difficult. 
Another piece of legislation that we are looking at at the moment covers the youth minimum wage. There is a strong argument for increasing it when we hear about youth workers one aged 18 and the other aged 17 who stand next to each other while working together in fast-food chains doing the same work yet being paid different minimum wages. I sat there and by crikey my own head was nodding—I heard the argument from the young people and it was a strong one. Then I sat back and started to think about the issue. I thought about who would be most affected by increasing the minimum wage. Yet again it would be our small businesses. 
Yet again it would be the mechanic who works in Timaru who does not have a huge workforce and does not make a lot of profit and who takes on a couple of 16-year-olds from the local school. Quite frankly they do not help productivity; they do not make him any money. But he wants to employ them for the sake of his community and because he wants to help out the kids at school by giving them a part-time job. So he does pay the minimum wage. But actually that works for everyone. The kids are happy about it because they get the chance to find out whether they like the work and want to be a mechanic. At the end of it there is a good chance that they will get an apprenticeship. The mechanic says he will no longer be able to employ them because it is just too hard for him to do so. He says he keeps being hit time and time again with added costs with added bureaucracy and with compliance issues that he just cannot cope with. 
Let me take the example of the hairdresser down the road who takes on a couple of girls after school—and they usually are girls just as mechanics are usually boys—and on a Saturday morning. During the process of looking at this bill the hairdresser rang and said she could not continue to employ those girls. She does not make any money from them and she is not going home every week with wads of cash in her pocket. Things are getting harder and harder for her and she is not able to keep them on. So we can look at those examples. 
Is there room for some of these changes in big business? Yes but do we constantly have to legislate and bang down on the small businesses that without a doubt are the backbone of our country? We are constantly making it too difficult for those people to achieve what we need them to achieve in order to see New Zealand continue to be the absolutely fantastic country that it is. 
I hope that in some respects this is it. I accept we ain’t got the numbers to see this bill not go through the House today and that Labour has done its work with New Zealand First and has that party on board. But I just ask the Government to stop—15 amendments is enough. I ask it to let small-business people have a go at getting on with what they do—which is running their businesses—and to stop changing stuff and making things more difficult for them.