Logie Jan: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 08 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6365. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call on this the first reading of the Employment Standards Legislation Bill on which my colleague Denise Roche has already outlined the Green Party’s position in some detail. So I would like to confine my contribution to looking at two particular aspects of the bill: first paid parental leave and secondly the zero-hour contracts aspects of the bill.Sadly the Greens as has already been stated cannot support the bill in the state it is in at the moment. I noticed that the member who has just sat down Andrew Bayly said that this bill is proof that the Government is aware of what is happening in our communities and in our workplaces and that National is the party to respond—to paraphrase his contribution. Well I would suggest that the zero-hour contract aspects of this bill are proof that this Government takes only superficial notice of what is happening in our communities that it is playing the numbers and that it is operating by focus group without any real consideration of the lives and the needs and the precarious state of many people’s lives in this country at the moment. That is at the heart of why we cannot support this bill as it is at the moment.The Council of Trade Unions has concerns that this bill will actually legalise zero-hour contracts whereas at the moment employers are actually taking legal risks using zero-hour contracts because they are not in our law and they are open to challenge. What this bill does is it puts them on a firm footing to enable employers to engage in those contracts. Sure the Government will say that it is about negotiation and we heard that again through the health and safety legislation—this absolute unwillingness to listen to people in the communities about that power differential and about how so many people in these jobs just feel completely unable to negotiate because they feel as if all of their hours and their wages are on the line if they complain and if they stand up for something. So people are being told that they should be grateful for work and they are acting as if they are because they are so worried about losing their jobs.I was speaking today with some workers who were saying that they are in full-time employment and that that now equates to 32 hours a week. They are earning what is now considered by many sadly to be a decent wage of $16.50 an hour. That is $27000 a year. They are having to feed their families and support their families on $27000 a year—on a full-time above - minimum wage salary or wage. This bill refers to people who are not even in that situation who cannot even be sure that they are going to have 10 hours of work a week who are still having to pay the rent and who are still having to try to put food on the table and feed themselves and send their kids to school. They deserve more certainty than that. The Government is suggesting that it is aware of what is happening and that it is listening and responding yet it comes back with a bill that actually entrenches in law the ability of employers to do that—for these people to have to work multiple jobs and not even be sure from one week to the next how they are going to pay their rent. I think that proves that you are not listening National members because that is not what our country needs.Those workers were telling us today when I asked them what their dreams were that they have had to put their dreams in a cupboard because they are so focused on surviving and on being able to put food on the table. This is an opportunity to have some aspiration for people in this country to enable them to have the very basic aspirations for themselves and to get their dreams back and this bill is a failure. It fails to give people any certainty. It onlygives employers a bit more certainty and that is not balanced that is not being aware and that is not what this country needs. Therefore at this stage we cannot support this bill.