Lees-Galloway IainIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It is a pleasure to rise and speak particularly to the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill a bill that is very very tight and very technical in the amendments that it makes—not insignificant but fairly small changes to the legislation simply clarifying what the current legislation actually says. They are so tight and lacking in significance in their nature that I am somewhat surprised that a National Party backbencher has not put them up as a member's bill.The actual changes that Part 1 of this legislation makes are I think quite worthy. It makes changes to section 142W of the Employment Relations Act 2000 which describes who is responsible in the event that there is a breach of the Employment Relations Act. Section 142W(1) says: In this Act a person is involved in a breach if the breach is a breach of employment standards and the person—(a) has aided abetted counselled or procured the breach; or (b) has induced whether by threats or promises or otherwise the breach; or (c) has been in any way directly or indirectly knowingly concerned in or party to the breach; or (d) has conspired with others to effect the breach." Then section 142W(2) says: "However if the person in breach is a company partnership limited partnership or sole trader a person holding a position in relation to the person in breach may be treated as a person involved in a breach only if the person is an officer of the person in breach."If ever there was a clause in need of tidying up and clarification that would be it. It comes to this old definition of a company or an entity as a person and it gets very complicated and somewhat tongue-twisting when we talk about a person—an actual human person—who is involved in that entity that is also described as a person which is what this clause does. So I must congratulate the officials within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment who have sought to tidy this up which they do with the amended section 142W(2): "However if the breach is a breach by an entity such as a company partnership limited partnership or sole trader a person"—that being a human person—"who holds a position in the entity may be treated as a person involved in the breach only if that person is an officer of the entity." It is still fairly complicated but much clearer than the subsection that we have currently in talking about companies partnerships limited partnerships and sole traders as entities rather than as persons which I think makes much more sense to any layperson who is trying to read this legislation.This is important because we do know that we regularly have cases where employers are in breach of their employment obligations. We recently discovered that something like 10 percent of employees do not even have a written employment agreement which is a fundamental requirement of our employment legislation and I would hazard a guess that most of the employers that do not provide written employment agreements are probably in breach of a whole host of other aspects of our employment legislation. It is important that we get this right so that we can actually identify the people who are responsible for those employment breaches. There is no point in holding a company responsible; if we are really going to effect change the people who have made those decisions—the people who decide not to provide a written employment agreement the people who decide not to pay people at least the minimum wage the people who decide to employ people on visas in a fashion that is in breach of their visas—need to be held responsible.Of course we can only apply this legislation—we can only apply the changes that are being made in the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill—if we have decent enforcements if have a labour inspectorate that is well resourced and is actually able to identify the breaches that are being made and if people feel confident to come forward and identify when they have been subject to one of these breaches. We know that a lot of people are not and we know that the labour inspectorate cannot be everywhere and that is why we have a lot of people who are in breach of this legislation. So this clarifying point is I think very very helpful. And I should note that amended section 142W(3) continues on with the change to actually identify an entity as an entity rather than a person in each of those situations such as "(a) a person occupying the position of a director of a company if the entity is a company: (b) a partner if the entity is a partnership: (c) a general partner if the entity is a limited partnership:" and so on and so forth. That is a very useful clarification of the legislation and it needs to be applied a bit more vigorously I think perhaps than it is currently being applied.Part 2 of the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill also makes some fairly technical changes—in fact they are even more technical changes I would offer—to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act. This will make the law much clearer around what people are entitled to in the event that—Hon Ruth Dyson: It doesn't get us to 26 weeks.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No it does not give us 26 weeks; Ruth Dyson is absolutely correct. That is one thing the legislation fails to do unfortunately. But we will get there one day when we change the Government. What it does do is it makes it clearer what people are entitled to in the event that their baby is born pre-term in terms of when their entitlement to paid parental leave actually begins and it makes some other subsequent amendments as well which are incredibly tight and incredibly technical in their nature.The devil is often in the detail with these things though. I am glad that this legislation is going to select committee because often this House can consider changes that we believe are technical that we are led to believe are technical changes and are just tidying up drafting errors or anomalies in the legislation or seeking to clarify the legislation which can often hold a few fish-hooks within them. So although we are promoting this as making reasonably technical changes I do encourage those who have knowledge around these pieces of legislation particularly the Employment Relations Act and the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act to consider these changes and make submissions if they feel it is necessary. Come and share your thoughts with us at the select committee because we do need to make sure we get these bills right. I have read on more than one occasion of a court trying to interpret what Parliament was trying to achieve with a piece of legislation and much of the debate was around how the changes were technical in nature. There was not much debate around the substance of them and it leaves the court at a bit of a loss as to what Parliament actually meant by legislation that perhaps itself is not spectacularly well drafted.With those few thoughts on this legislation I look forward to it proceeding to select committee. I am glad this is being done as a set of omnibus bills. That is a good way to proceed with changes like this. I hope that members of the National Government backbench take heed and acknowledge that there are better ways of making these changes than filling up the members' bills ballot with bills like this when we could be filling it up with things that make far more meaningful changes than some of the offers that we have had lately."