Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker and it's a pleasure to take a call on the Screen Industry Workers Bill. I would like to start by just correcting the previous speaker Scott Simpson on a few things. This bill is the culmination of hard work by many many parties and it is actually a piece to be really proud of. I commend the Minister Iain Lees-Galloway on bringing it to the House. But this was the commitment that we made: to start it in the first 100 days. So the fact that we're bringing it into the House now is the fruition of all the work that has been done.Somehow the Opposition seems to criticise us for taking the time to get it right rather than what they did when they actually put the Hobbit law" in place when they rushed it through—"rammed it through" I think was the wording that the Minister correctly used—did it overnight without the ability of one single person who was actually at the receiving end of this legislation to have a say in it. There was no select committee at all. The previous speaker objected to a shortened time line. Well the Opposition when they were in the National Government rammed this piece of legislation through without even one day in between putting it into law. So the hypocrisy is just touching me from the side and I want to have a shower.This bill shows that we are actively addressing the long-term challenges facing New Zealand and we are not shying away from the problems; we are actually tackling them. When the Opposition talks about jobs as we hear them do their focus is on the numbers—basically just the number of jobs. It doesn't matter what kind of a job as long as people have jobs—never mind about the quality of the jobs. Now what we are doing is very different. We are bringing dignity and respect back into the workplace. That is something that the Opposition doesn't know and actually the fact that the previous spokesperson for workplace relations took the first call is very telling because I believe that the current spokesperson for workplace relations doesn't actually really care.Jan Tinetti: Who's that?MARJA LUBECK: I think it's the Hon Todd McClay but he doesn't care. He might take a call—who knows—but we haven't heard him so far.So what we are doing now when we're talking about jobs is we are restoring the rights of screen production workers to bargain collectively to actually allow them to continue working as contractors. As we have heard from the Minister currently these workers are deemed to be contractors. They are therefore not entitled to employment rights and people might be surprised about that. These are human rights to bargain collectively—internationally recognised rights all over the world. In other countries screen and film industry workers do have those rights and from overseas they come to New Zealand with those rights—they would have bargained collectively for their rights—but yet we are denying our own people in New Zealand to have those same rights. It's absolutely appalling.This started back in 2010—that's quite correct—and the workers at that time sought to get some protection some minimum standards in legislation to protect them from things like bullying harassment contract termination security of work health and safety—minimum rights nothing more they asked for. The film industry—and people have not properly understood this—is a very unusual inconsistent and potentially exploiting industry so we need to make sure that people have proper protections in place.Now we all know what happened at the end of the day because of that imbalance in the employment relationships because contrary to what the previous speaker told us it's not a matter of just walking up to your boss and telling him or her what you want; it's actually an uneven playing field. So collective bargaining puts that balance a little bit back in the scales. But in the end what happened is that the National Government rode roughshod over the people's working rights and again as I said overnight without any select committee process at all put this legislation in place—took away the rights to collectively bargain for a group of New Zealand workers. They did that overnight. The Minister said "an abrogation of the democratic process" and I think that's a wonderful word.It was a shameful day for New Zealand. It was a shameful day. I was a law student in my second year at that time and I remember the feeling—DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm just going to stop the speaker because we've had a lot of talk about the past. I do think that she should focus on the bill before the House. This is the first reading of that bill.MARJA LUBECK: Absolutely and it was an absolute outrage that this bill needs to turn around a situation that was created in such a contentious and deeply motivated action. There's actually a really great record of this contentious industrial dispute. If anybody wants to google "Helen Kelly president of the NZCTU Hobbit dispute" you'll get all of the background.So actually fast-forwarding nine years lifting nine years of dark blue darkness we now have a great bill in place. To pass that bill actually gives some human rights back to the group that should have that. So I commend this bill to the House. Thank you very much."