Bidois DanDAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It's a pleasure to bring this debate back to the House today back to reality and to oppose with vigour the third reading of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill.I oppose this bill because this is a bad bill. It's a bill that is all about the unions. It's very little about the workers in fact. It's going to cost the economy. It's going to cost small business and large business. It's going to cost opportunities for our young and for people who want to get ahead. And it's also pitting employers against employees taking us back to the 1970s a period where it was about us and them. So that is why we oppose the Employment Relations Amendment Bill.We have one of the best and most efficient labour markets in the developed world. We have the sixth-best relations between labour and employment relations according to the World Economic Forum. We have a labour market that's producing great results and great results that this Government's trumpeting: 3.9 percent unemployment record high labour-force participation rates. Now does that say that we need to change this labour market? Absolutely not. And the principles of our efficient effective world-class labour market are very clear: it's about good faith and it's about mutual respect between the employer and the employees. And most employers are good employers in New Zealand. They take care of their workers they pay them well they are flexible with their working arrangements and that is what we heard in the submissions that were submitted from the business community but also that's what we heard from this side of the House yesterday in the committee stage.I'm very proud to see the colleagues that I have many of whom have been employers who have been in a position to offer people an opportunity to get ahead to make them better off and to give them the flexibility that they want. So we on this side of the House are very clear that it's about the mutual respect between employers and employees. I just think we need to stop bashing businesses as this evil group in society that just wants to pin down the workers that wants to extract as much value because that is a shame for the whole business community in New Zealand. A lot of people including my own parents are hard-working small-business owners. My dad's a truck driver and my mum owns a small sales business. DAN BIDOIS: That is disrespectful to them who are paying their workers well and want to get ahead for that.That is why union membership is at an all-time low. Despite what they're saying if you look at the long-run trend of union membership from 1991 to 2017 we see that union membership has declined from 34 percent of the workforce down to—guess what?—17 percent. That trend reflects the global trend. Unions across the world are declining and the real fact that this Government doesn't want to acknowledge is that there is no relationship at all between union power and the level of economic development in a country—the level of economic prosperity in a country.I want to acknowledge the Minister Andrew Little because he did raise a really good intellectual point about today's modern challenge. I want to propose an alternative to what he proposed and to the modern challenge. The modern challenge that we face today as a country—and we do face some serious challenges with respect to our workforce—is to empower our workers is to upskill the workforce so that they can get their fair share and it's to work in partnership between employers and employees in order to make sure we're all better off. That is I think today the modern challenge and that is how we on this side of the House would be addressing that challenge.Now I just want to go into some of the specifics today about this bill and why we are opposing it. So I want to talk about the changes that are on the way for small and large businesses and the impacts that this is going to have on our economy. First on the 90-day trials what we're going to see is fewer opportunities to take on workers in the business world. Next we've got unfettered access to the workplace for—let me explain this—workforces and employers where there is a collective agreement or where they are bargaining for a collective agreement. That is going to again pin the employer against the employee and it's going to create a hostile environment and that's not the type of environment we on this side of the House want to see.Third is around the paid time off for union workers. Now this is just going to add on extra costs to business because guess what? This all flows through to lost productivity in the workforce. So that is going to add on extra cost to business and even though it's reasonable as it's defined in the bill that's still very vague and what we're going to find is far more higher costs to business.We've got another provision in the bill around the duty to conclude the multi-employer collective agreement (MECA). And yes you know there's been a small win from the New Zealand First Party that you can get out of these MECAs based on reasonable grounds. But what we raised here today and yesterday in the speeches is that that is still far too loose and vague of a definition. What are these MECAs going to actually mean for the hard-working businesses of New Zealand? It's just going to add on more costs. It's going to make sure that it takes choices away from businesses and away from employees—and not to talk about commercial sensitivity. We haven't actually talked about that much in the House that employers in the same sector are going to be exposed from commercially sensitive information.Continuing on to the other points we've got rest and meal breaks which we've debated quite heavily in this House in the last few days. Now no one wants a case where we're not having rest and meal breaks in the workplace. What we're calling for is a degree of flexibility and it's that flexibility that is going to create a thriving dynamic and productive economy.Finally on the reinstatement as the primary remedy for any disputes and we've talked about this very loud and clear. There are many cases where reinstatement is just not acceptable—the workplace relationship has broken down—and we think that there needs to be much more flexibility on the table for that. So here that is in a nutshell some of the changes that are on the way to New Zealand businesses. And now New Zealand First will sit here and they'll say Well yes we've extracted some value from this bill." And I saw Mr Clayton Mitchell debate in the House today. I don't think he's even read the bill. It was an appalling speech. He barely spent any time in the House today talking about the bill that's before the House. So quite frankly New Zealand First got diddly squat out of their negotiations on this employment bill and it's really taking us back.We've heard the Minister talk about "It's taking us back to the 1950s." We've heard another one talk about "It's taking us back to the 1960s and 1970s." I want to talk about the 2050s and the type of New Zealand that we want to live in in the 2050s where our employment relationship is a flexible relationship where it's worker-centric not union-centric and where it's about a partnership between private enterprise and employers and of course employees. That is the type of vision that we have in the National Party for the future of employment relations and I cannot wait until the day that we get back into office and we're going to repeal this law by to and fro and work to that vision. So we will oppose this bill with much rigour in the House. Thank you."