Williamson Maurice: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliamson Maurice: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 10 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9619. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga): I am happy to take a very brief call in the third readings of this legislation and just say to members that it is amazing how with the passage of time much that was once considered almost not even thinkable becomes the norm. When I grew up in the workforce very early on the idea of paid parental leave would have been a complete—well you would not have even thought of it. I have got three fantastic kids. They are all adopted so I did not even get the enjoyment part of it; I just got the kids and the spending part of it. I did not get any of the money from the Government or anyone else for bringing them up.But I accept fully that the world moves on. I accept that the Government has made quite a few changes—in fact I think we have gone from 14 to 16 weeks of paid parental leave and then on 1 April this year there will be 18 weeks of paid parental leave. That is just the way the world is moving. That is just the way other countries are going and I have to accept that I am a dinosaur and living in the olden days—thinking that everyone should look after their own costs and pay their own way. I accept that; I fully accept it. I am happy to put it down on the record—in Hansard—dinosaur; there you go. But I also think that some of the flexibility that has been brought into the paid parental leave—so you know the identification of who was the primary caregiver and under what circumstances you could have variations and so on—is important and that is done.I come to the next one which is zero-hour contracts and again I thought I was a dinosaur on this one and then I realised I had misunderstood what was meant. When I worked in the aviation industry and particularly in America there were lots and lots of women—mainly—who had zero-hour contracts with the airlines to be flight attendants. And they actually loved it because they did not have to take the call when it came; they did not have to be available. They could work at a florist or whatever but one day they would get a call asking whether they wanted to do a New York run and they would say: “Hey why not?”.And that is what I thought zero-hour contracts were. And then I realised that they have got a more sinister element. That sinister element is: you will not be able to work for anyone else and you will be sitting at home by the phone waiting for me to call you and if I do not you will not get paid but if you work for anybody else you breach the contract. That is just complete madness. That is simply completely and utterly mad. If you are going to hold someone’s time in your hand then you have to pay for it unless you say to them: “I’ll call you up and if you’re free and you’d like to come and do a few hours good on you but if you’re not available or you don’t answer the call that’s fine. I’ve got five or six people on my list and I can phone around.” I would actually like to have that say in my electorate office—have two or three people whom I could call up from time to time and ask “Would you be able to do some covering hours on Friday because one of my permanent staff is going to a meeting?” or whatever.So I think it is really good that this legislation addresses what I think is quite a pernicious element that says: “We’ll hold you in our hand. We’ll lock you in from any other employment.” By the way you actually could do it with someone you did not like. You could say “I’ll lock you into a contract. You can’t work for anybody else.” and then never give them any hours which is just wrong. And so I congratulate all of the parties on getting this.I think I have pretty much expired my time here so I am just going to say—the last thing to try to do was enforce labour laws. I am a big fan of if you have got laws—and there are rules about what makes up a good employer—that you actually enforce them. I am not a big fan of all the laws that we have got. I think some of them are way too Draconian and way too over the top but I am a fan of if they are on the books and they were passed by this Parliament those rules being enforced. This legislation goes a long way to improving the enforcement so I support this bill in all of its phases.