Little Andrew: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7202. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak in support of this very well drafted very well crafted Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill. You know this really is a night for the season. It is the season of Dickens. We have had the “Silas Marner” of the National Party caucus David Bennett stand up here and talk about the freedom of workers and the freedom of employers to exploit because that is the only freedom that is at stake here. The right that the National Party is defending is the right for employers to exploit and to exploit the young. Then we have the “Ebenezer Scrooge” of the National Party caucus Chris Auchinvole. He gave us a great list of National Party achievements in employment—in the whole area of employment law. He talked about the 90-day “no rights” period and all the rest of it. There were a couple of achievements that he did not talk about such as the increase in unemployment which has turned out to be the highest level in 13 years. He did not talk about the highest level of youth unemployment in more than 20 years. I did not hear that achievement on his list because he knows that its retrograde measures introduced by this Government consistently over the last 4 years are having a deleterious affect on the employment rights of young middle aged and old alike. 
Then we had “Fagin” in the form of Scott Simpson who stood up there and said that he was exploiting his young labour too. The question I have for the “Fagin” of the National Party caucus is why bother paying them at all? Why when you can get away with it would you bother paying them at all? 
Then there is Jami-Lee Ross. I am not quite sure how to characterise Jami-Lee Ross so we will call him the “Little Dorrit” of the National Party caucus. He is the “Little Dorrit”. 
But the reason why I support this bill and why Labour supports this bill is because it confirms the basis of very civilised standards of conduct in employment in this country and we need more of it. This re-establishes employment rights and protections that young workers should have as of right when they walk into employment at the tender age that they go into it in the period covered by this bill. Those very basic rights are that they should have their employment rights clearly articulated and specified in a written agreement because this bill will ensure that young workers get to have that. It will ensure that they are protected against arbitrary and unfair dismissal because that is very important too and that is under threat. And it will give them protection in regards to their health and safety rights—that they will actually have some health and safety rights as well. We know that this Government does not care about that. We know it does not care about people in work having health and safety rights having their rights spelt out for them. These are small obligations to put on any employer. They are easy to meet easy to do and things that every responsible employer not only does but does willingly because they want to do it. But this Government does not understand that and does not get it. 
You see everything that this Government has done in the field of employment relations has taken this country backwards and has hurt people particularly young people. It introduced the 90-day “no rights” period—the right of an employer to treat somebody shabbily and never be held to account for it. It has introduced the obstructions to workers to either join a union or to have access to the union during work—all those sorts of things. It does not get the fact that the employment relationship is a power relationship. Even if you were looking at employment from the point of view of the free-marketeers who Government members all claim to be let them understand this: the only thing about the employment relationship is that it is one of imperfect information. It is one of imperfect information. One party has all the information; the other has very little at all. If there is one thing that every Parliament has a moral obligation to do it is to recognise that there are those in power relationships who are vulnerable and who are in a weaker position. It is the moral obligation of Parliament to step in to intervene and to say: “We will shore up one side of this relationship and make sure they have rights and protections.” 
This Government is a Government of the master and servant. Our party and the Opposition—the Green Party New Zealand First and others—are the parties of responsible modern employment relationships and responsibilities. That is why we support this bill. That is why it is important to bring integrity to employment to bring integrity to employers and to protect our young and vulnerable.