Tisch Lindsay: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Tisch Lindsay: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11555] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 Is it not extraordinary to hear a party that has no understanding—no comprehension at all—of what makes economies and communities work? That party thinks that money just grows on trees and is there for the picking. If we do not have the risk takers if we do not have the people who are prepared to take risks and invest their money we do not get the growth or the jobs that this Government wants to protect the whole time. I have no difficulty in telling somebody he or she is entitled to X number of dollars. That is because that person has put the effort in and should be rewarded for those efforts. But I object to that becoming a very one-sided issue. After the investment has been made if people are going to lose their shirts this Government says it will forget about those people their families and the staff they employ because it has to look after the vulnerable worker. 
We have just experienced probably the biggest flood disaster we have ever known in this country. I have just come from a meeting attended by growers from the Rangitikei and the Manawatu who will have absolutely no income at all this year. The potato crops have been lost and the pumpkin and squash crops are hanging on the fences—and I have seen them there. And this bill states to those people who have made the investment and got no income—and who are not likely to get any income next year either because it will probably take them 5 years to get back to square one and recover the position they would have had if the flood had not happened—that the Government is not worried about them but that the 2500 employees who work for them will be paid. On top of that if there is a redundancy agreement this bill states the employees are to receive redundancy payments. And then they can go down to Work and Income New Zealand and get a benefit. We say that is wrong. 
If we look at the downstream effect of that we see it will not only be on the growers—the farmers and the other producers. We may ask about the effect on the processors and transport operators. And what about the flow-on effect on a business that may well move into liquidation? We have not yet seen the worst of what will happen in those communities. We have seen the visible effects as we do when we have earthquakes and disasters like that—in this case floods—but we have not seen the downstream effects on the business people in those small communities. If they go bung—if they have to close the doors—and there is a redundancy agreement the employee does not miss out. The employee will get paid. The Inland Revenue Department will get its cop because that is the first charge that has to be paid. After that of course there is any redundancy agreement. 
On page 2 of the commentary on the bill the committee stated: “We consider the cap should be raised to $15000. We recognise that the removal of the cap may detrimentally affect other creditors”. That is exactly what will happen to the small operators. The 297000 small businesses out there will be carrying the can for a Government that does not appreciate or understand what makes this community work. We have all the compliance costs that Roger Sowry talked about and now we have this sort of legislation that states that the workers will benefit from or get something out of an insolvency while the creditors and the owners of the business carry the can. 
In earlier days I was involved with a mortgage discounting scheme. Members may remember it. Businesses got into deep trouble. I was in the Rural Bank in those days and we were giving farmers $40000 to walk off their farms and buy a house in town because their liabilities were greater than their assets. They had negative equity. Now what happened to the staff—to the people who had worked on those properties? Although they did not get anything at least they had a home to live in. But the farmer who had owned that land had put the investment in and had raised the money through a trading bank—or in this case through the Rural Bank which is why I was involved—lost everything.