Bradford Sue: Employment Relations (Flexible Working  Arrangements) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Bradford Sue: Employment Relations (Flexible Working  Arrangements) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 It is great to see this Employment Relations (Flexible Working Arrangements) Amendment Bill successfully completing its long journey through the House tonight. I congratulate Sue Kedgley and all who worked with her on this bill on their tremendous achievement. I know now after some considerable experience of my own with members’ bills in the last couple of years just how much work stress negotiation and patience is required to shepherd any bill like this through the House. It is just great that my colleague has persisted and succeeded with her original goal of making flexible working hours far easier to achieve for some of the workers who need this the most. 
Indeed as Lesley Soper has just said the bill has gone further than Sue even dreamt of. It is a fantastic achievement. Although I know that many of us inside this House and outside would have liked this bill to go even further than it does now it is a great step forward and will I think herald a sea change in how both workers and employers view the possibility of more flexibility in the workplace from now onwards even in this interim period before the bill becomes law. 
The fact that a majority of parties in this House support employees with dependants having access to the right to negotiate when they work full time—or more than full time—so that they can do the best for their dependants is a great thing. I am sure that there are some National Party MPs sitting here in the House tonight who would prefer to be voting for this bill. I am sorry that their party’s ideology has for some reason continued to deny them that privilege. All we have heard from National members tonight—and I am sorry to be repeating some of what my colleague Lesley Soper has said but it has been quite striking—is a kind of prolonged justification as to why they cannot bring themselves to support the bill. I am sure that a number of our National Party colleagues do not even believe their own excuses. 
The National Party constantly says that one of its main goals as it goes into the election next year is to support the family. I do not know how many times I have heard Judith Collins say that on platforms around the country. But when something very practical comes along like this bill which would help to alleviate the stress that so many families experience when trying to balance the competing demands of paid work and raising a family the National Party turns round and fails to vote for it. How can New Zealanders believe National’s rhetoric about the family if National members cannot even bring themselves to support a simple piece of non-coercive legislation like this? 
Right through this debate I have been surprised that National MPs seem to be blissfully unaware that their Conservative counterparts in the UK strongly support similar legislation and in fact have policies to extend it. This speaks volumes about how comparatively reactionary our own home-grown Tory party is and how out of touch its members are with progressive developments that even emanate from parties that share their conservative world view. 
One of the things that I personally am most pleased about with this bill in its final form is that it has been extended to include anyone who has a caring responsibility not only for children but also for people with impairments and older or sick relatives or whanau. I was very moved by Mark Gosche’s speech earlier in this debate on his own situation and by his courage in giving us a glimpse of the reality of how hard it is even with our well-paid jobs here to cope with caring well for a dependent family member. The small moment he shared of his and his family’s reality is something that is also shared by tens of thousands of workers around the country every day many of whom do not have the privilege of the pay or the comparative flexibility of hours that this particular job affords those of us sitting here in this House tonight. I am sure that this bill will go some small way towards making a real difference in the particularly stressed and difficult lives of workers who have those kinds of major responsibilities for family members with long-term illnesses or disabilities. 
I also hope that this bill will see many of this country’s most insecure low-paid and vulnerable employees—like cleaners and caregivers for example—given a new right to request some stability in their hours and their days of work. Many of those workers have children and other dependants and have just as great if not more of a need and right to flexible hours as people like lawyers policy analysts and MPs who operate very much at the other end of the scale. 
In conclusion I thank once again all those parties here in the House who have seen fit to support us in passing this bill for their role in making such a significant change in New Zealand’s workplace culture. The hours we are working in New Zealand these days are far too long. Wages for many people are far too low and too many parents and other caregivers are working far more than they would like. Although we cannot hope to solve all these problems with one small bill like this what we are doing and can do is to implement at least this reform which will be of immense benefit to all those affected not just in the short term but for years to come.