Mallard Trevor: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:665;Page:13308] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 It will not surprise the Government to know that the Labour Opposition will be opposing the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) and that we will be committing to repeal the most offensive parts of this legislation at the earliest possible opportunity. This bill is an attack on the rights and wages of wage and salary earners. It is part of an attempt by this Government to run down the wages and conditions of those people who work for a living in New Zealand. The legislation is very uneven and it makes vulnerable workers vulnerable wage and salary earners more and more vulnerable. 
Paul Quinn 
: When you were in power the average wage went from 82 to 73 percent. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I tell that member to look at any wage and salary figures in a time of high employment and he will see that when low-income people get jobs averages do not go up as quickly. Average wages tend to go up in times of high unemployment because low-income workers lose their jobs. If those members are too thick to understand that there is no hope for them at all. 
Paul Quinn 
: He doesn’t like it eh? He doesn’t like it. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The member thinks it is a compliment to be called thick and I agree with him. It is not fair on thick people to put Paul Quinn into that category. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: He can’t handle it can he? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Paul Quinn cannot handle it at all; I agree with Tau Henare. 
This is a four-pronged attack on job security. There is an attempt to weaken the process to extend the range of reasons for dismissal— 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I cannot hear and I am sitting directly opposite the member who is not in his own chair but who is interjecting. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I would have some sympathy with the member’s point of order but I have to say that there has been some provocation from both sides on the matter. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: These changes are unfair unbalanced unnecessary and ideologically driven rather than being driven by people with any real knowledge of how wage and salary earners live in New Zealand these days. The provisions attack job security they weaken the processes they extend the range of reasons for dismissal they restrict the right to appeal and they restrict the right to reinstatement. What an outrageous Government that tips away the balance. When someone wins his or her case the Government says that the balance should not be towards that person getting his or her job back again. That is the sort of approach we are seeing from the National Government here today. 
This is part of National’s attempt to drive down wages and it proves that before the election lies were told about the wish to close the gap with Australia. What we have seen under legislation— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Who by? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Those members should all look in the mirror occasionally! This bill makes a lie of the commitment to closing the wage gap with Australia. It allows people to be sacked without a reason and that is just not fair. New Zealanders do not like that; New Zealanders are for fairness. New Zealanders accept trials and they accept probationary periods but they say that if someone is not going to be employed at the end of a probationary period he or she should have a reason. That is pretty fair and reasonable. No reasonable person would disagree with that. No one is saying that someone has to keep a job but if that person is not keeping a job then a reason should be given. 
The Prime Minister made a promise to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions as to the processes about access provisions. He said that that was not a priority for the Government. Business New Zealand said that it was not a priority for that organisation. The Prime Minister said that he would discuss the matter again before he made any public announcements on it but he has now been shown not to be telling the truth on that issue. I think that one of the things we used to see quite a lot of around here—and in recent years and I include the latter period of the Hon Jim Bolger—was a high emphasis put on people keeping their word and being honest. But that has been abandoned by the Prime Minister in this legislation. 
On the question of access I think it is a pretty simple issue that if workers have an immediate problem if there is a grievance issue—subject to provisions like safety and normal working arrangements which are the sort of things that have been there—they should be allowed to ask someone from the union to visit them on site in order to try to sort out the issue. That is not an unreasonable thing. Again it is a matter of the pretty basic fairness that Kiwis believe in—that is that if there is a problem or an issue in the workplace then someone from the member’s union should be allowed to come in and talk to that person about it and that that action should be pretty immediate and not put off until the next day or the day after by an employer who may well be attempting to mislead people as to what is actually going on. Even Kate Wilkinson—I want to quote the Minister—said just over a year ago that “There does not appear to be widespread evidence of union representatives exercising their current rights to enter workplaces in an inappropriate way resulting in disruption for business operations or adversely impacting on the employment relationship between employer and unions members.” 
I agree with Kate Wilkinson. In a year as Minister of Labour I do not think I had a single complaint come to me about that issue. I do not know of any complaints that came to the department. Certainly no complaints about that were reported to me. I think that we are trying to solve a problem here that does not exist and in doing so we are taking away a fair entitlement for workers which allowed them to get on the phone and ask their union representative to come along and try to help them sort out problems they had. That is not an unreasonable thing for workers to be able to do and I think that most Kiwis think that that is fair enough. 
I have referred to the 90-day trial period before and the issue is relatively simple: it goes to whether someone is entitled to a reason when they get the sack. They are not asking for even a good reason just a reason and whether or not they are entitled to a reason. We have been seeing some parallels on that particular issue in these buildings over the last couple of days. The issue has been very well set out by Heather Roy when she said talking about someone who was the leader of her party: “As previously arranged Rodney Hide came to my office to view the defence document. He took it away from me and turned to leave. I explained that he could not take it away but could read it in my office and explained again the security classification that he holds. He refused to leave it here. He turned to leave my office. Short of standing up in the doorway or coming from behind my desk and taking the document from him I could not stop him from taking it from the office.” There we have a very clear case of someone who is effectively an employer. He is a leader of a party which is pretty close to being an employer for these purposes and which was certainly enough to get Heather Roy sacked. She could not intervene in that way so we have a situation where one of her former fellow Ministers is saying that she thinks it is all right and that she thinks it is something that can be extended to other people. 
I tell this House that this legislation is designed to tell ordinary wage and salary earners that the Government wants them to have fewer rights and that it does not want their wages to go up. It says to wage and salary earners that the Government is happy with the gap opening up with Australia that it does not want union representatives to come in when workers call them and that it does not want workers to be given a reason when they get the sack. That is the sort of legislation that I would have expected from a 1960s National Government. Even Sir Robert Muldoon would have believed in people being given a reason when they were getting the sack. Bill Birch certainly would have believed in people being given a reason when they were getting the sack. But with John Key and Kate Wilkinson we have legislation here that does not do that.