Macindoe Tim; Rurawhe AdrianHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. Do you know it's not often that I feel a sense of unbridled excitement when the honourable member Clayton Mitchell is speaking in the House. But just for a moment I had that rush of emotion because I thought from the way that he started that he was going to say New Zealand First had opposed this bill at the first reading but let it go through so that it could go to the select committee and we now realise that it's an unnecessary and frankly counterproductive bill and we're going to go through with our reservations and vote it down." I thought yes that means that National and New Zealand First together will have the numbers we can get rid of this one and get on to some significant legislation. But oh no Mr Mitchell has let us all down and my excitement level went down quite considerably as well. This bill is another example of Labour's payback to the unions for their efforts at election time and we see that coming through time and time again. It is an unnecessary bill. It's clearly an anti-business bill but it's also an anti - workers' rights bill. And I say that because a basic right of workers is not to join a union if they choose not to or if that doesn't suit their circumstance and yet this is part of a suite of employment law changes that we've been seeing coming through from this Government for the last 18 months or so which are all about union recruitment.Hon Clare Curran: What a silly man.Hon TIM MACINDOE: So let—that's so kind of the member for Dunedin South! It's possibly the nicest thing she's ever said to me. I could perhaps give a dissection of the merits of her speech a few moments ago—Hon Clare Curran: Seriously though could you run a decent argument?Hon TIM MACINDOE: —but that wouldn't be particularly edifying. I'll let her just sit there and insult me. She might actually do me the courtesy of listening because this is about union recruitment.Mr Mitchell mentioned a few moments ago that he'd listened to some of the submissions and they had substantially improved the bill. Well I do pay tribute to the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for the work that they did but let's not be under any illusion here. Mr Mitchell mentioned the Business New Zealand submission. I'm holding it up here and the Business New Zealand submission includes right at the outset "Business NZ opposes the Bill and recommends that it not proceed in any form."—in any form. So for Mr Mitchell to suggest that suddenly they're quite happy about it flies in the face of reality. Now to be fair to Business New Zealand they're not suggesting for one moment that exploitation of workers should be condoned. Of course it shouldn't. Nobody in this House would argue for exploitation of workers. Of course workers have the right to be protected from exploitation but the suggestion that this bill will prevent that from occurring is fanciful.I'll just make one final point in conclusion. The union narrative that underpins this bill is at odds with recent international agreements on non-standard forms of employment and fair recruitment. Those were negotiated by Governments unions and employers in tripartite fora at the International Labour Organization during 2015 and 2016. So this is an issue that has been recently dealt with in a consensual way by representatives of the different interests in Labour relationships and it has been quite clearly found to be unnecessary. So the National Party strongly opposes this bill. We're very disappointed that New Zealand First don't seem to be prepared to stand up for the principles that they were enunciating earlier in the debate. I'm sorry that it sounds as if it will go forward further. I hope I'm proved wrong.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Jan Logie."