Stewart Barbara: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStewart Barbara: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10014. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): What a pleasure it is to follow that eloquent member from the National Party Chris Auchinvole. Usually he follows me but this time I have the pleasure of being after him which is very interesting. I must say he is on another planet from most of the workers whom I actually talk to. I was interested too to hear the interpretation of the Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee chair David Bennett. What a unique interpretation! Obviously he has got a red banner high above his head that I did not know that he ever had. I must congratulate Sue Moroney on getting her bill drawn from the ballot. It is a hard job to get a bill drawn from the ballot.New Zealand First is going to support this bill only to the select committee at this stage. We want to hear from employers. We want to hear from employees. We want to know whether or not this bill is workable in this economic climate that we actually find ourselves in. In years gone by people did not have to worry about redundancy people did not have to worry about the price of groceries and people did not have to worry about trying to find another job but under this National Government jobs are scarcer than hen’s teeth. I know that when we look in our local papers the number of jobs thatare available is minimal and it is shrinking by the day. Today redundancy is a big word a big factor that looms over every worker’s head. It is a heavy load. To be made redundant in this situation is a really life-changing event. It can mean the poverty line sinking below the poverty line. The worst of it is that there is no legislated minimum level of compensation for people faced with redundancy. It is a sad indictment on New Zealand that we sit alone among First World countries in offering little assistance to workers who are faced with redundancy.It is ironic that despite the workers facing hardship the large corporates continue to pay out the corporate elite with their golden handshakes. Month after month we see this happening. We see it on the TV and we read about it in the newspapers: this one stepped down and got a huge payout; another one stepped down and got a huge payout. I know that Darien Fenton read out a long list of these people. Of course at the top of that was Lesley Longstone from the Ministry of Education. It is almost as if there is one set of rules for the workers and another set for the fat cats at the top of the pile. We know that that is what is happening.How can you reconcile this with the workers—the people who are battling who get up every day and slog their intestines out for the minimum wage? There are lots and lots of them. In service stations and in kiwifruit packing houses there are a whole lot. These people have got no protection. They are our poorest and our most vulnerable workers. It is these workers who are disproportionately affected by this gap in the employment legislation. In the current financial climate we have witnessed huge job losses—redundancies from KiwiRail Fonterra the Department of Conservation Mainzeal Property and Construction Summit Wool Spinners Telecom and Tīwai Point just to mention a few big organisations. We have not mentioned the small shops in our towns that we see closing up on a regular basis and having closing-down sales. These are all examples of businesses downscaling cutting back or going under in this economic environment. This is not the brighter future that people were anticipating or families or workers. Small businesses and medium-sized businesses are finding this environment tough—really tough. Up and down provincial New Zealand they are finding it tough.Debate interrupted.