Heatley Phil: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Heatley Phil: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12154] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) 
to be read today. It is interesting that we are speaking about this bill straight after debate on the Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill during which we talked a lot about constitutional decisions being made and running roughshod over them. That has happened previously and we will be inspecting this bill particularly during its Committee stage as to whether that has happened in this case. It is highly likely; if so members will hear what the National Party feels about that. 
The bill was examined by the Education and Science Committee. The committee recommended that it be passed with various amendments and I look forward to discussing some of those. The State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) makes amendments to the State Sector Act and interestingly to the Education Act. The main focus of the bill is to address problems that apparently arise from the fact that the State Services Commissioner’s ability to negotiate collective agreements is currently compromised by boards of trustees retaining all those usual rights. Throughout the country we have seen boards of trustees wanting to act independently and with a large degree of autonomy when it comes to the employment of their staff. That is because schools like a particular flavour. They may wish to employ people who provide that flavour in the school. It might be a focus on Maori education and there is nothing wrong with that. It might be a focus on particular technical areas. When I went to school there were woodwork metalwork and technical drawing classes—those kinds of subjects. It might be a focus on learning the English language and so on. As well as providing a general education across the curriculum a school might specialise in particular areas. 
Boards of trustees have rights duties and powers relating to them as employers for all sorts of purposes. The difficulty of course is that the exercise of those rights duties and powers meant that the State Services Commissioner could not easily negotiate collective agreements. When those agreements were being negotiated of course the parties the commissioner was negotiating with would always come back to the issue that under the Education Act boards of trustees had those responsibilities. So in that negotiating process they were torn between not only two Acts but various parties—and rightly so. 
 So this bill is brought about to empower the commissioner to exercise the related powers of an employer when negotiating collective agreements. It requires the union bargaining for a collective agreement to give prior notice of industrial action and that seems fair enough to us. We do not want to see strikes in this country. We certainly do not want to see the strikes that we saw in 2002 when teachers in schools all over the country went out on strike one after another and kids were sent home. If that is going to happen—and it certainly happened under the Labour Government and is something that we did not see in the latter years of the National Government—we need to see the unions giving prior notice of that action. That seems fine with us. 
The bill also empowers the commissioner to suspend striking employees by notifying the relevant union rather than advising each employee separately. This type of issue is where we part with the Labour Party in supporting this bill and it is why we will not be voting for it. The National Party will be opposing it. We find it appalling that the commissioner in suspending striking employees has to notify the relevant union rather than the employee. Imagine if that happened in the private workforce—outside the public sector—whereby a business owner who was laying off or employing staff did not inform that staff member of the job he or she had just won or lost or inform the staff member about the job how it was going its continuation its progress and how the duties under that employment may develop. The owner would not talk to the individual involved—the person who woke up every morning and went to work at 8 o’clock and left at 5 o’clock after putting in a good day’s work—but instead he or she would notify the union. It raises all sorts of concerns with us. It tells us that the Minister in charge of the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) has a greater appreciation for the union bureaucracy and a need to inform unions than he does for the individual worker who might be affected by any decision in the workplace. The example I used in this case was when boards of trustees had issues with regard to their rights duties and powers. That ran against what the commissioner was able to do. 
There are also amendments to clarify the commissioner’s powers during a negotiation. The commissioner is able to cover boards of trustees for the costs of damages and some amendments are brought about by that. The commissioner will cover the costs of boards of trustees for damages arising out of the exercise of powers conferred on the commissioner. In other words if the commissioner makes a decision rightly or wrongly costs are therefore put upon boards of trustees. They should not be penalised by having to pay those costs. The commissioner through these particular amendments will reimburse those costs to the board of trustees—and rightly so. There is no reason at all why decisions made by one party should penalise another. 
The employees must give sufficient notice of a strike and I spoke about that earlier. Under this bill the boards are also obligated to provide information on a strike and there will be amendments to clarify redundancy provisions. The National Party will oppose this bill. During the Committee stage we will certainly be discussing in more detail why that is the case. I bring the House’s attention to the minority view which I did not go over but which is in the commentary. It summarises a little bit about how the New Zealand National Party views the bill.