Tuiono TeanauNANCY LU (National): I am standing before you today to voice my opposition and that I do not support the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill. Now while part of this bill may sound like it has good intentions as mentioned by several previous members across the House this legislation in my opinion when I read through it when I listened in to the submissions when I heard actually directly from the member who proposed the bill Dr Tracey McLellan the legislation in my opinion is actually trying to solve a problem by looking for a problem to try to solve. Now that already got me lost. When I was looking at it—what is the problem that we are trying to solve here and where is the data and the evidence that can be put before us? For example sitting in the Finance and Expenditure Committee with my good colleagues the MP for Tukituki Catherine Wedd asked that question: show us some examples—show us some examples. What do you mean?"—you know "Remove those personal names and give us some concrete examples so that we can understand; we actually want to understand the problem so that we understand what it is that we are trying to do. Where is the evidence for it? Where's the data for it and then what is the possible solution that we can actually align on and eventually vote on?" And the answer was silence. There isn't really something evident for us to look into. But OK let's go back to this bill that we have debated for quite some time now. It is hoping to seek to prevent discrimination against workers who are KiwiSaver members by allowing them to raise personal grievance if they believe their employment has been adversely affected due to their KiwiSaver membership. Now that very very long wordy sentence tells me it's very subjective. Yes I agree employment agreements between employers and employees are subjective but it is also very confidential. But what we are talking about here is actually asking employers who have the expertise with HR departments HR expertise or have the money to hire HR experts or human resource lawyers to be able to look into these employment agreements.But what we do have in New Zealand—and actually this brings me back to my prior life before coming into this House was I was once a finance manager and an HR manager for a company about 30 full-time employees and what we have found is that the New Zealand Government and our official websites already provide very comprehensive helpful straightforward documents and processes that help many many of our businesses in New Zealand to draft good proper law-abiding employment agreements. What the employers—and that is the 95 percent of businesses in New Zealand the small medium enterprises who actually hire less than five full-time employees in New Zealand—they don't have the time to hire or the chance or the money to hire an HR manager. They don't really have the time or the money from their hard-working money to hire an HR lawyer to help them to go through the employment contracts. That's why actually on many of our Government websites there are templates and good processes for them to be able to do those employment contracts.However when I looked at this bill this very bill in front of us what I was reading through and I put on my former HR and finance manager hat I thought this is creating so much uncertainty for me. If I wanted to hire someone or if I have the opportunity to and in this very dire and challenging economic environment in New Zealand when I put on my HR manager hat I'm actually hesitant because I don't know what I'm getting myself into. And by this I mean I don't know what I'm getting myself into by signing this employment contract for a potential new employee for this company. But then what are the finance costs related to it? What are the potential personal grievance? What do you mean personal grievance? It's so subjective. So that is very discouraging for our companies in New Zealand and again I have to remind everyone in this House but also people are listening in and watching us on TV we are talking about 95 percent of businesses in New Zealand are less than five people full-time employees. And so for these companies and for these employers to have to feel those uncertainties sometimes it might be actually easier if the employer just does a little bit more. Now my parents and this is again I think bringing in—and so when I was reading through the bill and listening to submissions I was thinking a lot about the people and families that I know around me and that includes a lot of the small and medium businesses that we have in the Chinese community in New Zealand including my parents who once owned a small business.Often what happens is instead of putting all the extra time into managing people and doing all that they prefer to hire less people and then just pile on more work on themselves for example my parents. I remember my parents—my dad would go out would leave the home would leave home at about 5:00 a.m. in the morning so he could go out and get ready for business. But he would always be the last one to shut the doors to turn off the lights to come home. And he would do that and then I've asked him many times as a younger person in the family I've asked him " Why can't you get more help?" Well the problem is for him he thought if he can do it and there will be less trouble between the different kinds of employees the different kinds of training and then the different discussions and debates. Also coming down to for example when personal grievance happens what happens to the employers of these small enterprises? Often as employers who felt extremely helpless they don't know who to go to. The first advice they probably will get is to go to speak to a lawyer. But how much would a lawyer charge? And so it very very discouraging. So when I read through the bill and when I listen through to the submissions and when I see there is so little evidence about the actual problem that we are trying to solve I come back to my very first question when I began my speech: what is the bill trying to address? There isn't really—and so the other thing that when I read through this bill was the bill also failed to consider and account for—there is more than just KiwiSaver in New Zealand. People actually have a choice about what they want to do for their savings but this bill fails to account for the diverse retirement saving preferences for workers and workers deserve to have the choice to choose how they want to save how they want to invest such as for example property or personal investment portfolios or other retirement schemes. But by legislating to mandate equal treatment of KiwiSaver members we are actually inadvertently disadvantaging those who have made different financial choices and this is something that I don't believe some of our Kiwi workers out there would agree to. Another unintended consequence when I was reading through the bill and I thought in my head was this potential of racing to the bottom in our employment terms in the negotiations. So rather than risk offering better conditions to some employees because I really see the potential in you or because I really see the capabilities and experiences that you bring in instead of having a mindset with the employers of "I will risk offering you better conditions for this employee because I really want you to join me and help me to grow my business and help me to expand my business" some employers because they have been mandated to do more red tape to follow more red tape and because there is so much more that they need to do they might have to opt out and just make it easy because it's easier to follow the law to standardise all the packages and therefore everybody's the same and therefore there is no competitiveness between what we want to do.So this overall could result in a worse outcome and worse mindset not only just for the employees but also for employers. So in New Zealand many many of our businesses and again coming back to what I said a bit earlier the 95 percent of the small medium enterprises that hire less than five people in New Zealand they don't need the extra layers of red tape and this is why our Government when people have the choice people would vote for choice and when people had the choice to vote for a Government that will cut all the red tape—and many times now that we've also said to cut all the green tape so we can actually unleash some potential and actually allow people to be a little bit more flexible allow people to take on some more risks and be OK to take on risk to take on opportunities to grow their businesses to grow the local economy for example in the beautiful areas like Tukituki and Hamilton and to actually grow our economy overall as a whole for New Zealand.So I really don't commend this bill to the House because I don't see the problem it is trying to address and we're just going around and around trying to identify a problem. So with that I don't commend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): There is a spare five-minute call. I call Dr Vanessa Weenink."