Key John: Employment Relations Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Key John: Employment Relations Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:16155] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 It is with pleasure I talk on behalf of the National Party on Part 3. Despite the Minister’s rather dismissive view that Parliament would have no interest in this part I will make this prediction: not only does Parliament have an interest in this part tonight but Parliament will have an ongoing interest in it for quite some time. I make the prediction that the whole bill is nothing more than a nationwide recruitment drive for the unions. This is just part of the whole clandestine activity that will take place whereby unions will organise very important health and safety training courses that are secretly approved by the Minister on some sort of communications device. 
If the training courses had to be gazetted then there would be a clear and an easy track for someone to follow. But this will be the great line: “I’m off to a health and safety employment course.” When the employee is asked why he or she is going the employee will reply: “Because I heard it on the radio. It was a party-political broadcast brought to us by the Minister of Labour Paul Swain. I heard it on the radio.” “Swainy and boys” will invite employees to a health and safety training course to listen to how to improve health and safety. That will be great will it not? How many people record the radio when they are listening to it? If an employer says to an employee: “Can you just show me where you actually heard that?” the employee will reply: “I heard on the radio that ‘Swainy and the boys’ are having a cup of tea and a health and safety course. It happens to be at 2 o’clock tomorrow afternoon just before the running of the Melbourne Cup so why don’t we go down and have a listen?” That is the kind of clandestine behaviour that we can expect. 
The Minister said that there would not be much activity. He said that there has not been much discussion of this part and there would not be much discussion of it tonight. I make the prediction that not only will there be discussion tonight but that this part will be the subject of many parliamentary questions on behalf of the Opposition going forward. We want to know how many courses the Minister will send New Zealanders on. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: Listen to the radio. 
JOHN KEY 
: We will be listening to the radio looking at the  
New Zealand Gazette 
 and searching the Internet. We will be searching and included in our favourite sites will be: “Health and safety employment courses brought to employees by ‘Swainy and the boys’.” We will look at that sort of activity. 
This is very very concerning behaviour. Earlier tonight my colleague the Hon Roger Sowry came to the Committee and much to my surprise he announced that a press release had been put out sometime earlier this evening I think in conjunction with the Minister stating that $1 million is to be put aside for work in this area—that is $1 million will be available to the unions. I wonder how much of that $1 million will go towards radio advertising gazetting and the running of health and safety training courses. Maybe the Minister may want to take a call to tell the Committee how many courses will be run. The next question the Minister may want to answer is what that will do to the productivity of New Zealand. Not very long ago this Government was telling New Zealanders that we would get back into the top half of the OECD by 2011. We will be in the top half of the OECD for the number of health and safety training courses attended by workers in New Zealand. I have no doubt that we will be in the top half of the OECD for that. If “Swainy and the boys” set up some sort of private company we could be in there very very quickly but we will not be back in the top half of the OECD. 
I bow to Mr Brown’s knowledge. He is the most knowledgable member about the waterfront in New Zealand and our shipping industry. Earlier on he said we should not be frightened of unions. I am a young man; I am younger than I look. I am only 43 years of age and I remember seeing on television on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve hundreds of cars at Picton that could not get on the inter-island ferries because of the strikes for chocolate biscuits. Now the issue will not be chocolate biscuits; it will be training courses.