Mitchell Clayton: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 10 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9617. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I would like to start my contribution today with a heavy heart by sending the Melgren family my sincerest heartfelt condolences on the loss of a great man Peter Melgren who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly this morning in Tauranga. We are thinking of him and his wife Troye; his children Chontelle and Sheldon; and his brother Philip. He has been a pillar of our community for many many years. He was involved in the Tauranga City Council for 30 years and was recently the Mount Mainstreet manager. He will be greatly missed.I stand with pride also today to speak to the legislation arising from the Employment Standards Legislation Bill and also—something that I have not done a lot of in my last 18 months of being in Parliament—to actually commend the bills to the House in full support. It was a fantastic feeling going through the Committee of the whole House on Tuesday and seeing the solidarity right around the Chamber. I just have to say that that was certainly something very very good. We would certainly like to see more of that.I do think however we have got a failure to communicate which we saw last week when to my shock and many others’ surprise we heard Labour come out and support the legislation despite there being no amendments made in the select committee being brought through. It made me stop in my tracks because we did as Mr Iain Lees-Galloway said together write up the minority report showing the solidarity of opposition and the comment that comes to mind is: “We cannot support what amounts to a broken promise of working New Zealanders.”This Government let us be honest has had many broken promises over the year—in fact I brought a folder full of broken promises—so it was a big shock to New Zealand First and to myself when we thought: “Oh no what’s going on here?”. But it was that failure to communicate an obligation that we saw of this Government to approach New Zealand First and all Opposition parties to involve them in discussions and conversations. I leave it at this point purely just saying that we are happy with the outcome but I think it needs to be brought to the attention of the House that if you are talking about an open transparent Government that is working for the best outcomes of all then you really need to have that bipartisan approach with all members of Parliament.It does make me also talk about the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee process where we saw the lines being drawn and the fight being given to try to get this resolved when it came to zero-hour contracts and yet at times it was like butting our heads up against the wall because the members of the Government were not wanting to rock the boat; they were wanting to keep it straight and steady. That I would like to see changed in the future so that we can actually have open genuine dialogue where you can have an opinion on it and you can challenge your own party’s position to put something forward that is going to be for the betterment of New Zealanders. This is an example of exactly that where we had to go out of the select committee to correct something—that was inherently wrong.I was also a little bit embarrassed as a politician on Tuesday night when I saw on the news members of parties who were squawking and fluffing up their feathers trying to take what they saw as their role in fixing up this problem. It is no wonder that New Zealanders sometimes hold politicians in such low regard when we see this sort of sanctimonious pomp and self-imposed importance—where we saw members of parties thinking that they were eagles flying above our heads when they actually need to realise they need to come back down to Earth get real and realise they are turkeys like everybody else. We have got a job to do we are public servants and we are there to come out with the best possible outcomes for New Zealand and New Zealanders.That aside this bill is a fantastic bill. There is probably one main area that I will spend some time talking on which I see as a flaw that will need to be fixed. I believe that with support from around the parties in this House we will resolve that and that is around casual employment contracts.This bill though does address the imbalance that we have had in this country for many years where employees are held back by some employers—not all. I know a majority of businesses operate and have always continued to operate in a professional manner with their employees and have treated themselves and their workers as equals. This bill brings back the balance in that relationship. You cannot have any relationship whether it be a sporting one a personal relationship or otherwise if there is a power struggle between one person with more than the other. This bill addresses that and brings that balance into line.Casual employment agreements do have a place in a modern workplace and the Minister himself did actually come out at the Committee of the whole House and make that very very clear—that a casual employment agreement if dealt with correctly is going to make up a large part of employment agreements around the country. We heard from submitters many thousands of submitters—12260 in total who took the time out of their day to submit—and hundreds of them who came in specifically to talk to us. I can only talk about one in particular and this was a professional lawyer. When we talk about vulnerable workers we think of uneducated people but here we had an educated lawyer who was a mother who was struggling under a casual employment agreement to get enough hours and enough certainty in her workplace to give her a quality of life that we would expect somebody of that education to be able to handle.Conversely I had conversations with other people in similar situations with another lawyer in fact who was on a casual employment agreement. It suited her to be virtually on call as and when required—the difference being that there was a need for work by one person who was a young mother and the other was a semi-retired lawyer who really just did it as and when she felt. So the balance was naturally there. But when the balance is not naturally there you do find that people on casual employment agreements can find themselves in a vulnerable situation where they are begging almost for the scraps of time from their employer to get work done. There is no incentive for the employer to actually get this person on to fixed employment—whether it be part-time or full time or on a contract basis. There is no incentive whatsoever.What New Zealand First strongly proposes and it is supported by the Greens and Labour—and we would like to see some support across—is to get a casual loading system for casual employment agreements. It works very very well in Australia. The proposal is a 19 percent loading on a casual employment agreement to incentivise the employer because it is costing them more to get that employee off the casual hours and on to fixed part-time or full-time hours.How that 19 percent was broken down was 1.6 percent for bereavement and sickness leave. Of course in a normal agreement you are not entitled to those until you have been working for 6 months so that would be a loading. Then you have got 4.4 percent of statutory holidays which part-time and full-time employees have the benefit of so that would be considered a loading. So that is a total of 6 percent. Then we added 5 percent for the employee to say: “You’re casual; we want to give you a bonus for that.”—and that comes to 11 percent. And then of course the 8 percent that is an entitlement to all workers. So we are talking in actual fact about 11 percent. When I asked the Minister the question of what this Government is proposing to do for casual employees he obfuscated and passed the buck to Jonathan Young the chair of our committee for him to stand up and give me an address on that and an answer.I was a little bit shocked because all I got was the Supplementary Order Paper read back to us verbatim and the statement that they cannot support this because there is no incentive for the employer to take them off that because you are only talking about a small amount of a boost and that would not be enough to take people off that. I was shocked. I said: “Well why don’t you make it 25 percent?”. I did scream that across the House so it may not be picked up in Hansard. The reality is we need to address that and I hope we get some cross-party support as we go further through this year.Paid parental leave was fantastic—16 to 18 weeks. We would like to see that further increased out to 26 weeks. There is much better enforcement in this new legislation. The inability for employers to take deductions out of wages has been removed. It is a much clearer much more open and transparent employment agreement and we do commend this legislation to the House. Thank you.