Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It's a privilege to take a call in this general debate and normally I have some degree of admiration for the member from New Zealand First that's just resumed her seat. Normally she's well-briefed well on top of her case but today I'm sorry she really wasn't. She was completely off the boil.Maybe it's because there are things afoot amongst the coalition Government at the moment that they don't really want anyone to be talking about. If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd be saying that all the beleaguered aggro that's going on with the Minister of Immigration is all part of a smokescreen and a deliberate ploy to stop him talking about his other portfolio responsibility as Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety. Iain Lees-Galloway has been charged with guiding through this Parliament the opportunity to the new Government to repay its political debt to the trade union movement. And they thought that when they introduced the workplace relations changes back in January of this year that it would be plain sailing. They thought Aha! Here we go. There's our opportunity to increase union membership to give unions more power to make them a bigger player in industrial relations in this country." and it hasn't quite worked out the way they thought.It now seems after a Cabinet meeting on Monday that changes are afoot and that the bill as reported back from select committee is going to be significantly and radically changed watered down—a flip-flop back-down. And we knew that some of this was coming because a few weeks ago senior members of the trade union movement decided to have a flick—indeed actually to launch a full frontal missile attack on Winston Peters and the New Zealand First Party. Those leaders—Richard Wagstaff and a fellow by the name of Robert Reid from FIRST Union—decided to have an attack on Winston Peters because they saw him as having had a play in this industrial relations legislation in a way that was going to water down the union-friendly pro-union changes that the new Government wanted to introduce.Well I think actually it's a question of New Zealand First having listened—just like the Government is having to listen too—to the opposition that the National Party has put forward on this bill. At every inch of the way at every turn at every corner we have opposed it and we've opposed on the basis that it is fundamentally and absolutely wrong in terms of growing the New Zealand economy of creating better workplace opportunities for New Zealand workers that it's bad for employees and it's bad for employers.But I think that the New Zealand First Party has actually decided to listen to what the National Party has been saying. They've listened to business they've listened to the Employers and Manufacturers Association they've listened to Business New Zealand and they have listened to the chambers of commerce and their submissions. At select committee all those organisations made very staunch and strong submissions about how bad this piece of legislation was going to be—that it was going to take us back to the militant trade union scenario and landscape that we had back in the 1970s. Every indication we've had this year—the last 12 months—has been that that's exactly the course upon which the trade union movement wishes to take New Zealand at the moment. In fact it's fair to say in my opinion that when this bill comes back to the House probably in the last sitting block just before Christmas when the public's attention is diverted away from it we will see a significant backdown in terms of the big promises that the Labour Party made to their trade union friends and they will have to swallow a very significant dead rat. I think we're on the eve of seeing an embarrassing and humiliating backdown from the Government in terms of the promises they've made to trade unions.And why is this important? Well it's important because this is a Government that relies on the leveraging of New Zealand First in order to get any legislation passed. And when Winston Peters said a few weeks ago that this was "a work in progress" we all know around this Parliament that that is Winston Peters speak for "I'm going to have a fiddle. I'm going to have a play. I want to use it as a branding exercise." And so that's exactly what I think is going to occur.And when the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff says "We are incredibly disappointed by New Zealand First's attempts to duck the commitment they made." we know in fact that that is a concession from the trade unions that they've heard from the Labour Party—"We're not going to be able to deliver on everything we promised to you." Winston Peters has decided to have a play has decided to have a fiddle and we can just hope that the worst sharpest aspects of this have been softened by New Zealand First in their input."