White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you Mr Speaker. I too was an employment lawyer for 25 years and I would agree with my colleague that what you'll see out of this is actually a real issue of disconnect between the object of the principal Act which recognises the inherent inequality of power between an employer and employee and the law that is about to be passed in this country the Employment Relations (Trial Periods) Amendment Bill.Now I was listening to a woman recently called Claudia Goldin—she won the Nobel Prize for her work on the pay gap—and it was a very interesting discussion. I'd urge you to look at that work if you really want to work on bettering the lot of New Zealanders. I'd love it if the Government MPs would actually look at that work because it's science based. It's all based on her work as an economist. She has looked at the things that make a difference in people's lives and she's done it quite dispassionately. She said that there was a difference between people who look at the world as historians and people who look at it as economists. I did a history degree and so I look at the problem before us and the piece of legislation before us partly through a historic lens. The reason she says that that's different is she says the economists look at things in terms of markets and that the historians look at things in terms of power imbalance which is interesting because it comes up in this situation. So I look at the world differently from many people in this room who would look at it in the market view. But the issue with markets which is effectively systems is that this doesn't really hold up under either form of scrutiny in my opinion and I want to explain why.The historic lens that I take to this is that I've always been aware that there are major issues with power imbalance and I can see that in the work I've done as an employment lawyer. Really in the early days I was involved just as we had awards etc. and we had some form of collective representation. Then the world changed and we ended up in the Employment Contracts Act where that was stripped away completely and people were treated in an atomised way. I worked under that and I found it really really hard because in these situations where you put somebody into a position where they have very little power it's a very sunless world.We changed to an Act which recognised for the first time that power imbalance. That was the Employment Relations Act with part of that Act about objectives there fair and square before us holding us to account in terms of making sure that the things we did around employment—because employment is so important to the bread and butter of people's lives—were fair were actually reasonable and took into account the nature of human beings which is that there are power imbalances. I saw a change to trials for groups under 20 and I thought OK I can live with this." because what you've got in that situation is smaller employers who also are in a situation of less power than the big businesses. But this is a change that is all about giving the powerful more power. That's what effectively the Government are doing today taking our biggest entities taking our big powerful institutions and making them bigger. And we're making the workers who work in those situations who've just begun their employment much smaller and more vulnerable. That is what we are doing today.I want to explain how that works at a human level. I gave an example earlier in my speeches and I want to give you another one. Take a childcare worker. Take a childcare worker living in Mount Albert who has her kid at Kōwhai Intermediate another one at Mount Albert Grammar who's looking to this Government for a little bit of relief. They're renting and they're not earning a great deal of money. They might be earning $70000; that's not unreasonable. This Government promised them an easier run. It promised them in tough times they would get a tax cut and they would be better off. What they face instead is a situation where if they're working for a childcare company and now they move across to one of the big corporate childcare companies they're likely to go on a trial. Now we know that women's pay has been below men's and we know it's been that way for a while. Surely a Government would try and make it better. But that woman's going to be hesitant to move isn't she? Because she's now got further cost of living increases because her kids can't go into childcare. If she's got an under-2-year-old she's not going to get it. She's not going to get that free childcare subsidy and she's not going to get all the half-price transport which would have been possible for her children at Kōwhai and at Mount Albert Grammar. That's gone and instead she's got a decision to make: does she move to that job that pays a little bit more at the big corporate childcare centre? Does she do it? Because if she does it she'll be put on a trial period. Now I asked the Minister yesterday whether—as a thought she had had—perhaps we should make sure that such people are not constrained at the other end of the trial period by something called a restraint of trade—something I've seen a lot. I've seen it a lot with low-paid workers and I know it happens because the evidence tells us it happens and it happens to childcare workers. It happens to people like that. They can't just go and work down the road if they start with one of the big childcare companies because they're restrained.I asked the Minister to consider an amendment on that but no. No no; apparently that's an entirely different thing and doesn't count. If we had been in a select committee process I would have raised that as would other people and we would have ended up in a situation where perhaps we would have ended up with a little bit more balance. But there is no balance here because now this woman will be in a position where she has to decide: does she go to the new job at $5 extra which will feed her kids and pay for the bus fare and maybe pay for the childcare of her 2-year-old? Will she do that or will she not take that opportunity for career advancement? Will she stay where she is on less money because that's what she's got to do isn't it? She is not—let's bust this myth once for all—somebody who will be frightening to an employer and they'll have to take a chance. But is it possible they'll put her on the trial? Absolutely it's possible. She will be put in the most precarious situation possible.Now if something goes wrong in that time—and I raise the issue of maybe her kids getting sick. We know how important it is to the community that people feel secure enough that they're not going to get sacked if their kids are sick. But say she has a run of bad luck and those children get sick and she ends up in a situation with her employer who is concerned. They're not going to tell her. What they're going to do is what human nature does. People in power they don't engage in that situation. They tend to withdraw. They tend not to tell the childcare worker who is in that situation. They tend to just disengage. So she spends three months sweating it three months worrying about it and at the end of it just before the three months are up—because you take your time if you've got the power on your side don't you and you do it when it suits you—she's going to get terminated from her employment. Who is going to end up paying the bill? Because she'll be without work and that'll be next Christmas won't it? Thank you for that; happy Christmas!At that stage she will end up going to—guess who? To the very people that you're punishing people for going there. She will end up on a benefit. Guess who pays those benefits? We do. And guess who will be getting the profit from the switch in staff? The big Kindercare or the big organisation that sacked her. They will be pocketing the money. That money won't be with New Zealanders. That money will be—sure as eggs—overseas. And guess who will have paid for it? The mugs in the Government will have made the taxpayer pay for it.We can talk about competition we can talk about competence but if we do not scrutinise if we do not scrutinise new law if we do not put our thinking caps on if we do not read the latest people if we do not take advice—we are just arrogant and soulless if we do that. And if we do that we will end up in deep trouble in this country. We will end up with people who hurt. We will end up with people who are powerless and disengaged. Do you know where this starts? With a lack of capacity to empathise. There were some disturbing signs on the other side that some people think that this would never happen to them. Well it will happen to your children.I do not commend this bill to the House."