Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Chair and thank you to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety for his invitation for us to do some extra reading on this side of the House. In the spirit of bipartisanship I might refer him to some reading. He could look at one of my books actually on Douglas Myers and the history of Lion Nathan and look at some of the union practices in the 1980s at Lion Breweries on Khyber Pass for evidence as to whether people behave reasonably. And you might find indeed some very interesting practices that were the development of a system an arrangement and a plan that was similar to what he is reintroducing.And you might also read about the history of the building of the Māngere Bridge for example—which was held up for a decade—and have a look inside the harbour inlet there to see all the concrete that was poured into the harbour because of people being on strike and practices that were dealt with and were part and parcel of the industrial relations framework that we had then which the Minister seems to look back upon as a golden age. What I was trying to work out was just—getting clear in my head and the Minister may well think that I'm not as swift and mentally agile has he claims to be but let me just work this out. So the point that he makes is he says Oh well look this is all just what there is in the existing legislation; what's the problem?" Well the problem is that this is additional. This is new. This is another set of circumstances—another whole suite of negotiations conversations meetings and people arriving—on top of what we already have. It's not replacing the current regime; it's adding to it. So notwithstanding all the things that are currently going on and the union meetings that are already being paid for under the existing regime he is coming into the House and introducing a new set an additional set—and more hours and more meetings. So you can go along and you attend an initial two "fair pay"—misnamed "fair pay"—agreement meetings. So that's two hours each; so that's four hours gone. And then under clause 82(1)(b) if they decide midway through the fair pay agreement—and I'd be interested if he could confirm whether I got this right. So under paragraph (a) you attend two meetings; two hours each. Then if they decide to propose a variation midway through which they possibly could—there'd be another two-hour meeting so that's three. And then under clause 84 there is the entitlement to another meeting; so another two-hour meeting for the purposes of the fair pay agreement. And then remember that we may be dealing with multiple fair pay agreements. And so a business might have to face the possibility that they have a whole bunch of workers who may spend some of their time as cleaners for example and they go through this whole process and they have three meetings possibly four—I don't know whether it's possible to have four meetings under this arrangement—of two hours each. And they go through all of that and have all these visits. And the employer—and again we think of the small mum and dad operator in Haast who might have two employees; so the two of them have to travel to wherever they have their meeting. They've had their three possibly four meetings because of the cleaning operation. But then that goes through and then next month another fair pay agreement comes along and it turns out that actually—while they're cleaners a third of their time and they've gone through the whole process and they're in that—actually the next one relates to something else; it may well be hospitality and so they have to go through the whole thing again. And they go through a number of meetings and so that's great. The Minister says "Oh it's nothing it's nothing it's nothing! It's just a few hours and it's every three or five years". Well I don't know where he gets that great deal of confidence from because this is all additional to what we're already doing. And the point that we're making is that it's not the end of the world; people aren't going to go broke overnight because of this—but it's another layer of cost that he is adding on to businesses right here and right now."