Bayly Andrew: Minimum Wage (Contractor Remuneration) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBayly Andrew: Minimum Wage (Contractor Remuneration) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5743. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): I am awake thank you! What a great opportunity to talk about the Minimum Wage (Contractor Remuneration) Amendment Bill. I think we all share the intent of this bill which is to try to look after the lower-paid members of our community. It is great from that perspective but I think the reality of this bill is that it is deficient in a number of ways and no doubt many of our colleagues have talked about this. What I find interesting is when you look at the amendments to section 2 inserted by clause 6 and the definition of “principal in relation to a specified person”—we need to get an explanation around clause 6 which sets out that the principal has to apply this in a situation and there are a number of specified services. Of course those are all set out in schedule 2. Many of those are fine and appropriate if you were to adopt that but the interesting exception is in the definition of “principal” “(b) does not acquire the services for the person’s personal domestic or household use or consumption.”For many this bill imposes a number of additional requirements primarily on the employer and what I just want to draw your attention to is new section 4B of the Act inserted by clause 7—I have read the bill. The four additional tests I think are not particularly pertinent and impose a much higher cost. First of all new section 4B states: “The following matters must be taken into account in establishing the actual rate of remuneration …”. The first of which is obviously “(a) the terms of the contract;”—that is fine. Second is: “(b) whether the principal and specified person have agreed on what is a reasonable amount of time …”. Third is: “(c) the information in the remuneration record [is] required to be kept under section 8B;”. And fourth is any other relevant information.For full-time employees you have a contract and if they are on a fixed basis all you would need do is to report in and make the necessary payments to the Inland Revenue Department. What this bill does is actually take the information requirements a whole lot further for those who would normally be regarded as casual employees. I am not saying that they are less important but it just seems perverse that we end up imposing a much higher information requirement on employers to keep track of it. It is almost like the proponents behind this bill want to make sure that we have got a really good wrap around our employers because the underlying assumption which I do not believe in is in my view that it is almost as though we do not trust any employer who employs someone on a contract basis. I do not think that is correct in today’s environment. There are of course poor employers but that assumption which I think pervades this bill is actually inappropriate.The other thing is that clause 11 which inserts new section 8B goes on about additional records to be kept. It talks about the name of the specified person the postal address kind of service the hours if remuneration payable at intervals the hours in relation to each interval the remuneration paid to the specified person for the service and the method of calculation and any other particulars. Again it is getting into a level of detail that is simply not relevant and is probably inappropriate. I think in the end what we are trying to achieve with this is that we want to make sure that contractors who are legitimately employed by employers are not exploited. That is first above anything. Of course that is covered by their normal employment laws we already have in place. But the requirement to be overly prescriptive around how we employ these younger people—and I note that the bill proposes that that reduces down to age 16 and over—is in my view just totally inappropriate.What we really want to end up with is a fair exchange between an employer and an employee. We do not want to clutter it. We do not want to actually create a disincentive for employers to actually employ these types of people. I think on that basis that this bill is inappropriate and actually probably out of date given all the substantial changes we have made to employment law in recent periods. So on that basis I oppose the bill.