Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Madam Chair I'm very appreciative. Hey well guess what? The unions are back in charge aren't they—they're back in charge. You know I find it fascinating that the very first piece of language used in reporting about this bill was a suite of changes to promote and strengthen collective bargaining and union rights in the workplace."—beautiful beautiful! And Labour even went on to say and admit that "This law is about strengthening union rights and union members." Well isn't 2020 going to be fun when we've got a Labour - New Zealand First Government standing up there—and now I can see the Hon Shane Jones is on the other side. They'll be standing up on the hustings talking about what a great thing this is for New Zealand and how we are driving forward New Zealand and making it more prosperous by bringing about this change. Well I think that's going to be a really interesting argument because this is a continuing process by this Labour - New Zealand First Government to remove the lid of optimism from business—the lid of optimism. And you know we've seen it. They're imposing the costs on businesses: "They're all right—they can pay for it. They're good for it." The second thing is it is making it harder for immigrants to come into New Zealand to work in our good businesses in New Zealand and now we've got these wide-ranging employment changes. That's all going to be the framework that cuts to the core of how we operate in New Zealand and I just think there's an assumption around this. The first thing I want to say is that I support the role of unions. They have a part to play it albeit it's interesting that in the market environment they've seen their union membership plummet because people didn't see the need to join a union. There are only 355000 people in the union movement out of 2.7 million in New Zealand—that tells you what they see as the value of the union movement. There are cases where we do not have good employers but the corollary is also that not all employers are bad employers. The vast majority of the 530000 businesses we've got in New Zealand they are good. They are family-run businesses hard-working mums and dads working there employing their people—good people. They are part of the fabric of those businesses and in most cases—most cases—they are doing a great job. There's teamwork and that's how everyone survives including political parties. That's why—teamwork—and that's why with the assumption that we need to make these wholesale changes I do not believe the case has been made. I want to talk about the issue around the MECA. We've heard a bit about this but one aspect that we've heard a little bit about—my colleague Andrew Falloon from down in Timaru talked about it and he used the example of transport from Timaru to Takapuna and that is right. In many businesses people choose to work the way they want to work. I know that in my wife's business—where most of them are women—often the people who want to go to work early don't want to take long lunch breaks because they want to get home to their children and they have got the flexibility around that. So the worst thing about the MECA award is how it can be imposed and we know how the unions are going to go about doing it. They will find those businesses that are the wealthy ones who can make the changes or the ones that are in a position where they have to agree to union demands. They will decide those changes and then they will spread them across the rest of the industry and standardise the employment arrangements and I don't think that's right. I don't think that's right. People should have the right to work out when they want to work how they want to work and on what basis they want to work. The other thing that hasn't been picked up on is that under new section 41(3) and (4) in clause 12 the unions actually have the right to initiate bargaining 20 days earlier than the employers. I don't understand this and I'd really like it if the Minister in the chair could deal with this. There's been absolutely no explanation from the Government why union representatives should be able to begin bargaining earlier than the employer—20 days earlier in both cases and I refer to new section 41(4)—[Time expired]"