White Helen; Kuriger BarbaraHELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm just going to comment on the comments that I've just heard which were that they create this and they give these people an opportunity—fairly paternalistic language. I gave an example in my earlier speech of a woman who goes from a minimum wage job into a job at Starbucks. That person is contributing to the workforce as soon as she arrives and she's the very person that I'm worried about because of the vulnerability that she has inherently. I have long experience as an employment lawyer and I did that job because I was concerned about power imbalance. There is always a value in employment. It is a huge deal in our society but both parties are valuable. It isn't a case of people giving others an opportunity and nothing coming back; it's reciprocal and there's no balance in this legislation. A balance has been struck where smaller employers are allowed a different set of rules from big ones. The advantages that are being given today by the National Government are advantages to large employers. Large employers are the ones that we hope will have the best and most robust and most fair processes. What that will do is it will mean that lots of people in New Zealand—I think the amount quoted was 76 percent of New Zealanders—will be working in environments which are structured and are robust and it is not a lot to ask that those businesses reflect our values and are fair businesses that treat people fairly. What this law is suggesting is that they no longer have to do that. I'd like to go back to the comments of my friend Willie Jackson who talked about the actual precariousness and fear of those workers because that's what I have seen and that's what I am concerned about. If you can be dismissed in 90 days it is an issue that if somebody makes a pass at you if they say something inappropriate or if they treat you badly you are going to be fearful. You cannot afford if you are like the woman that I described earlier to actually go out on a limb in any way. You can't afford to question the dynamic in the workplace. So it is a risky situation. It is precarious—you can't afford to lose your job. Now you might be able to afford to lose it if you're on 180000 bucks but you really can't afford to lose it if you're on $70000 a year and you've got three children to support and you're not going to be able to lose it next year—you're not going to be able to afford that kind of risk because the costs that you will be suffering at that point are quite high. I talked about the connection between this legislation and the other proposals of this Government which are to gut things like free childcare and half-price transport—all of which support our families and women like the one I described. These are a big deal. We have just fought an election on the basis of the cost of living and I would ask for a little bit of empathy and reflection about who it is who most needs help in a cost of living crisis. It is the worker on those kinds of salaries. They're the ones and these are the very people that this law makes vulnerable as soon as they move jobs. Now there is a concept called portability of employment and there's a concept called flexibility and I want to draw a comparison. The concept of portability of employment is now being used in America and it's about making sure that workers can move. They can move up in the world and they can actually move around the workplace. That is an employee-centric positive approach to getting some flexibility but that's not what this Government has focused on. It's focused on a kind of flexibility that's all about stripping workers of all their power. That apparently is supposed to miraculously help them. It's supposed to help them and we've heard that today that workers are apparently begging for the opportunity to be exploited—to be in situations of vulnerability. I have put up a challenge to you and I will put it up again when we go into the committee stage. I will say to the Government: why don't you have a look at some methods of portability? Why don't you free up these employees that you are so freeing up to flexibility—why don't you free them up from things like restraints of trade which big corporations like Amazon and Starbucks are stopping people moving on with and those sorts of things? I want to see your money where your mouth is in the Government. I want to see the Government look at those things that are constraining those workers from moving up in careers rather than these kinds of forms of flexibility. What they in fact do is constrain employees and keep them in low-paid work because as I explained a woman who has three children and who is working in her locality cannot afford to move to an employer who is going to put her on this kind of trial if the risk is that she will get fired for no good cause in 90 days. She cannot afford to take that risk and that actually would be a pathway usually for her to increase her income. I love the idea of a kind of response to the cost of living which is actually about letting people have a decent go and move up in a workforce. So I want to see that and I challenge the Government to look much more broadly and creatively. Those members are not going to get the opportunity that in fact they should have had in a select committee to hear such ideas to hear such stories or to hear the stories of people who have been hurt when they've been vulnerable. There are so many stories out there because there are many forms of this vulnerability. The Government is not going to get to hear those stories and the New Zealand public are not going to get to tell those stories and there won't be a lot of listening or learning going on. But I challenge the Government to have a little bit of empathy and to put yourselves into the boots of the person who is the woman I'm talking about who has the three kids who's on $70000 who works in a minimum wage job and who just wants to feed her kids and get ahead. Put yourself into her shoes and ask yourself whether in fact in that situation it would be some job that you're willing to do and what you would do in those circumstances. If you were in that role what would you do? Would you move into another job which might pay a little bit more if in fact it's risky? So that's my great concern which is that this will be a movement backwards and that we will see people become more vulnerable and we will see the most vulnerable become more vulnerable as a consequence of this law. I don't agree that there's a need to rush this through or that there is nothing to discuss here. It's a fundamentally different concept bringing this kind of trial in when we are talking about big business because as I have said in my earlier speech this is actually a situation where big business could put their big pants on get a decent process together and treat workers right. They could get a decent culture and they could do those things and everyone would be better off. That's a better way to handle that situation rather than saying that they don't have to have a process and they don't have to have fairness and taking down the standard in our whole society. That is a very sad outcome indeed and who's going to pay the ultimate cost for this degrading of the culture to the point where somebody is dismissed? I take you back to this woman who was working in my community. Her kids go to the local schools. Who is going to pay the price if she takes the job at Starbucks and then she loses the job due to a trial period? Actually it's going to be all of us. All New Zealanders are going to have to pay the price because that woman is going to be right on to the benefit. That's what's going to happen. We will be paying the price and there is no reason for that to occur when in fact—DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member's time has expired. Thank you.