Power Simon: State Sector Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Power Simon: State Sector Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:610;Page:7310] 
SIMON POWER (NZ National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I wish to follow the Minister’s comments and address some of the concerns raised by my colleague the MP for Coromandel Sandra Goudie and to get a little more specific about why the title to this bill—the State Sector Amendment Bill—does not reflect the actual position that is being stated. 
This bill effectively exempts public sector organisations from a series of rules that apply to the way private sector organisations are restructured or if different companies within a parent company are transferring employees from company to company or entity to entity within an umbrellaed company structure. There is no way that private sector organisations would get away with trying to pull the stunt that the Minister is trying to pull while sitting in that chair and promoting this bill. Because of the facts surrounding Christine Rankin’s removal from Work and Income New Zealand the Minister is trying by promoting this ill-conceived State Sector Amendment Bill to exempt the Government from the very provisions it put in place under the Employment Relations Act and the very provisions that members on this side of the House told the Government would occur in exactly this type of situation. 
I cannot believe for one moment that the Minister in the chair could seriously want members of this House to deprive employees and workers of their rights to claim redundancy entitlements because they happened to work in the public sector and decide that the public sector needs to be reformed in a way that makes its entitlements different from those available in the private sector. How can United Future members sit there and allow two standards of redundancy compensation to apply—the difference between private and public sector—and sanction the removal of redundancy provisions in the public sector because this Minister took his time some months ago to remove Christine Rankin from a position in Work and Income and was required to legislate that restructuring in a way that avoided the provisions of the Employment Relations Act? That is why this bill should not be called the State Sector Amendment Bill but the “Trevor Mallard Exemption to the Employment Relations Act Bill”. 
That is a serious concern and it is a double standard when one considers that if in the private sector two entities both owned by the same parent company were to undergo the transfer of employees from one company in a structure to another company in a structure this Government would be crying foul if those employees were prevented from bringing technical redundancy cases. This Minister should get to his feet and explain why Parliament should pass legislation that devolves from those employees the rights they are entitled to under legislation promoted and passed by this Government in the last term. 
This bill should be renamed the “Double Standards for Redundancy in the Public Sector (To Get Us Out of a Tight Spot With Christine Rankin) Bill”. It is unacceptable for the Committee and in particular United Future to sanction such a differentiation between public sector and private sector employees. It is being done in a way that seems unprincipled and is nothing short of desperate retrospective legislation to get this Minister out of the tight spot he created by supporting the passing of the Employment Relations Act through the House in the last parliamentary term. These are serious legal questions and that Minister should get to his feet and answer them.