Dalziel Lianne: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — First Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:606;Page:4042] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 I do not think that the honourable Rodney Hide realised he had 2 more minutes to go. After last night everyone has become used to calm collected and friendly Committee stages. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The member should make her contribution by way of her speech. She was late in rising to the call. The bell indicated the termination of the previous speech. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I was not aware that there were only 5-minute speeches in first reading debates. Obviously I have not spoken during members’ night for a while. What has brought me down to the House to speak tonight after a long long time is Mark Peck’s bill. As Minister of Commerce with responsibility for this area I have come here to signal the Government’s desire to have this bill referred to the Commerce Committee so that work can commence on the policy that we have been working on as a Government since 1999. I have to pay some tribute to the National Government of the day when it agreed back then to review both the personal and corporate insolvency laws. I say good on National for that. I am glad that it started that process which we were very happy to pick up when we became the Government. We followed through the objectives that were set by the Government of the day for that review. 
We were asked to look at a predictable and simple regime for financial failure: one that can be administered quickly and efficiently imposing the minimum necessary compliance and regulatory costs on its users without stifling innovation responsible risk-taking and entrepreneurialism by excessively penalising business failure and one that distributes the proceeds to creditors in accordance with their relative pre-insolvency entitlements unless it can be shown that the public interest in providing greater protection to one or more creditors’ priority debts outweighs the economic and social costs of any such priority. That is what we are talking about here tonight. We are talking about the public interest in providing greater protection to one or more creditors with regard to the social cost of that priority not being accorded. 
All that this bill does is to remove limitations. The Government has already decided to increase the amount that can be paid in the way of wages holiday pay and those other things we have talked about. That amount has been increased from the figure of $6000 in the current legislation to $15000. I would like the select committee to look at that in some detail. The bill proposes that there be no cap on the amount that can be paid and I think the select committee should hear some argument on that. The second decision we have made is that redundancy compensation can be included within the cap. This bill makes it absolutely clear that wages holiday pay and redundancy compensation are all included within the concept of that priority. 
It is important that we do give workers the ability to do something that they cannot do themselves. What sets them apart from some of the commercial interests is that they cannot secure themselves against company failure. The previous National Government was very much responsible for improving the situation back in 1993 and this is another chance for National to come on board and to help to improve the situation even further. The whole point of the legislative framework is to provide protection for people who cannot protect themselves. Workers cannot secure the liability of wages or holiday pay earned or indeed of redundancy compensation that is due and payable. I believe that is an important issue that does need to be addressed. 
As I said before a number of decisions have already been taken on the insolvency law review. We owe the tier one decisions to my former colleague Laila Harré and I congratulate her on her work in that area. I announced the tier two decisions about a week ago. We have to remember that all those decisions are significant. There is no way that we could draft bills and introduce all the provisions refer them to a select committee and pass them through all the remaining stages by the end of this year. I therefore welcome this member’s bill in the House at this time so that we can address this issue with due speed and ensure that the sorts of examples we have heard from members on the Government side of the House and from the Green Party are not repeated in the future.