Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well thank you very much Mr Speaker. I had to go and refresh my memory about the introduction of this bill because it happened so long ago. It was back in March 2020 back in the last Parliament.Just listening to the member who has resumed her seat Marja Lubeck I did a quick look at her Wikipedia page and it lists her profession as trade unionist". That actually sums it up completely. Not a politician not a member of Parliament not a servant of the people; her profession is listed on Wikipedia as trade unionist. The Minister speaking earlier on in this bill: he's a unionist as well. He came from the old FinSec union. And that actually belies the linkage between the parliamentary Labour Party and the trade union movement. Those linkages are historic they are political and in many cases they are financial as well.So what we have here is what we thought was originally a piece of legislation that was going to be rushed through in the dying stages of the last Parliament on a promise that the Labour Party made in 2017 to their union mates that they would introduce this legislation and have it passed within the first 100 days of their administration. Well here we are nearly 5½ years into this failed Labour Government and they are only now bringing back this legislation from select committee for a second reading. So what went wrong? Well fundamentally the legislation is flawed. It's wrong it's conceptually inadequate and it removes freedoms. It removes flexibility. It removes the ability of employers and employees to freely negotiate terms and conditions of employment in a way that Labour Party politicians and trade unionists find objectionable. Well on this side of the House we stand for freedom. We stand for the ability to have flexible labour laws for laws that enable businesses and employees to work together to grow businesses to create strong jobs and to create opportunity for a growing economy. But on that side of the House they take the reverse view. They like big Government they like centralised control they like strict union discipline and Dr Gaurav Sharma has just today revealed the intensity of the strict union discipline that is applied within the Labour Party's parliamentary caucus—and so it is within the trade union movement.This is a party that likes to control people. They like not to give people individual rights. They are scared and fearful of people making decisions for themselves. What they want is union control. And actually this piece of legislation is all about a relationship that is historic and political and at times financial with the parliamentary Labour Party and the trade union movement. This piece of legislation does nothing to encourage the brilliant and bright opportunities that exist for New Zealand filmmakers—and the people who work for them and with them—to create great movies a great industry and great opportunities for us as a nation and to grow our economy. This is a bill that will stifle that.The previous speaker quoted from two unnamed submitters. Well we had 207 submissions to the select committee back in 2020. Only 30 of them were heard in person but my recollection of those was that they were just a steady stream of union members—one after another—who gave remarkably similar testimony to the select committee. In fact if I was a teacher and they were my pupils I would have accused them of plagiarism because the words were the same. One would have thought that they had been provided with a cookie cutter template submission word script to use; talking points to use.For the then chair of the select committee—I'm not sure that she's still the chair of the select committee—to then cite those as some kind of justification for this piece of retrograde legislation that removes people's freedoms that removes flexibility from the workforce and removes ability for us to grow an economy; that's a disgraceful use of selective submissions from the trade union movement by that member. As I said we've had an insight just today as to how strict and controlling that mentality can be within an organisation that doesn't like people being individuals.On that Government's side they like to put everybody into groups into units into groupings of human beings—they don't see them as individuals. They don't trust individuals. And that's of course basic socialist dogma—not to trust individuals. They don't like that. So at select committee this legislation was considered and the select committee made a number of changes but one of the changes was a further insight. And just remember—for people who are watching and listening at home—that at select committee the Labour Party Government has an absolute majority in the select committee as they do within this Parliament currently but not for much longer. One of the things that was changed at select committee was the meaning of "screen production worker". I want to quote from the select committee's report where the majority—the Labour Party majority—on the select committee came to the view and it says in the report "We consider that the intention of the bill is to treat an individual as working for another person even if the individual is providing their services through a third party." Now let me say that again because it takes some getting your head around to understand that: "We consider that the intention of the bill is to treat an individual as working for another person even if the individual is providing their services through a third party."Well that's the kind of mind-set that this Labour Party Government considers "individuals". They want the employer not to have any individual relationship with the employee. They want the flexibility of negotiating terms conditions and arrangements to be made by third parties who actually may not be privy to the commercial workings and understandings of both the employee and the employer. They don't like that.They want to categorise everyone as a worker who is a unit of production and that's not the view that we see on this side of the House. We have far greater respect for individuals and their ability to negotiate their own terms and conditions on the basis that they are intelligent smart capable clever professional people with skill sets that are sought after by employers—and in this case filmmakers. On the Labour Party side they don't see it like that at all. They want the union to be controlling it; they want the employees to be members of that union.So on this side of the House we see that this piece of legislation's second reading—and as my friend and colleague Paul Goldsmith has made very clear we will of course oppose this legislation. But after three years of mucking around and waiting it seems that the union movement is having to wait a long time for the original 2017 commitment to pass this legislation in 100 days—5½ years into their term they are now just getting around to a second reading.So we on this side of the House don't support the legislation. We think it's backwards. We think it's a step back to the 1970s. We think it's Napoleonic in terms of its approach and the Minister represents everything about that kind of description in terms of his speaking to the bill at second reading. He has a Napoleonic approach to freedom of negotiation between people who want to work and sell their skill set to a willing buyer in terms of a production company a movie production company that may want to use their services and pay appropriately for them.So this Screen Industry Workers Bill we think is a retrograde step. We don't support it. We won't support it. And given an opportunity if we have the privilege of sitting on the Government side of the benches in 15 short months' time this is a piece of legislation that we will almost certainly look to put right in the fullness of time."