Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I just want to start my contribution on behalf of New Zealand First by thanking the member across for having a very calm approach to this subject Amy Adams for her passion and of course Willie Jackson for his passion but also for the work that's been done behind the scenes to get this bill into the House in 100 days. I think that's very very commendable.I think it's the first proof of how MMP can work very very well for this country. When we first sat down and looked at some of the ideas that our coalition partners had and discussed those we realised that we needed to sit down and work through some of those differences. It is no surprise to everybody that New Zealand First did ensure that we kept the 90-day work trials for small and medium sized businesses. The question that the Hon Steven Joyce raised is if we think that 90-day work trials actually work in some cases why didn't we leave them in there in their entirety?He mentioned the small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The SMEs are a measure that the National Government actually introduced—small to medium sized businesses with under 20 employees. You didn't give any clarity about whether they were going to be full-time equivalents (FTEs) or if they were just going to be employees in general. Maybe that is something that this new coalition Government can look at moving through in the future. We certainly will ask this of submitters as it goes through the select committee to find out how practical and realistic that is. That is something that could be raised.I want to also discuss and bring up the point that Amy Adams made about this compulsory opting-in for a month while a new employee gets their feet on the ground gets their legs under the table and understands what's happening. Well I said the same thing to the National Party when they brought in compulsory opting-in to KiwiSaver. You had a month's trial and then you could decide yourself as an employee that this is either good for me" or this is "not good for me". If it's good they stayed on and they contributed to the KiwiSaver programme or they opted out.My point is that it gives people choices. They're not going to be disenfranchised in any way by being part of a union. In actual fact they will get natural higher rates through those unions. I myself in my early years of working when I was working in the apple pack-house and I was working in other areas I joined the union for a short period of time and then I realised "Do you know what? I can do this on my own." I negotiated my own individual employment agreements—[Interruption] This is my point. Then I realised I had the strength of character and I could go and negotiate. But to actually have that option there for workers to understand what the unions are offering and what I can go and get for myself is giving them the flexibility and the job security which is very important.Raising wages in this country is something that I am proud of as a New Zealand First MP and that we negotiated hard for in this coalition agreement to make sure that we work towards a living wage economy. When I spoke to the Deloitte's BusinessNZ seminar and they did a survey after we announced the fact that we were promoting a living wage and we would move there with tax incentives and packages for businesses to ensure they could pay for it it was very well-received. In fact 91 percent of the people that did the survey also agreed that we need to work into a living wage. This coalition agreement as quickly as practicably possible is working towards that. We need to look at raising the bar and I will tell you why. Raising the living wage—which is not part of this bill Madam Deputy Speaker but just to give an oversight of what this will also add to—will actually stop the brain drain of Kiwis going to Australia. Raising wages which this bill does actually do by these agreements that we have inside this—DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's a long bow.CLAYTON MITCHELL: It is a long bow. But it also will create higher productivity. This bill is designed to do that. We want to get better productivity. When we look around the world in the OECD New Zealand's productivity is one of the lowest of First World countries. I want to acknowledge the fact that when the Hon Steven Joyce mentions the fact that we've got the third-highest rate of employment—the third-highest rate of employment—again I get back to the standard. The previous Government encapsulated that data by saying "If you work one hour a week"—just one hour a week—"you're deemed to be employed." And yet when I go and test that theory in the real world "employment" to anybody that understands it means that you can look after yourself sufficiently and you don't need to be beholden to the Government or the State to top you up with a supplement or a boost.So we've actually got a false data collection when we say we have the third-highest employment rate in the world. In actual fact because we capture anybody that's got a job for an hour or more that's not real employment because guess what? Taxpayers are paying for that top-up. We have got a State-dependent country at the moment. There's a lot of people even those that are employed that need extra help and support. Moving ourselves up by using all mechanisms that we possibly can including the unions and what they add will help New Zealand and New Zealanders stand on their own two feet. It's going to give more PAYE and GST to the Government to get back to core business. It's going to make more cash available more money in more people's pockets so businesses will be richer. There will be more profitability. So this doom and gloom of how bad this bill is we say goes against what we are hearing in businesses. In actual fact I've got some remarks. Hospitality New Zealand commends the fact that New Zealand First has negotiated the 90-day work trials remaining. That's important. It's huge for people in business. We've got here Tenby Powell the founder of the SME Business Network which has more than 11000 members. He's also welcomed the decision. He says here "We are thrilled that the Government have chosen to retain the 90-day trials period for small and medium sized businesses. It's a very pragmatic solution in a tough employment environment."Now even Minister Willie Jackson said he also employed people and it was commendable to hear the fact that he had used 90-day trials in the past as have I with my businesses. The vast majority of businesses do use them in the manner that they are designed to be there for and it does give a little bit of certainty. We go back to a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. We've got to get the right balance between employer and employee. This bill takes that step to ensure that that balance is there—that the needs of the employer looking for skilled dedicated and flexible staff is at the absolute forefront of anybody employing anybody and that the employee's needs of having job stability safe working conditions and good remuneration packages are part of that balance.So New Zealand First is proud to be supporting this. The meal breaks that we are winding back the clock on—when I first came into this House this was one of the first pieces of legislation that came through. To me the irony of that is that we were putting through the health and safety plan which was all about ensuring that workers in their workplaces were going to be kept safe and sound and yet part of that safety was ensuring in high-stress jobs in dangerous jobs that those workers could actually stop rest prepare themselves have a meal break and then continue on with their work.There are exemptions in this bill that will actually allow certain businesses to have that flexibility for their workers. If there are other businesses not included we'd like to hear from them if they think they should have that flexibility but we've got to think of the safety of our workers. This ensures safety first making sure that when people do go to work they do come home safely at the end of the day.I understand what Amy Adams has spoken about and I agree with her to a degree that that flexibility in some cases is very very pragmatic. However it's a little bit too prescriptive and we can find workers being bullied into situations and forced out of their meal breaks which is not the intention of what we were trying to achieve.I'd like to just conclude by commending this bill through the House to select committee where we will be paying very very close attention to what the submissions are and if we can improve this bill in any way we will certainly have our eyes and ears wide open to that. But we'd just like to say that those 90-day work trials are very very pragmatic and despite the fact that there are a very very small number of businesses who abuse this regulation we will be collecting data. I have to say we are not trying to hit with a hammer all businesses but unfortunately the data had not been collected for the last nine years and so we've got a bit of work to do to find out specifically—is it industry-focused is it employer-focused and which employees are actually getting caught up with these bad business practices? We certainly are very very pro-business. They are the lifeblood of this country as too are our workers. That fair pay for fair work is the balance that we are going to strike and that we have got with this bill so we commend the bill to the House."