Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd like to speak to my Supplementary Order Paper 143 which is in relation to clause 12 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. This Supplementary Order Paper seeks to amend by deleting clause 12 of the bill. The clause as it currently stands allows union representatives to initiate bargaining 20 days earlier than an employer. This will lead to a potential confusion as to what advantage is conferred by early initiation which may detract from an efficient bargaining process.In our view good faith bargaining requires all claims to be considered and responded to before bargaining can reasonably be considered complete. I understand the Minister took a very short call in relation to this issue earlier and essentially said that he wants to bring some sort of order to the process.Marja Lubeck: It always used to be like this. Unions always negotiated earlier.SIMEON BROWN: My question to the Minister is—and I appreciate the interjection from Marja Lubeck on the other side but I'm trying to ask a question of the Minister in relation to clause 12 which is around what is the issue that is being raised here in relation to the ordering currently where both parties can initiate? He alluded to some sort of rushed process whereby people try to go to collective negotiation first both at the same time. I'd like to know from the Minister what evidence he had which shows that that is of some concern or whether that is leading to bad outcomes in the collective negotiating process—whether that's actually leading to employers and unions not concluding bargains or collective agreements which are actually of a conducive nature to a good employer-employee relationship.I think what clause 12 does is it pits employers against unions. It gives an advantage to one over the other. And I was just reading through the departmental report. We asked this exact question in the select committee and the response from officials was—and I assume the Minister stands by this—that the amendment is intended to allow unions to set the agenda of bargaining by initiating first in order to address the inherent imbalance of power in employment relationships. And I challenge that statement there. I think of the employers in my electorate many of whom are very small many of whom are not large employers. Many of them are in retail or in light industry small industry marine-based employers in Half Moon Bay Marina and predominantly then service based whether that's through the shopping centre - based sort of industry.So I ask the question: why is this pitched in New Zealand in a way which is sort of trying to make it out that these employers are all big employers who are needing to be brought to task or brought to bear to the power of the union? Why do we need to lead to a situation where our unions are trying to address the power imbalance when clearly the vast majority of our businesses are small businesses—they don't employ a lot of people—and we are essentially saying that a union can come along and has a 20-day advantage over the employer over the business? That will I think lead to a breakdown in relations rather than actually being conducive towards bringing employers and employees together to try and actually lead to good outcomes here for the betterment of New Zealand.I do agree with my colleague Andrew Bayly that there is a place for unions to negotiate these bargains but there also needs to be recognition of the fact that employers ultimately provide jobs. They are the ones who actually provide jobs for workers and they are the ones who pay the wages and they are the ones who actually have to create the wealth so that people can actually have a job and earn an income and have a livelihood. And yes there can be bad employers but we also need to ensure that we're not leading to a situation where there is a breakdown in relationships between those employers and the unions which they work with. Many employers would say to me Yep generally we have a good relationship—[Time expired]"