Bennett David: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett David: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7195. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 The only good thing out of that speech was that that member Rino Tirikatene is going to send the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. But I did like that he said he had researched it. I am pretty sure he got it pulled out of the ballot and the day it was pulled out he had to work out what he actually had put in. 
The thing is that this bill is an attack on the fundamental ability of people to make decisions in their own life. It is democracy being attacked by the Labour Party again. It is the Labour Party trying to tell people how to live their lives. This bill is the thin end of the wedge because the reality is that the Labour Party members want to make all New Zealanders employees. They do not want any contractors in the New Zealand economy. They want only employees and this bill is the first step to achieving that. The Labour Party members are using young people as the first step in that saying “Oh we are looking after the interests of young people. We have to do this.” Rubbish! The Labour Party has got an agenda to make everybody employees and this bill is just the first step in that agenda. How dare you use young people in that way! 
 I remember this afternoon we sat in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and we had the Labour Party members saying “We cannot have any difference in the wage rates paid to young people. Can’t do that. Can’t do that.” But now in this House they want to have different contracts for young people so that they cannot be in contractual service but have to be in employment. One of the fundamentals of the society that we live in is freedom—freedom of choice democracy and the freedom for individuals to make choices about the arrangements they enter into. How dare the Labour Party take away the freedom of our young people! What gives those members the right to take away that freedom from young people in this country as people going forward? 
The Labour Party speech made an assumption. It assumed that if you are in a contractual relationship you are in a worse position for health and safety than if you were in an employment arrangement. That is not the case. It is not the case. There are accidents that happen in all workplaces. We need to make sure that all workplaces are as safe as possible. You cannot make assumptions like that in this House and then try to take away the freedom of our young people as a result of that. 
We also need to look at the practicality of this. Young people often need to be in jobs that are outside their school hours at times they can accommodate with their own timing. Being under a contractual basis is normally the easiest way to achieve that. It is the flexibility that is important for the young person and Labour members are taking that away. They are denying young people jobs and opportunities. They are denying the future paper boys and paper girls of New Zealand the chance to deliver that paper and that is a shame on the Labour Party. And it is not only for the really young. It is for 16-year-olds as well—16 and under. So a 16-year-old who may want to go farming who may want to go and become a contract milker cannot become a contract milker in New Zealand. Under the Labour Party they have to be an employee. You are dumbing down the workforce of New Zealand just for the purposes of Labour Party control and that is not in the best interests of this country. 
I am disappointed that this is the first bill that this member Rino Tirikatene has brought forward. I had more hope that he would have come through with a bigger bill that was in the interests of his communities rather than a fanciful approach of the Labour Party trying to test the waters with what it wants to do around employee contracts. It is a shame that he is being used by the Labour Party and it is a shame that that party is using young people in this way. The National Government will not do that. We believe in the freedom of our people we believe in the freedom of our young people and we believe that they should have a choice of how they arrange their employment relations whether as an employee or as a contractor. Thank you.