Seymour David: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionSeymour David: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 03 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9408. Text is subject to correction.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this bill and I want to address my comments largely towards the paid parental leave part—a part that I am particularly proud of—but I also want to make a few comments about employment law and some of the speeches that we have heard more generally.My first job was working at TDC Sawmills in Whangarei 60 hours a week—40 hours during the daytime and 20 hours at night for $7.50 an hour pulling 12-inch by 2-inch boards six metres long. I doubt that many of the members on the other side of the House have ever worked that hard particularly those who attended King’s College. One of the interesting things I learnt from talking to my colleagues there was that the only thing that improves the condition of the working man or woman is not this House making statutes to ban a particular arrangement and take away their options. The only thing that helps is the offer of a better job somewhere else—that is employers competing to offer higher-productivity jobs to people with growing amounts of skill.In the time I worked there I saw a number of people move on and take exactly those options. Sadly from the tone of the rhetoric that we have heard in this House this afternoon and throughout this debate what we have discovered is that this House puts in place many many restrictions on the contracts that people can be entering into. And make no mistake those restrictions do not make the working person any better off because every time we put a restriction on the contracts into which people can enter under employment law all we do is make people ever more cautious about being willing to enter into those contracts in the first place.The people who want more and more restrictions on employment law contracts—well typically they themselves have never gone out into the market place and tried to hire good people. They have never stayed up at night doing their compliance trying to find enough money to pay the wages bill paying their workers and then paying themselves—only if there is enough left over for the employer. That is the reality for many New Zealanders particularly in small businesses which has not been heard tonight. As this House once again moves to tighten up employment law it does no favours for the employer and ultimately no favours for the employee because you cannot legislate better jobs you can only ban certain employment arrangements.I want to turn to a particular clause in this bill that as we heard from Sue Moroney I have had something to do with which is paid parental leave. I believe very strongly that the role of the State as a provider of social insurance is extremely important but it should be offering insurance against unexpected outcomes. For the overwhelming majority of us having children is not an unexpected outcome. Having a baby born pre-term—that is an unexpected outcome and that is something that I believe the State should offer compensation for to help people through that time.The provisions that I have helped negotiate in this bill as we heard earlier from Sue Moroney say that if you have a pre-term baby you will be able to receive additional paid parental leave to the extent that that baby is born earlier than the expected 36 weeks. That is a compassionate welfare State addressing truly unexpected outcomes which I support. I do not support the relentless extension of paid parental leave which amounts to a massive wealth transfer for mainly political purposes.None the less I am proud of what the ACT Party has done to improve this bill. I would like to thank the honourable Minister Woodhouse for the role he has played and also Sue Moroney for her passionate advocacy throughout the process of forming this bill to date.