Wong Pansy: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wong Pansy: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 July 2008. Volume:648;Page:17042. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 I remind everybody that today is 1 July. Supplementary Order Paper 211 which was brought to the House by Michael Cullen states that it will affect—and only a Labour Government would do this—“any person who immediately before 30 June 2008 is employed by the company” which is Toll NZ. I will come back to that point. So Labour not only forgot about this matter but is doing something about something that happened yesterday. 
When Labour members put down patsy questions in the House today they did not seem to remember even at that stage the Toll NZ workers. The Labour member Darien Fenton asked the Minister of Labour what changes to help workers took effect today. Well National members could have told her that the changes that took effect today would have resulted if it were not for the cooperation of the House in the Government Superannuation Fund contributions of thousands and thousands of workers from Toll NZ not continuing. 
What sort of Labour Government is this? Its members stand up in this House day after day and claim that Labour is the only party to look after the workers. Well I have bad news for those members: they seem to look after the Australians better than they look after workers here. After all as my colleagues say the Government has happily handed over what we now know is $800 million—$600 million - odd in cash and $180 million of debt—to the Australians. The Australian shareholders are actually very happy that someone is prepared to pay an inflated price for their shareholding in Toll NZ. 
Supplementary Order Paper 211 is very interesting. It is supposed to become part of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill which I am looking forward to debating. I thought the debate would be centred on the regional fuel tax all sorts of Government policy statements and national and regional roading transport project planning but suddenly we are landed with a Supplementary Order Paper that is quite strange. I will take the public through its provisions. It is to do with ensuring that the Government Superannuation Fund contributions of workers who until yesterday were employed by Toll NZ but today are employed by KiwiRail continue. 
It is interesting to note the way that the Government will have that happen. New clause 41(1) states that any person employed by the company is “deemed to be an employee in the Government service so long as that person continues to be an employee of the company.” Interesting things happen in Parliament; it is suddenly deemed that for the last 9 years those workers continued to be employees of the Government service rather than employees of a private company! New clause 41(4) states in relation to employees of the company who are contributors to the Government Superannuation Fund that the “controlling authority in relation to those employees means the company’s board.” Suddenly a Crown entity is set up and the Supplementary Order Paper tells us apparently that its board of directors should be treated in the same way as the board of a private company. So with this piece of paper people who are actually employees of a private company can be deemed to be employees of a Government service and a board of a private company can be deemed to be the same as a board of a Crown entity. I wonder who the top advisers are who can dream up changing people’s status with just a simple piece of paper. 
On the one hand Labour members try to blow their own trumpets by claiming that on 1 July all sorts of legislation comes into force—flexible working hours and whatever—and on the other hand they suddenly realise that a quite large number of workers were totally forgotten in all the intense burning-the-midnight-oil negotiations involving the Minister of Finance and Toll NZ. It is quite interesting to reflect on that because some commentators have said of Dr Michael Cullen’s role in the “Treelords” negotiations that he is the only member of the Labour team who not only is capable of seeing the overall picture but actually has the mana to pull together all the details and to make sure that the various parts of the machinery fit together. Well in the light of that compliment—that he is the only Government member who is capable of making sure that every little detail falls into place—one has to ask how he could overlook thousands of employees of Toll NZ. 
Another question needs to be raised—and National members will raise it. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee constantly meets with union delegates who come in front of the select committee and make statements about their looking after the interests of their members. I wonder what happened to the union representatives from Toll NZ—the ones who looked after the railway workers. Did they remind Dr Michael Cullen? Did they ever raise the issue with the Labour Government? Were they ignored? I would be interested to see a Labour member take a call to enlighten us as to when the omission occurred and who discovered that the workers were the only ones to be forgotten by the Labour Government during those intense negotiations. Government members always proclaim that they are looking after the workers. I want to know when the omission was discovered who reminded the Minister of Finance of this huge omission and how the Labour Government managed to produce the Supplementary Order Paper. Usually when National members ask for a technical amendment etc. we are told that there is not enough time to put anything together. When the Labour Government wants something done in a hurry somehow the advisers and the technical draftspeople can always be counted on to put it through. 
I say that today is a day of shame for the Labour Government which claims it is the protector of the workers because the workers were the ones who were forgotten in this golden handshake deal. The Government is kind to the Australians only rather than the Toll NZ railway workers. But National will cooperate because we would not want to see the workers suffer just because the Labour Government forgot about them; we will support Supplementary Order Paper 211.