Mapp Wayne: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1475] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 The law was bad back in 2004 and it is bad now. Let us take for instance the current situation—and I appreciate that the Act does not strictly apply here. Let us imagine for instance that an airline company wants to change the service provider for the maintenance of its aircraft. This is not an airline company that is just having a change of shareholders but one that wants a different service provider to do its maintenance. Under this bill that airline company would still be stuck with the very people whom it did not want continuing to do the maintenance. That is a flawed theory. 
Labour’s argument is that a special group of people is much more vulnerable than any other group of people: cleaners. I have to ask whether there are hordes of unemployed cleaners around the country and whether cleaners are actually disadvantaged. It is one thing to be low-skilled and to have modest wages; I acknowledge that cleaners are often in that situation. Cleaning is often part-time work night work and so forth. But that of itself does not mean that people in that situation therefore cannot get jobs and are always on the unemployment list—it is not like that. In fact at various times when I was at university I did some cleaning jobs and I am sure many people in Parliament can testify that they also did so. The reality is that those jobs were easy to get. The industry is characterised by relatively high turnover. Cleaning is typically not a job that people want to stay in for long periods of time. It is a falsehood to argue that workers in that industry are uniquely vulnerable and need a job guarantee. It does not matter what the Minister says; that is effectively what will happen. 
This legislation is a form of job guarantee irrespective of whether the person who originally needed cleaners wants to change the people who are doing the job. The employer may say that contractor X is doing a bad job and that a new contractor is needed to do the work but the Government says that the employer cannot do that. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Really? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: No the employer cannot do that. The employer is unable to get new cleaners if that is what is needed because the original cleaners can say: “Hang on a minute; we just want to transfer over.” The Government says that that applies even in cases such as  
Gibbs and others 
 v  
Crest Commercial Cleaning Ltd 
 which referred to subsequent or second-generation contracting. So it applies not only in a situation where there is simply a change in shareholding but in the situation of a franchise operation where there is a change. The original cleaners will always be able to say that they want to keep cleaning a place irrespective of whether they are doing a good job. Irrespective of whether the job has been satisfactory those people are able to stay. 
 That cuts across business freedom. The Labour Party will say that that sounds all very harsh and unreasonable and that the National Party is just taking a prejudiced view against people on low incomes. I acknowledge that people in the cleaning industry are on lower incomes. But let us look at the facts of the  
Gibbs and others  
v 
 Crest Commercial Cleaning 
Ltd 
 case. The people were cleaning kindergartens. Kindergartens are not flush with money; they have to be careful with their resources. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: And they have to be well cleaned. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: And that is the key point—well cleaned. People do not just change cleaners willy-nilly; there has to be a reason for people to change a cleaner. Perhaps the job is not satisfactory or it is over-priced. It could be any one of a number of reasons and I am certain that people with commercial experience know the truth of that. Kindergartens are not noted for being rapacious organisations. They had very good reasons to make the switch and they did so. They sought to employ Crest Commercial Cleaning an organisation that did not directly employ cleaners. It used franchise operators which it then engaged to do the actual cleaning. It was on that point that the court stated the 2004 legislation did not apply—that it would have applied only if Crest had been directly engaging the cleaners as opposed to operating a franchise operation. 
Labour wants to ignore the whole concept of the integrity of contracts. It wants to ignore the whole concept of franchising and of different arrangements. It just wants to cut across that completely. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: No free enterprise. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: We know that the Government does not understand free enterprise. So in practical terms this Government is prepared to say to the kindergarten organisations in Dunedin that it is too bad if they have bad cleaners who are not performing as one would reasonably expect them to perform because they are stuck with them. The Government is telling those organisations that it does not matter what arrangements they make—whether they change firms or try to get franchises to do the work—because they are still stuck with the original people. Where is the incentive for better performance in that? How will people actually improve competitiveness productivity and all the things the Government says we need to do in the New Zealand economy? Essentially people will stop taking those sorts of actions. 
National is fundamentally opposed to this legislation. It cuts across commercial reality and across the ability of people to improve their performance. It means that one has to take on as the new cleaners the very people to whom people are choosing to say: “Actually we need a new group of people to do that work.” Only then can one apply all the new tests. Actually the test was being applied at the time of changing the contract in order to get a different firm. Let us imagine the situation if we did that with regard to carpenters. Let us say we engaged a group of carpenters to build a house but found halfway through the contract that things were not going in quite the way they were supposed to go and that we needed to get a new builder. If we went along to the carpenters and told them that the contract was not working and that we needed to get in a new firm to complete the job those carpenters could say to us that we were perfectly entitled to do so but that they would still turn up the next day and continue to work on the house because their jobs would just continue on. That is exactly what Labour proposes in this legislation. Labour thought that the 2004 amendment to the Act was marvellous. Well it was not marvellous. It has led to a less productive economy. 
In the couple of minutes I have remaining I want to say that this country has a problem with its productivity. Everyone in this Parliament acknowledges that. The way to boost productivity is by boosting skills and competitiveness by eliminating compliance costs and by reducing taxes. Labour is failing the test on every one of those. For instance Australia—the country with which we compare ourselves—spends under a conservative Government more than we do on skills training and on building expertise. It puts 1.5 percent of its total wealth into boosting skills. It does that not just in the universities and polytechnics but right across the board at all levels. This country spends 1.3 percent. 
One of the key choices Australia has made is to boost productivity. This country has not made that choice. I ask Labour—because it will have a choice in 2 or 3 weeks—whether it will support a 90-day probation period. Every country in the OECD has done that. Some—for instance Britain—have a year. New Zealand is the only country that does not have a 90-day probation period and that holds back productivity. Will the Government do that? 
Lindsay Tisch 
: That will be a test. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: It will be a test for the Government. Does it want to have a more competitive economy? 
Chris Auchinvole 
: It says it does. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: It says it does but if this legislation is anything to go by then the answer can only be no. 
Finally will the Government reduce taxes for hard-working New Zealanders—low-income earners especially—irrespective of their incomes? The answer to all those questions is no no no and no and that is why so many people are going to Australia. 
This is bad law. It was bad in 2004 and it is bad in 2006.