Parmar ParmjeetDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker for the opportunity to take this call on the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill. The member in charge of the bill I was just wondering which world he lives in but then the member who just resumed her seat clarified where he actually comes from which was good to know. But we know that that region is quite business-focused and they understand what is good for business and what is not good for business and what is good for our labour market—the flexibility that is needed. Those businesses definitely understand that which that member and of course the Labour Party clearly don't understand. I also heard from the member who just resumed her seat that all the immigrants or most of the immigrants actually go through the labour hire companies and actually I refute that comment from the member. All of a sudden that member is showing so much love to immigrants and care for immigrants because they want some sympathy for this bill. So what we would like is some real argument for this bill rather than trying to get sympathy from various sectors in the community. We also heard that personal grievance provisions are not available for people that work through triangular work arrangements and I also refute that. Of course personal grievance provisions are available but it works differently from the way the member has actually proposed in this bill. There are so many things—from the members those who spoke on this bill from the Labour side the member in charge and the member that resumed her seat—I think that need to be challenged. During the select committee process my understanding was that the member was really keen to work with everybody on the select committee. I thought that by the end of the select committee process after seeing what submitters had to say the member would actually decide to withdraw this bill. I'm really surprised that actually that didn't happen. The bill nearly the whole bill was rewritten in the select committee process and that is not something I have seen for members' bills before.Despite the opposition to this bill that we saw during the select committee process this got through with the select committee recommending that it should be passed. This was a recommendation by a majority and of course the majority is held by Government members. I want to build on this—we received 174 submissions on this bill and out of 174 submissions 89 submitters supported the bill 81 submitters opposed the bill. So it might look like yes there was more support for the bill but when I dissect it a bit further and look at the number of unique submissions that were received supporting the bill and opposing the bill—let's first look at the number of unique submissions that supported this bill. It's 17. The number of submissions that opposed this bill is 35 double the number of submitters that actually supported the bill. That should have been an indication to that member that this bill is not good to come to this stage. I would have expected that the member will understand that the sector outside doesn't like this proposal and so he would actually think of withdrawing this bill and he hasn't done that. Now we also heard that Well it's National Party members you know saying all these things". No it's not us; it's submitters those who said things which are not supportive of this bill—very clearly. My colleague the Hon Scott Simpson before mentioned about Auckland Council. He mentioned a different part from their submission and I want to actually also quote a part from their submission because Auckland Council is an organisation that uses people through these agencies. So it's really important to see what they have to say. This is an example: they said that "Auckland Council strongly supports legislation which benefits and protects employees (of any kind) who are being exploited". So of course we want to make sure that nobody is being exploited. "With regard to this bill we do not consider this will be achieved. We do anticipate significant adverse unintended consequences which means that we do not support this proposed legislation". Very very very strong words. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! I apologise to the member. Could the two members who are having a conversation across the House please cease and desist. Thank you. I apologise to you Dr Parmar please continue. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. So I was saying that Auckland Council their submission has used very very strong words. It says "Significant adverse unintended consequences". Now let's look at another example because this example is of an agency that actually supplies these skilled or unskilled people to various businesses. So we have looked at what an organisation that uses people or employs people—I mean here the "employee" and "employer" term is used differently but I'm using "employs people"—that come through these hire agencies. So now let's look at what a labour hire company had to say during the select committee process. They said that if "this bill [is] made into law [it] will ultimately negatively impact upon workers professionals and the New Zealand economy". Again a very very strong submission. Now the third example is about businesses—what businesses think about it—because it has to be about business it has to be about the economy because that is what relates to a flexible labour market and Business New Zealand is a good example for that. They said that "nothing in the bill provides any support for the idea of a highly productive and high wage economy. Business [New Zealand] recommends that the bill not proceed". Now to be fair I would like to look at other submissions as well those who actually said that "Yes this is a great first step". So let's look at those submissions. These submissions came from—I've just picked two examples: one came from the New Zealand Meat Workers and Related Trades Union. Of course unions would love this bill. They are saying that of course it should be extended to more types of working arrangements including casual workers. Then we have another submission from the largest union in the country the New Zealand Public Service Association. Of course they are very supportive of this bill and they're saying "Yes great first step towards ensuring protection". Clearly we can see that this bill is just to serve unions but here in Parliament we're not here to serve just unions. We are here to serve every sector of our country. So we strongly oppose this bill."