Hughes Darren: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee Recommittal Third Reading 
Hughes Darren: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee Recommittal Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:455] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 When National Party members went out campaigning during the election and were focusing on the things that really matter I wonder whether any of them said that the things that do not matter are jobs for ordinary people. The thing that matters most to every family in New Zealand is the chance to have a job to earn wages so they can pay the family bills. Those are the things that really matter. The National Party MPs sitting over there spend more time giggling about light bulbs than saying what they want to do before Christmas to working families in New Zealand. Politics is not just a big joke. I see one of the new National members over there in the back row—Amy Adams who gave her maiden speech earlier in the week. She is already giggling and laughing about how fun politics is as she sits there using her votes to rip away rights from working people in New Zealand. She is proud of it but this was supposedly one of the things that really matters. We say that these things matter hugely to New Zealanders and we are going to fight all the way to make sure that we get answers out of this Minister. 
It is a disgrace that this Minister Kate Wilkinson was so excited to accept a ministerial warrant but now will not get up in the Chamber and answer simple reasonable and rational questions from the Opposition when we represent many hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who voted for us to make sure that we hold this Government to account—and we will because this is so important. She will not answer us. We have been in the Committee stage for around 5 hours. We are at the beginning of scrutinising this bill which has not been to a select committee. We were told that it was not going to be part of the Government’s first 100 days but we now find it on the floor of the Chamber. I ask members if they know how many times the Minister has deigned to get up on her hind legs and address the country about this bill in that time? The answer is three miserable times. There are Opposition members of Parliament who have spoken more times on this bill in this Committee stage than its Minister has. She is letting this country down and she is not earning her money. 
I want to ask the Minister some questions to join the questions of all my colleagues. I ask her whether she believes that anyone will suffer as a result of this bill. Does the Minister believe that any worker will suffer as a result of this bill? She has nothing to say on that. Will the Minister even concede that this bill might have some negative consequences? There is silence from her on that as well. There is nothing. She is not prepared to answer a single thing. There is not a whisper a murmur a knock at the door a text message an email or even a fax from this woman; she will not tell us what she believes about this bill. We know that the Government is divided on this bill—it is deeply divided. That is why Mrs Tolley is being hidden away. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: In the attic! 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: She is in the attic. She is up in the civil defence room in the Beehive hiding away from Gerry Brownlee. He is very grumpy at the moment on a whole multitude of fronts and for good reason. The point is that Mrs Tolley is divided; the front-bench Minister is not allowed to give her opinion. She has misled the public on this bill. We know that the Maori Party does not support this bill. As soon as its members were free from the shackling confidence and supply agreement that forced them to vote to put taxes up on low-income people and as soon as they had a free choice they abandoned the Government within its first week in the House because they know that this is unfair. I acknowledge the Maori Party for that. I think it is great that it is voting against this bill because it is bad for ordinary people. This Minister must take a call because I know that she is a believer in the parliamentary system. 
We have heard some maiden speeches this week. Those speeches tell us what people are really going to be like in politics. I want to quote to the Minister her own maiden speech from 17 November 2005; members will be interested in this. She said “It is an absolute privilege to be part of our parliamentary process. It is also a huge responsibility—a responsibility that I take very seriously. I hope that when it comes to my valedictory speech”—that will be in November 2011—“I will be able to say I exercised that responsibility well with integrity with enthusiasm with soul with spirit and with my arsenal still intact.” 
This Minister is using her arsenal today to ram down the rights of working people in New Zealand. She does not have the integrity the soul or the spirit that she talked about in her maiden speech to get up to defend the parliamentary process that she was so pious about just 3 years ago as quoted in  
Hansard 
 when she was asked what her real views were. Now that she has got the car the job the house the warrant and the staff all those things do not matter. The National Party reverts so quickly to type. We now know that she did not mean what she told the House when she talked about her great respect for the parliamentary process that she wanted to treat with integrity soul and spirit so she could leave with her arsenal still intact. We now know that she did not mean any of that; or she is being muzzled and is not allowed to defend legislation that we were not told would be in the first 100 days. It has not been to a select committee and she has only bothered to get up on her pins three times to defend it. She is a disgrace.