Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): Mr Chair thank you for this opportunity to speak on the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill and I want to bring members' attention back to the actual bill we are considering. It is this one here. There's a lot that's been removed from it and there's very little that remains and what's important is that we don't fall into the trap here of dressing this up as a major move forward. That would be a complete triumph of spin over substance because what we've had Marja Lubeck the member opposite just claim is that somehow members on this side of the House think that bullying and harassment is acceptable. I find that allegation outrageous. Of course we do not nor would we expect any employer to engage in that sort of behaviour and in fact the current law does not allow employers to engage in that sort of behaviour. We need to be very clear that the current law already allows people who are employed by labour hire firms to raise personal grievances. This is a matter that members on the opposite side of the Chamber and the member sitting alongside the chair this evening seem very confused about so I'm going to go to the departmental report a neutral report from the officials. I'm going to read from it what they said about the current provisions relating to personal grievances. They say The personal grievance provisions in the [Employment Relations] Act already apply to the relationship between the worker and the on-hire firm". So what I put to you very clearly is that these personal grievance measures already exist and that in fact all that Mr McAnulty's bill does is have a little party about how you divide up the pie of the personal grievance. What it actually does is it inserts a new section 103B which allows the employee or the employer to join a controlling third party in a personal grievance. So what it's actually saying is "You already had a personal grievance but now we'll let you jump through a thousand more legal hoops to decide how those two people involved in your employment relationship divide up the liability." This is about how two people involved in working with someone divide the liability when one of them has done wrong. This is not a great step forward for workers' rights and to cast it in those terms is verging on being disingenuous. What is also does is a whole bunch of tricky process things and on this side of the House we know that where you introduce additional processes—there's a whole section in here a new section 115A about how you notify the controlling third party and what that looks like and there's a new section 123A about the remedies—and when you insert these sorts of things and you create the potential for dispute between two parties as to who is liable you are making hay for lawyers. I would put to you that making hay for lawyers in this way won't actually benefit individual employees. But you know what I do want to do is I want to thank Mr McAnulty because what he did with this bill was he gave us the opportunity to hear from real labour hire companies and to hear the reality of what they do for workers in our workforce. We heard from some extraordinary people who have provided opportunities to New Zealanders from all walks of life. We heard for example from the Shamrock Recruitment Group based here in Wellington. It is an organisation that has given literally hundreds of New Zealanders a pathway back into work. What the Shamrock Recruitment Group said to us was that in its original form—and I quote—"Put simply this Bill caters for an employment and contracting market in New Zealand which existed two decades ago and is not fit for purpose in 2018." That's why the bill that we are considering tonight is so so different from the one that first came into this House because put simply that bill had the mentality that members opposite had which is that it was written for a world that no longer exists. We now exist in a world where people actually enjoy the flexibility of individual employment agreements in individual circumstances. I just want to tell you a couple of examples from Shamrock Recruitment Group that they shared with me. When I sat down with them and said "Tell me about the people whose lives you've changed." they said "Well let me tell you about the women that we hire who want to be able to have the school holidays off. We give them flexible jobs. Let us tell you about the people who we hire after hours because they are removing asbestos from buildings and we're able to work around their day jobs. Let us tell you about the people who are students at university and whose timetables we can work around." Actually this bill seeks to demonise third-party hiring agencies. Actually they create flexible employment opportunities for dozens of New Zealanders. This bill is not a great step forward. It just creates a whole lot more process to the benefit of no one. Thank you Mr Chair."