Mackey Moana: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee Recommittal Third Reading 
Mackey Moana: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee Recommittal Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:456] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to take a call on clauses 1 and 2. We Labour members find ourselves in an extraordinary position: none of the many questions we put to the Minister in the chair last night—Kate Wilkinson—in the debate on Parts 1 and 2 have been answered. Those questions might have been answered had the Government allowed this bill to go to a select committee. If it had allowed the Opposition the media and the people of New Zealand to have their say on this bill then maybe we would not be demanding so many answers from the Minister of Labour who is ramming this bill through the House under urgency. 
She is ramming it through before Christmas although National said that it would not be put through before Christmas. This bill does not come into force until 1 April next year. There is no need for this rush. Rather than the Minister sitting there as though she has been struck deaf and mute all of a sudden she should get to her feet and answer some of our questions. It was her decision to ram it through and now she sits there as though somehow she has no obligation to the people of New Zealand despite drawing a quarter of a million dollars in salary from them. I think it is an absolute disgrace that the first acts of this new Government are to raise taxes for low-income families destroy their retirement income earnings and take away their rights at work in their first 90 days of employment. The Minister does not feel that that is important enough for her to get to her feet and answer some simple questions. 
I ask the Minister how she is going to police this legislation. How is she going to know the reason why someone was fired when employers do not have to give the worker they have just fired a reason? The Minister said she has put human rights protection in this bill. As my colleague Annette King raised how is she going to know that an employer who says “You look like you are not enjoying the job so off you go.” does not have a far nefarious reason at the back of his or her mind for letting that person go? What if an employee turned up to the staff Christmas party with a partner and the partner turned out to be of the same sex as the employee? The employer suddenly realises that the person he or she has hired is gay and does not like that so the employee is told “I’m sorry but you don’t fit in here. You don’t seem to be enjoying the work you are doing.” I seriously want the Minister to get to her feet and explain to the workers and the people of New Zealand how this bill will be policed. She has just opened a huge door to discrimination against many different groups in this country. She got up on her feet and talked about— 
Chris Tremain 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. We are dealing with the title part of the bill. I am asking that you ask the speakers over there who include a long-standing member of the House to actually speak to the title and to focus on the title part of the bill. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: There already are rulings about what people may speak to even when bills have been to select committees. Of course the Standing Orders changed in recent years; previously the title clause was taken at the start of the Committee stage and now it is taken at the end of the Committee stage. That is because the debate on the preliminary clause has become a summing up of what has gone before. There already are rulings that indicate that people speaking to these clauses may bring together what has been raised before. On top of that there are a range of Speakers’ rulings that where a bill has not been to a select committee and has not had the scrutiny of a select committee then the title debate and the preliminary clauses debate can be wider in scope than would otherwise have been the case. The effect of those two combined sets of rulings is that the preliminary clause debate in the Committee stage is a fairly broad debate where one can cover the scope of the debate and of the bill. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Thank you. The point is made that people should be speaking to the title and the commencement date. In normal circumstances one would expect that debate to be a relatively narrow debate. I accept the submission of Dr Michael Cullen that in these circumstances the Chair should be slightly more lenient than would otherwise be the case. But I encourage members to focus on the title the commencement and the summing up aspect because this is the last time the House in Committee will have the opportunity to speak on this bill. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: For the peace of mind of Mr Chris Tremain how about this: given that employers do not have to give any reason maybe we should call the bill the “It’s Not You It’s Me Bill”. Maybe that would be an adequate description because workers are not going to have any idea why they have been fired. 
The Minister in the chair in one of her speeches in the first or second reading said how great this legislation would be for young people starting out on their working lives as if they should be grateful for it. I ask the Minister in the chair how they will know what they have done wrong if employers do not have to put down their expectations of the job before those young people start and do not have to tell them why they were fired. What will that mean for those young workers when they go to their next job and the employer asks them what their last job was and why they left? What are they going to say? Do they say that they do not know because there is a law in this country that says that employers do not have to tell employees why they are being fired? It could have been because the employers did not like the colour of their skin. It could have been because the employers did not like who the employees were married to. It could have been for a perfectly legitimate reason but the employees do not know. 
Hon Member 
: Vote Labour. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: It could have been because that person votes Labour. It could have been because he or she is a member of the union. It could have been because the employee was organising staff members of the workplace to join the union. The employee just does not know because the Minister has deliberately drafted this legislation so that the employee does not have to be told the reason why he or she was fired. 
The second question I have for the Minister is why she has told two stories to the public on this bill. She went out and said that the public did not need to be worried about this legislation because it is not Wayne Mapp’s bill; it is a different bill. But in this House she said that it did not need to go to a select committee because it is Wayne Mapp’s bill. I want to know which one of those two stories is true and therefore which one of those two stories she was misleading the public with.