Yang JianEMPLOYMENT RELATIONS (ALLOWING HIGHER EARNERS TO CONTRACT OUT OF PERSONAL GRIEVANCE PROVISIONS) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed.Dr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to support the bill. The bill proposes a new section 102A which allows high earners the option to contract out of Part 9 of the current Employment Relations Act.As a new immigrant from China where we had socialism everyone was equal and everyone earned a similar salary and coming to New Zealand I often find it hard to believe that those golden handshake deals involve so much money—a huge amount of money. I thought it would be very challenging to all businesses. This bill will help to protect businesses. Basically this bill will help to protect businesses from being taken advantage of by costly personal grievance claims that negate their employment agreement. When you have a business you want to employ a CEO and then you find it is hard to get rid of the CEO because they would demand a lot of money through personal grievance claims. In the end the business will have to basically pay out to resolve the issue because they may find it even more costly to go through the courts. So this bill will in that sense help reduce the risk and protect businesses.The current Employment Relations Act includes personal grievance provisions that override any contract that has been entered into by the parties. These provisions were supposed to protect vulnerable workers and it is necessary to be there to protect those people. But when you come to CEOs those high earners you will find that they are more capable of negotiating good deals and therefore it makes more sense to give them the option to contract out of Part 9 of this particular Act. So this is the idea of the bill. My understanding is that when the bill was first drawn Labour was supportive of it. I understand that Andrew Little agreed with the bill in principle and thought Labour would support it to select committee. So that was the original plan. But then of course now obviously we can see that Labour and parties on the other side are opposing this bill. It is a bit surprising. The Employers and Manufacturers Association has made it clear that they will support the bill because the bill will save taxpayers money and help free up court time. They believe it is a useful sensible proposal.This bill will provide certainty to many businesses because they understand that they would be able to basically end the contract without being charged this huge amount of money and also because we believe it is a good deal because it is optional. It is not compulsory. People can negotiate and you should trust these people—they can earn so much money. We believe they are capable of negotiating for themselves. So this is another reason why we believe that this bill is a good bill. It basically will help business people to employ people with the certainty of the outcome with the certainty of not being charged or sued for any personal grievance claims and that it will be easier for business people to make decisions to hire CEOs or high earners. So it is important for us to understand that this bill firstly will protect businesses; secondly it will provide certainty to our businesses; and thirdly it is optional. It is not compulsory. It can be negotiated. So this bill we believe will be able to increase our productivity and give more certainty to our businesses. Thank you.