Fenton Darien: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fenton Darien: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10779] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 First of all I want to thank the Green Party and the Maori Party and of course my colleagues in the Labour Party for their contributions and support. I appreciate very much their understanding that this is a situation of basic fairness; that the Kiwi way is to treat people fairly particularly when they are vulnerable. I also put on record my thanks to the many people who have been in touch to tell me their stories or to offer their support. I acknowledge all of the unions and organisations that have backed the redundancy protection bill and who will continue to fight alongside Labour to ensure that this issue will be on the agenda at the next election. I mention them by name: the Council of Trade Unions the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union the National Distribution Union my own union the Service and Food Workers Union the Dairy Workers Union the Unite union the Rail and Maritime Transport Union Finsec the Maritime Union the Public Service Association the Nurses Organisation the New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa and the Wellington People’s Centre. I want Government members to know that together these organisations represent 350000 workers plus their families. Today National and ACT have sent a strong message to all of those people that National and ACT do not care about them. 
I also respond to the pathetic defence from members opposite who say that Labour had 9 years. I mentioned in my first speech on the bill that Labour actually did an awful lot about redundancy protection but it was not a priority because people were not losing their jobs in the droves that they are now. For insolvency situations we made redundancy protection a priority. We also cut the tax rate on redundancy payments and we set up the advisory group because we also want to do things based on good evidence. That is what the advisory group was about. Members opposite should not go on about Labour having 9 years because we did a lot there was a lot to do and there will always be more to do. The fact is the Labour Party has more ideas and will take them to the next election. 
This Government has failed working people again. It has failed to take the harsh edges off the recession as John Key promised it would. Wages are in decline unemployment is skyrocketing and workers cannot look forward to any support from this Government. 
When this bill was drawn from the ballot last year I deliberately postponed its first reading. I wanted to make sure that the bill was not taken lightly by political parties but unfortunately the speech made by David Bennett shows that the Government has utter contempt for the issues facing workers today. I wanted to make sure the bill was not taken lightly; I wanted to give National and ACT and other parties a real chance to show that they were prepared to listen to working people and their families when they say that not enough is being done for workers facing redundancy. Actually I do not think they bothered even though more than 120000 of these postcards that I am holding up went to John Key’s office. I know they would have gone in the rubbish bin but what about the cost to workers? We can talk about the cost to business but what about the cost to workers and the cost to their families? 
Redundancy entitlements are about recognising that the loss of a job is not the fault of workers; they provided their labour in good faith to an employer and they have a risk of not finding a comparable job. We have had examples in the debate today. It also recognises the impact generally on the earning capacity of the worker. Redundancy entitlements can also act as a deterrent; I think some of my colleagues have referred to this. An employer might otherwise make a worker redundant without due consideration. For example I am aware that many of the employers in the 9-day working fortnight programme— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Ha! 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Yes I know. Many of them joined that. The cost of redundancy of making their workers redundant made them sign up to it. It acted as a deterrent. It was not John Key’s brilliance; it was the fact that something stood in the way of them being able to just send people down the road. I have noted that in the last year personal grievances in relation to redundancy have doubled. That is the consequence of not having certainty in the law around redundancy. The cleaners who work in this Parliament have no redundancy payments in their agreement. They have a specific clause that says that they do not get anything. This is legal in the current situation and common. Yet all of us in this Chamber can be made redundant at every election but we get paid 3 months’ salary.