Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to just follow up on a couple of speeches that my colleagues have made in this debate on Part 1. But just following on from Todd Muller's very good contribution one of the things that became very apparent at select committee as the Education and Workforce Committee was hearing submissions on this bill was the number of employers who came and said Well look if the Government is determined to foist this legislation upon us then what will inevitably happen is that businesses will modify their behaviour. They will change their way of doing business. They will adapt and adopt to maintain profitability and to remain competitive with the domestic economy and also internationally."One of the submitters was actually from the Port of Tauranga and the HR manager from the Port of Tauranga came to select committee and said "Well look what will happen is if the militant port worker unions—who are traditionally very militant—decide to play silly buggers silly games then what we will do is just speed up our process of automation." And then what she said was that actually there was hardly a single job at the Port of Tauranga that could not be automated. And actually therein lies the perverse nature of this legislation.Todd Muller: Be careful what you wish for.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Be careful what you wish for Todd Muller says. Be careful what you wish for because that is exactly what might happen.But I want to just go back to a very thoughtful contribution from Nicola Willis around the basis of the submission from the Privacy Commissioner and it relates to the clause that refers to in Part 1 the need for an employer to pass on contact information of new employees who are not union members. Now the Privacy Commissioner is not known for his extreme views. He's a measured considered person who brings to the role I think a very careful view of the world and the Act that he administers. So when he comes to a select committee of this Parliament and gives a scathing submission that says in part that placing the burden on employees to opt out of sharing their details may unduly influence their decision. He said that a decision once it has been made by an individual to accept an individual employment contract—and that he sees no reason why their details should be provided to a union. A union effectively of course is a third-party independent organisation and no employer would consider for one minute providing personal contact details to a third-party independent organisation such as the local tiddlywinks club or the bowling club or something like that. But this bill if it were passed would place an onus on employers to provide that kind of information and this is something that is deeply concerning.And then what was the response—the response from officials in their departmental report to the issues that the Privacy Commissioner raised and his concerns? Well their response was pretty soft I have to say. One could almost be certain that it had come as a result of a conversation or two with a variety of people who might have shared the view of the authors of the bill. But what we found in the departmental report was something quite stunning: that our much-lauded Privacy Act of 1993 is in fact going to be subordinate legislation to this Employment Relations Amendment Bill—subordinate legislation. So our privacy practices that we hold dear and care for carefully that we nurture as a nation and as a Parliament are going to be subordinated by this trade union - friendly piece of legislation.Now most New Zealanders I think will be horrified to find that out—that the interests of the trade union movement are going to be put ahead of the privacy of New Zealand citizens and their decision is going to have to be an opt-out decision if they don't want that information passed on. Well that is the same as used to happen with Reader's Digest. They used to send out subscriptions and Reader's Digests to people and say "Well we're going to keep sending you those magazines and you're going to have to keep paying for them unless you opt out unless you tell us you don't want to receive them any more." Well that practice has been long since made illegal and this process of having to opt out should similarly be made illegal."