Mallard Trevor: Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10510] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 The Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill is an interesting bill from the Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson. It was very very urgent. In fact if one looks at the bill one can immediately accuse the Minister of two things: first of being very very slow to get her legislation into the House and secondly of being lazy and not even getting clause 1 “Title” correct. She has stated the wrong year in that clause for example. That is just a sign of how poorly this Minister has focused on her legislation and on the requirement to get it right. 
I will also quote from the material that the Minister has supplied to us. The “Consultation” section of the explanatory note of the bill states: “Officials have advised they have concerns about developing the proposed amendments to the rest breaks and meal breaks provisions of the principal Act at speed and without adequate consultation. This may result in policy being designed and implemented with unintended consequences including unforeseen regulatory compliance impacts and administrative costs.” 
We have now the major embarrassment of a Minister who introduced a bill nearly a year ago as something that was really really urgent but badly drafted badly consulted on and not worked on properly. Then she left it just sitting on the Order Paper for that period of time. What did she say at the time was the reason for the bill? She said there was an urgent problem with regard to air traffic controllers. Do members know what the urgent problem was? It was that some dipstick in the Civil Aviation Authority had indicated that everyone had to have meal breaks all around the country at the same time and that pilots were too thick to work out that when their flights were delayed they had to contact air traffic controllers to say they would be late. Pilots do that anyway. When pilots are off their schedule they always contact air traffic controllers. It comes up on the screens of the air traffic controllers so they know whether a plane will be late and whether their meal or rest break might be delayed. It is a basic safety thing. There was never a problem other than one that was very close to being a figment of the imagination in the mind of the Minister of Labour who was scrambling for an excuse in order to tip the existing legislation over. 
But of course what the Minister forgot was that as the amending legislation was coming through the House in 2008 she was less than full and frank. She did not really tell us what she thought. She was in a pre-election sort of phase of not wanting to disturb anyone and of pretending that she was friendly to workers especially women workers. She was in that sort of phase at the time and she made some really interesting comments on that legislation. She said: “it merely codifies what is already happening in most workplaces” and it “should have been relatively uncontroversial.” So what has changed? What has changed in workplaces since that time? 
Sue Moroney 
: Ah air traffic controllers. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well air traffic controllers and nothing else. 
Then there was a lovely statement. I very rarely agree with the Minister but it was one she made on the third reading of the amending legislation in 2008. She said “Rest breaks and meal breaks are not there just for health and safety issues of course; they are also there for the socialising impact between employees so that they get to know each other and it can be a happy and productive workplace and we certainly support that.” That is what the Minister said and she is right. We have a cup of tea together we have a break and a chat we get to know our workmates and we have a happier workplace and are more productive. That is a good thing. Why is she wrecking that now? Why were productive workplaces important before the election but not important after the election? There has been very little in what the Minister has said that would convince us that they are at all important. 
What we are seeing though is something that comes from a Minister who before her time in Parliament was one of the main promoters of the Employment Contracts Act. Kate Wilkinson has had quite an interesting history in industrial relations law over a period of time. We are seeing her get back to her natural roots. She is getting back to the point of supporting the sweatshop employers whom she supported and represented in the past when she represented them from outside Parliament. Now she is representing them from inside Parliament; she is doing their bidding here tonight. Notwithstanding her fine words before the election when she was pretending to be friendly to workers especially women workers she has now turned her back on them. She has rejected them and she is saying that she does not care if they do not get a break. She is saying they can work right through that time and have a break at the end of their shift. It is sort of wonderful: one of the things that will flow out of this legislation is that people will work for their 8 hours and will then be allowed to take their two 10-minute breaks and then half an hour. 
Darien Fenton 
: Unpaid. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Unpaid for the half-hour. That is the sort of approach that this Minister is promoting at this stage. 
The Minister should just admit that this bill is badly drafted. She has not used the last year in which time the bill has been sitting around to get it updated. She has done no further consultation on this bill in that time and she was too damned lazy to update it. 
Carol Beaumont 
: Shoddy. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: It is shoddy—like John Key with his trust really. 
Sue Moroney 
: Sloppy. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Sloppy is the word. Like the Prime Minister the Minister has been sloppy in her approach to her work. She is so far out of date that she did not even have the good grace to get the bill printed with the right date in it. Now we have the Minister of Justice in the House and he has a much better reputation than Kate Wilkinson for consulting on these things. He certainly would never get to the first reading of a bill and have the wrong date in it. He would never do that; he is far too competent to do that. At some time over the next 10 minutes it would be good if Simon Power had a word in Kate Wilkinson’s ear and told her that when she introduces legislation she should not be sloppy but should just get the date right to start with.