Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Chair. Look I just want to start by saying in the context of events today I thought that Scott Simpson's attack on Darien Fenton was scurrilous and possibly even bordered on bullying. He said that she was a trade union member and that that characteristic of Darien Fenton had led her to bring this bill and then he went on to say that Darien Fenton may not even have read it. I don't know if he was implying that Darien Fenton couldn't read it but if that's what he meant to say then that could definitely tip over into bullying. I think we should all be very very careful how we address each other. A personal attack of that nature really should have no place in this House. I also want to say that the policy debate is the one that we should be having here. We are going to have a debate in particular about the economics. The economics is essential. Some people call it the dismal science but it's very difficult to make labour laws without understanding the way that the supply and demand of different quantities interact and how they lead to prices. I note and I have to say I highly agree with amendments that have been made in the previous stage and I think that they should be retained. I think that the bill as drafted comes much closer to matching its intentions in its current wording than it did before and I want to explain why that is. It is not possible to raise wages sustainably by restricting the supply of labour. That's what this bill would have done by imposing collective agreements by ensuring that if a person working on a particular site was not with the employer that employed other people on the site they would none the less have to be in the same union agreement. That is a way to constrain the number of people who might offer their services to work on that worksite by requiring them to be part of just the one collective agreement. It precludes other workers from coming along and saying Hey my best opportunity might be a triangular agreement. My best opportunity might be to come and work on this worksite but actually I won't be getting paid as much or the same conditions as the people who are there now." That's what that provision in clause 5 would have done and I think it's very right that it's been got rid of because it's got us much closer to a bill that reflects its true policy intentions in its current drafting. The reason why unions can't sustainably raise wages is I think best explained by Henry Hazlitt in his brilliant 1945 book Economics in One Lesson. I think that this Parliament could be immeasurably improved if more people were to read that classic tome—particularly chapter 20. I can see Dan Bidois is getting a bit excited there. He's twitching because he's read it and he's a good economist and he knows that chapter 20 explains why clause 5 of this particular bill was such a bad idea. It explains why it is that trying to constrain the number of people that can work on a particular worksite is not actually going to raise wages but it takes some explanation Mr Chair and I really hope you'll give me a second call because it's some quite interesting and important economics that I think the committee could benefit from a wider exposure to. It goes a little bit like this. While it in the first instance would seem that constraining the number of people that can work on a worksite will mean that there's less competition amongst workers for wages and that wages will actually be raised by that constrained supply of labour on the worksite the problem is that they cannot actually raise productivity on the worksite by constraining labour supply. So the only result is that the price of goods and services produced is higher than it would have been had we not had a clause 5 - style restriction on how many people could actually work on a particular worksite. Of course those costs—those monopoly rents held by those particular workers—have to be passed on to the consumers who purchase the product. They might be paid by those people who supply the capital that makes the particular workplace possible but nevertheless those increased costs are passed on to other workers. The wages earned by those other workers are worthless because they have to pay the monopoly—[Time expired]"