Sabin Mike: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSabin Mike: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16811. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MIKE SABIN (National—Northland):The member who just resumed her seat Denise Roche was talking about lifting wages. Her answer to lifting wages was actually more unionisation and collective bargaining. I do not think so. Lifting wages is about productivity. Hello! You know in the world of the Greens this is all you need to do: you just need to get a bit of the old union strong-arming or to lift the minimum wage with a bit of legislation and employers can just pay higher wages forthwith. Well that is not actually how the real world works. What a business relies on in terms of its employees and raising wages for employees is the fact that they produce a product and they do it efficiently—OK? Is that not right? So if the Greens are so concerned about lifting wages then I would expect that they should be voting for the bills in this Parliament that this Government is passing that are all about the economy and productivity. But that is right—the Greens do not vote for those bills because they are not actually about lifting productivity. They are actually about lifting the presence of the unions or possibly that is their friends over there on the other side of the House in the Labour Party.Andrew Williams spoke earlier and anyone tuning in to that speech would think they had gone back about 60 years or so to the wharf strikes because the sort of rhetoric that was coming out of his mouth was archaic. It has had its day and it is gone. Part of the noise that comes out of there—admittedly they have got to do a bit of payback to their union friends who will be tuning in and watching the debate so there is a bit of payback going on there—[Interruption] Oh that has got them excited. That has got them excited. Part of it is that I think the unions and people like Andrew Williams and co. are worried about the fact that actually the flexibility that is introduced—Barbara Stewart: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Andrew Williams did not speak on this bill. It was Andrew Little.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will you correct that?MIKE SABIN: Sorry Mr Deputy Speaker a Freudian slip. Yes Andrew Little—Andrew Little. Sorry Barbara—yes Andrew Williams. Andrew Williams is not the person we are talking about.Dr Cam Calder: He would have spoken well though.MIKE SABIN: Yes he would have. It is Andrew Little. Andrew Little talked as though we had gone back a couple of generations in his thinking. Actually anyone listening to that speech would think that employers are there to do nothing else other than to exploit employees. It is just an absolute load of rubbish. It is as much a load of rubbish as Labour members suggesting that there is a manufacturing crisis out there. We all know that that is not the case. They are not banging on about that any more are they? Oh no. They will be saying: “Let’s take dairying out of that equation. Let’s just magic up some different figures because then actually what we’re saying is plausible.” Well actually nothing of what they are saying is plausible.I actually think that what the Employment Relations Amendment Bill recognises is that there is a reciprocal relationship between the employer and the employee and that relationship is centred on the need for one another to work in a collaborative and respectful manner in a fashion that improves productivity because when productivity is improved everyone is actually a winner. That is what this bill provides for. And I do not know why Labour members are so scared of that. Are they so scared of that because that means that they will not have as much control in the workplace any more? As the Greens seem to suggest if you want to lift wages it is all about collective bargaining. Collective bargaining and discussions of that nature will always have a place but do not ever forget that raising wages is about raising productivity. It is about an economy and it is about a Government that actually gets what it takes to grow the economy. It is an excellent bill and I look forward to seeing workplaces embrace it.