Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): I'm pleased to take a call on the Employment Relations (Restraint of Trade) Amendment Bill and we want to commend the member Helen White for having this bill be read. It's always interesting to see a majority Government taking this very important and substantive piece of legislation via a member's bill particularly when we were having a discussion about the purpose of a member's bill and whether they should be narrow or broad. But I actually am a believer that there is scope to do substantive change in legislation and to our system via members' bills and restraints of trade is an area that is well overdue for us to address. It's been really interesting to hear members throughout the debate—particularly from the ACT Party—portraying their relationship between the employers and the workers as an even playing field when we know that it is not and that that is inherently simply not the case. Restraints of trade are becoming more common in Aotearoa. Despite what people may have believed which is that it's the kind of thing that is left to CEOs it's increasingly more commonly used for lower-waged workers and for people in the gig industry and many people in Aotearoa will be familiar with the case of Tova O'Brien who actually went through a very—Hon Member: Oh poor old Tova—poor old Tova! RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: OK but it helped illustrate the problematic element that restraints of trade actually can have for people and the impact that it has on their employment. Do you know what? Independent from the National Party's views—who seem to be bemoaning me mentioning her name—it is an example of the impact it can have on people and in Aotearoa there are some cases. The member who is sponsoring this bill mentioned an example of a barista from Fuel Espresso who was under some pretty ridiculous restraint of trade conditions. He'd been required to work for an outlet more than 100 metres away from the one where he'd quit his employment. But these kinds of things apply to hairdressers to airline workers and the impact that it has is that if you leave your employment unless you go to another trade you end up either having to then go into receiving income support which we know actually for many is way below the poverty line—so it sets people up to actually fail in terms of them having a good safety net or it forces them into another trade. So restraints of trade serve no one but controlling employers who seek to have more power over workers and while there isn't heaps of local academic research on the impacts of the restraints of trade applications here in Aotearoa we have overseas examples in the US where it is increasingly more used in the gig industry. It was really interesting again to see the National Party talking about how this bill was going to lead to the brain drain to Australia while not acknowledging that actually Australia has a more unionised workforce. It has higher taxes for high-income earners and a tax-free threshold—which I mean we support and we're actually kind of into that. So I think that the idea of portraying this bill as risking people leaving to go to Australia is a dog whistle and it shows the colours of the parties of the right which is to side with employers and never take the side of the workers who actually are the backbone of our economy. The employers are nothing without the workers who are there in their businesses providing the labour for them and it's not even—Hon Member: Oh good on you Karl Marx".RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Actually yeah it is a socialist statement but it is also simply a fact. So we welcome this bill. We welcome the opportunity to have workers who have experienced restraints of trade submit at a select committee stage and I actually foresee that we're going to have some really interesting submissions from workers themselves. Unlike what the National Party alludes we're going to have a wave of employers talking against this. We're probably going to shine a light on the state of restraint of trade practices in Aotearoa and that will help inform this process to ensure that whatever comes out of it is fit for purpose to protect our workers—to protect the backbone of our economy. Kia ora."