Rich Katherine: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Rich Katherine: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:5089] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 I am very interested in the Minister Ruth Dyson’s passing comments about vulnerable workers because section 69E(5) in clause 4 of this bill talks about airport workers cleaners and food workers being vulnerable workers. But if a Thai tiler is paid less than the average wage to tile someone’s house somehow that person is not a vulnerable worker but a professional person who is able to establish whether he or she enters into a contract. A lot of the comments that we have just heard about vulnerable workers do not ring true when day after day we have seen the Minister defend the indefensible in terms of the treatment of those particular workers. She can dance on the head of a pin all she likes but it does not look good. 
We are talking about the commencement date in this part of the debate. The Minister has just outlined some changes to certain parts of the commencement date for certain provisions and that is just another indication that this bill was not properly drafted in the first place. We have seen time after time this Parliament being asked to turn back to the Employment Relations Act of 2000 to amend it—not just once or twice. I heard before that it has been amended 14 times. These last-minute changes to the commencement date just show the lack of rigour that has been used in the development of the Government’s legislation. 
Most of the small cleaning businesses I have spoken to would say that regardless of when the commencement date is it does not matter to them one iota—they do not want any commencement date. They do not want to be put in a position where they fall heir to somebody else’s shoddy workers. Usually cleaning contracts change hands because the cleaning is substandard—as we saw in the Dunedin kindergartens. Those kindergartens were so badly cleaned that in some cases the management considered closing them because it had received parental complaints and some teachers were concerned about the safety of children in those kindergartens. Well that is not good enough. I do not think that putting this bill which is nothing more than a vendetta against small business before the House is good enough. 
Clause 2 “Commencement” states: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” Most small businesses I have spoken to think that is far too soon. Some of the provisions might be coming in some 3 months later but what this legislation does—regardless of the commencement date—is to impose a bigger compliance cost on some of those mum and dad operations than any other regulation the Government has brought in. 
Lianne Dalziel stood in the House today and said that the Government is business-friendly. Well nobody believes that because on the one hand she is trying to make warm fuzzy comments to business and on the other the Government is bringing in laws like this one which make it harder not easier for business people to conduct their business. These people are not wealthy individuals; they are small-business operators—mum and dad operations—which in most cases earn no more than $20 an hour. But they go out and they do the cleaning. They clean our schools our kindergartens our offices and other businesses and they do it to put bread and butter on the table for their kids and their families. This Government is making it harder not easier for those people to do that. 
So although we can sit here and have an academic argument about the commencement date out there in real-life land businesses do not want it at all. The Government should be ashamed of this legislation because this is where ideology does not match common sense. What the Government is doing—making small businesses fall heir to shonky workmanship—does not make sense. Those contracts change hands largely because of the quality of the cleaning or the quality of the food. One of the examples in this bill is that of food workers in retirement homes. Well if the food is horrible day in day out in a retirement home why should that contract continue? Why should that retirement home be forced to keep that contract in place even after it has been terminated? The Government should be ashamed of itself—forcing old people in retirement homes to eat rubbishy food.