Moroney Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled 
Moroney Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled 
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SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 Part 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) amends the principal Act the Employment Relations Act. I think that with all of the issues facing New Zealand at the moment if we were to amend the Employment Relations Act we might do something about creating more jobs. We might do something about closing the income gap with Australia. Part 1 does none of those things and in fact it goes in the opposite direction. I will explain why. Despite what the Government is trying to portray this amendment bill does not create one job—it does not create one job. In fact it makes decent working people more reluctant to actually seek to further themselves and progress into another job. It will cause people who have families dependent on them who have mortgages to pay who have food bills to pay and who have school fees to pay to stay stuck where they are— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: No! 
SUE MORONEY 
: —because that is the only way they can have a guarantee of any job security and Tau Henare knows that. He knows and he wants—and John Key wants—New Zealand working people to stay stuck where they are. He knows that that will be the only guarantee for all New Zealanders no matter what sized workplace they work in—that will be the only guarantee of their knowing they can put food on the table next week. The minute they take the opportunity to actually improve themselves to take that step up to take the risk of another job to perhaps change careers or to even just go for progression within their own career they put themselves at risk of the National Government’s fire-at-will bill. That is what Part 1 does: it seeks to take that job insecurity that is in small workplaces and mete it out to every single New Zealander. 
I sat on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee when this legislation was put up in the last term of the previous Labour Government. It was a member’s bill from Wayne Mapp so we have already visited this legislation in the previous Parliament. The previous Parliament said: “No way! That is not the New Zealand we want to create.” We heard that something in the order of the massive figure of 200000 New Zealanders every year change jobs—or used to. We can double it: 400000—have I got it hugely under? Every year 400000 New Zealanders used to change their jobs and change locations. Maybe it was to get a higher wage; for whatever reason we had that type of labour market. 
I predict that that will come to a screaming halt. In fact we know that it has come to a screaming halt already but it will get worse because who would do that when they have their family dependent on the income they bring in? Who would put themselves at risk? Certainly not the people that we need to come from overseas to be nurses in New Zealand for example and doctors teachers and people whom we need in order to make sure we have the sort of services in this country that New Zealanders rely upon. Are those people going to take that risk knowing that they could face for no reason at all being told within the first 90 days that they are just not suitable? 
It may be that someone just used too much sauce. When we had decent law in this country and fair legislation under a Labour Government if I were to use too much sauce the employer would be required to tell me that I had used too much sauce. The employer would have a conversation with me about the hollandaise or the aioli or whatever type of sauce it may be. The employer would actually have a conversation with me whereby I would come to realise that perhaps I had used too much sauce or perhaps I could say to the employer that the reason I put on the amount of sauce was that it was not covering the fish properly. We could have a normal conversation and sort it out in the workplace. I would not have to lose my income as one chef did because he put on too much sauce. There was no conversation no discussion at the workplace but he lost a job. I am really sad that Michael Woodhouse cannot understand the impact on working people of not having a job.