Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): It is a great privilege to stand up and take an early call on this bill and there may be opportunities for me to speak again. We have come out very strongly supporting this bill and initially with some reservations around a couple of the points. However when we went to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we thought that we could iron out some of those points. It was a very very difficult situation when of course we did not have the numbers to get even the discussion to go through to actually make some amended changes that would have made this bill become the bill that I think it is going to become.Hopefully today this will go through with these amendments because concerns have been allayed to New Zealand First by a number of concerned people out there—particularly by one group. They have certainly rallied around to email us. I will be responding to those emails of course once we have seen these changes come through. These changes are important and they do tidy up some of those unintended consequences particularly in and around the ability to ensure that for people who are doing a piece-rate or in fact are giving a service to multiple principals at the same time that that can actually be calculated in total. I think some of the new amendments coming through to make this non-retrospective to leave those businesses in situ—as they stand—for now and to let time make that change will make it a very subtle and easy-moving change.As we said right at the very start we have some serious concerns in relation to particularly new schedule 2 at the back of the document in relation particularly to paragraph (f) which refers to newspaper and pamphlet delivery services. The unintended consequences of allowing this to remain in the bill which is now going to be removed would actually potentially inhibit particularly those older people from getting jobs because they will be going up against younger people who will be more able and more quick to go and deliver pamphlets and so on and so forth. Despite new section 11AC which provides for a fair and reasonable amount of time we believe that this will actually in effect go against those people who are trying to supplement their superannuation with a couple of hours—or what may even be 4 to 8 hours—in a job that could be done by a 16-year-old in the same time it would take two to do it for example.We do believe that this bill is necessary. We also have some concerns—along with a number of emails from a particular sector that has some concerns—which will be eliminated once Supplementary Order Papers 203 and 204 have been introduced. They were discussed in the select committee. Mr Andrew Bayly I would certainly like to have your take on that. We hope that we can get some sensibility in the Committee today to get these through because the emails that we have been getting in support of this bill far outweigh the number of contacts we have had from those people who oppose it because it does tighten up those dodgy dealers who are taking advantage of vulnerable workers who should ultimately be paid a wage as opposed to being forced on to contracts.This here does not stop those young contractors from being contractors. In fact I had an email which I have got from a father who was concerned that this would stop his son from doing his apprenticeship and being paid a contract wage despite his son getting better than the minimum wage. I said: This bill will not in any way stop that from happening." All that this bill will do is make sure from this day forward that those principal contractors make sure that they hold that data that information on the hours the days and the way in which their rate of remuneration is calculated which is currently in law under the employment standards legislation. It is tied in with health and safety legislation. This absolutely encapsulates all those three things and puts them nicely into a package to say that this country is starting to look after those people who are being taken advantage of without actually causing mayhem and chaos for the genuine operators inside the contracting world.We do support this. We are pleased to see that we have had an amendment made also in relation to new schedule 2. That is around public entertainment. That has been amended also after discussions and considerations with the honourable member David Parker and of course there has been the removal of pamphlet deliveries which we see as a potential problem for a particular sector of the people who do that sort of work. Thank you."