Roche Denise: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Roche Denise: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7198. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DENISE ROCHE (Green) 
: 
 Nga mihi nui ki a koe. It is my pleasure to speak on this bill the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill. We will be supporting it and I congratulate the member on bringing this bill to the House. Finally something positive for our young people and young workers in New Zealand is being promoted in this House and I sincerely hope it passes into law. 
This bill is an important step in recognising and protecting young people in New Zealand. We seem to have this mistaken idea that New Zealand is a benign country and that our children are not exploited at work but this is simply not true especially when you consider that the Government has introduced a bill for youth rates for young workers starting out on their working lives which deliberately invites exploitation. Add to that the fact that this Government is now taxing paper boys and girls. We are entering a time of cynical fleecing of young workers in the guise that it is good for them. 
This bill will do what the Government has not: offer protection to our young people. They are amongst the most vulnerable workers in New Zealand. Unlike most countries in the world New Zealand has not got a minimum working age. This bill will ensure that young people even if they are under 16 are to be treated as employees—employees rather than contractors—and that is a start in job protection. 
On the one hand we encourage our kids to get a job—and as a parent I was desperate for my kids to earn some money so they could stop fleecing me—not just to save up for treats but also to contribute to the household. The other thing about it is that we encourage them to get jobs because that is where they develop their work ethic and their work-readiness. 
There are many thousands of New Zealanders—young people children—who are treated as independent contractors rather than employees. For these kids their first foray into the workforce can frequently be unpleasant. They probably do not even know that they are independent contractors; mainly they just feel like they are being ripped off like Waiuku boy Max Hansen and his 13-year-old sister. They were delivering pamphlets for 3 years and were told suddenly one day that their $6 an hour was halved. Their mum tried to negotiate and went public but these kids were out of luck because they were independent contractors. That company has 6000 independent contractors most of them likely to be kids. It is unlikely those kids know they are independent contractors. It is more unlikely that they are in a position to be able to negotiate because the balance of power between a child and an adult is not even. They are not even going to get anywhere near a negotiating table. 
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions suggests that there are thousands of children in this country earning $2 or $3 an hour. That is paying on the same level as sweatshop owners in Third World countries. We had a “sweating commission” in New Zealand in the 1870s and we abolished cruelty to children but this Government says that we can carry on with that. 
We know that independent contractors do not have the same protection as employees and you can just look at the 
 Hobbit 
 film and what happened with independent contractors there. These kids have to pay their own ACC and their own tax they have no holiday pay or sick leave they have to provide their own weather protection and they also have to maintain their own health and safety—and these kids are at risk on their jobs every day. Risky situations that pamphlet deliverers face for example include dogs include traffic and include other sorts of injuries. 
Today the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has been hearing submissions on the youth rates that this Government wants to introduce. Part of the conversation we are hearing is that we need to be doing more for children who are in the workforce who are under 16 as well. There are international conventions that we have not signed up for. This bill is a great start in the right direction. I commend it to the House.