Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Just responding to a couple of issues raised by the Minister in terms of the widespread support in the sector for this which he claims I suppose the question I have is: is he aware that a large portion of the funding that drives this industry in this country comes from the Government and does he concede that it might be possible that many people in the sector are reluctant therefore to be openly critical of this Government which provides much of the funding for them? So I'd be interested to know just on what basis he thinks that everybody is happy about the timing of this legislation and whether he has really understood the realities of people trying to survive in business in a difficult post-COVID environment where—as every other industry is aware—people are having large sicknesses as a result of COVID. There are a lot of just practical difficulties of trying to restart a business that was rather frozen during the so-called COVID process. He thinks this is a great time for a major change. I'd put it to him from people that I've spoken to that there is no great enthusiasm for it right now but he may know better. The second point he raised was that he rather flippantly sort of passed on this notion that yes we're changing this basic arrangement that we have in New Zealand law that contractors cannot and should not collaborate with other contractors to set prices and terms and conditions. It's called cartel behaviour. That's why it's against the Commerce Act and what this law is proposing is to exempt this industry from that. The point that I wanted to get some clarity from the Minister about is that he says that this is highly specific—and it is in this legislation—to this industry and I just wanted to get from him the exact elements of this industry that make this unique requiring this change. I would also be interested—and he may choose to or not—in whether he can give a commitment that this approach would not be extended to other parts of the economy because if it was it would be a fundamental change to the way our markets work. It would be a dramatic change in the way that we organise companies and the way that we organise how things happen because there are many many contractors of course in many many industries and if we were to say that all of them could now—I mean the Government contracts out billions and billions of dollars of work. If he was to suggest that those contractors could now all sort of get together and collectively bargain over Government contracts that would be a very interesting thing to conclude but it would also have a very large impact on many industries. There is nervousness out there around the Government's intentions on this and the line between employee and contractor of course is a very contested space and it will continue to be so. So I'm just curious if we could get any more clarity from the Minister around exactly what it is about this industry that makes it a unique case on this particular issue around an exemption from sections 27 and 30 of the Commerce Act. Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): The particular features of this group of workers that are unique are the ones that I described in my previous comments which were that the previous Government by legislative fiat took away their fundamental rights to be considered employees to test those rights in the courts and to be able to collectively bargain. If the member feels very strongly that there should be a consistent position here he's very welcome to put up a Supplementary Order Paper to reclassify these workers as employees if they wish but I don't see any particular inclination from him to do that. In respect of the timing of the legislation the member might take some comfort from the fact that Supplementary Order Paper 234 changes the commencement date of the legislation from one month to three months.