O'Connor Simon: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Simon: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11919. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):Thank you very much. It is important to rise and speak tonight. I want to acknowledge the previous speaker Andrew Little who has fallen into the continual trap of the Opposition: he spends a lot of time saying what National supposedly is talking about. National is not against the workers. National is not attacking the workers. We are not trying to keep the man down. This is not that Hegelian master and slave dynamic. That is always and only said—only said—by the Opposition about the National Party. We are a party committed to jobs to growth and to Kiwis who are prepared to be part of that growth agenda. So I am pleased to stand here and speak to the Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill and pleased to stand in opposition to this bill.I was standing in my office an hour or so ago and I was trying to get my head around why this bill had been put up by Ms Moroney and others. Why was redundancy such a major issue for members of the Labour Party? Then it dawned on me. It dawned on me that they are worried about David Shearer. They are actually compassionate empathetic people worried about the impending redundancy of David Shearer. They are wanting to make sure to assuage their consciences that when they put the knife in his back and push him out in the coming days or weeks they will be able to look after him—they will be able to look after him.Is it Iain Lees-Galloway on the redundancy issue? We have to worry there. Is that the issue of the day? Is it Ms Moroney? Is she concerned about the redundancy? For her to step away from whatever shadow policy she is involved with it needs at least 4 weeks’ support. We find very quickly I think the motive here. This is an attempt to assuage one’s Labour guilt around redundancy for the impending issues around their leader that we hear. They have all of a sudden gone incredibly quiet. We wonder which of the members across the way have already put their ladders down.One of the key things that ultimately comes out of this is a mind-set. It is a mind-set. We could summarise it like this from the Labour Party. It is very simplistic—very simplistic. Karl Marx would be pleased with it. It is the belief from the Labour Party that ultimately every employer is a crook. It is also a belief that every employee is an idiot. We know that neither of those two statements is true. We believe that employers and employees—Kiwis—can go around the bargaining table and have a conversation. We can stand on our own two feet be we an employer or an employee.The party in Opposition—and it is the reason it is in Opposition—does not believe that. If you listen to those members’ speeches in this House time and time again they are always about control. They are always about control. No one bar the Labour Party has the knowledge the insight and the great belief—no one other than the Labour Party—to make the decisions! The National Party stands here with a belief that Kiwis can stand on their own two feet and negotiate their contracts. They can negotiate around their own redundancy payments if they so choose as members I am sure on all sides of the House have done in their time.It is about choice. You see the Labour Party falls back again. It does not want choice. And why does it not want choice? Because it wants to make the choice for everybody else. This is that hands-on politics. This is the hands-on politics we heard from David Shearer and the Labour Party. And I have said it before. They want their hands on your wallet and around your neck. This is all about control.Also it lacks economic understanding. You see in a very basic way if a company a not-for-profit organisation any organisation or a small business is moving towards redundancy it means things ain’t good. Let us put it in very simple colloquial language. It ain’t good. It does not have the money for these sorts of dynamics. Why is it going under? I am not saying that it is the case in every situation but things ain’t good to use a bit of Kiwi colloquial-speak for the Opposition. So this bill is crazy at a number of levels.As Dr Calder pointed out earlier Labour had 9 long years to fix this but as I also noted as I began this speech I think I understand the motive. There is a lot of talk about making a certain leader of the Labour Party redundant and to assuage those members’ guilt they are willing to try to push this bill through to make the ending of David Shearer a little smoother.