Roberts Angela; Dean JacquiANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is a great privilege to rise and take a call on the Employment Relations (Restraint of Trade) Amendment bill. Good day at the office thank you Helen White. It's really great to be here in support of this bill. We've heard a lot of Chicken Little-ing" tonight; it's happened before. People are terrified about what this bill means and what it doesn't mean. It's obvious that not everybody has read the entire bill because they're scared of things that are clearly not going to happen when you read the bill properly. At the moment because of restraint of trade it isn't you know—the argument that we've got legitimate propriety interests and you can see it you know trade secrets all that sort of thing. Well there is an opportunity and this bill protects confidentiality and fidelity. I think it is a real stretch to argue that someone who has been taught how to make a coffee—a good one or a bad one—should be punished and unable to shift jobs the reason being because you're trying to legitimately protect your proprietary interests. I think that is too much of a stretch. The real impact is as we've already heard that it depresses wages and stifles innovation because people can't negotiate for better pay and conditions and they can't move on. The interesting thing is this is about—we've had a bit of market failure with this and with the way things are operating at the moment. This is actually about restoring some balance to the market. This is about making it possible for someone to go "I've got something to sell I'm a fantastic barista and I think that I should be getting paid more or maybe have better working conditions or work in an innovative business. I'd really like to go and work for that business" because we have ambitious business owners in this country who don't need to compete on low wages. They want to be able to compete because they're innovative and they're successful and they invest in value—their most precious resource which is their workers. The problem with those businesses is they can't compete because they can't attract those workers to a much better business because of the restraint of trade of those workers being able to move on. We talk about agility. Well stopping somebody from going to a better workplace because you've got a fantastic potential employer that's not agility. That is dampening the opportunity for innovation and to improve productivity. Anyone who has run a business or been involved in an enterprise especially a small enterprise knows that we have to be agile and creative and we have to make the most of our precious employees—not exploit them but make the most of them.I grew up in a hairdressing salon and I have discussed this with my mother who was a fabulous employer. She employed a lot of apprentices around New Plymouth over the years and we discussed the restraint of trade which is common practice for most hairdressers—the idea being that if you leave a salon that your clients may want to follow you. That's an interesting challenge. But my mum said actually the time when her staff might have wanted to leave wasn't because she was a poor employer because she was a fabulous employer. She trained her staff really well and she looked after them. The problem was maybe there wasn't a great fit between the culture of her salon—we know what salons are like they're incredibly vibrant and most salons are quite different from each other. She might have had a staff member who wanted to go and work in another salon and she'd say "Good luck to you." So actually what it does when you've got staff who can move freely with their skills it ups the game of the employer "How do I make sure that I keep these people I've invested in?" Restoring some power to a well-trained worker actually improves productivity. It makes sure that you are more likely to retain your workers not lose them—weirdly enough. I know it seems counterintuitive. But if you can look after your workers because you fear losing them to someone who's going to offer them a better job actually that's going to help with your productivity. It is a sensible bill. It isn't outrageous. Employers will find that this is actually something that will help them lift their game. It's going to help us look after our workers. It is because of this that I commend the bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."