Copeland Gordon: Employment Relations Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Copeland Gordon: Employment Relations Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:16189] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 Late in the year 2002 about 6 months after I came into this Parliament for the first time I was sitting with quite a large group of Wellington business people. In terms of the conversation we were having they asked me why United Future had gone into a supply and confidence agreement with the Labour Party. Straight away I replied that it was firstly to keep the Greens out of the Government. They responded immediately by saying they thanked God for that. They were very very delighted at that. But they wanted to take the conversation a bit further so they asked me how we could possibly be working with the Labour Party given some real concerns they had about the occupational safety and health legislation that we were in the middle of at the time. I replied that I shared those concerns but I would try to answer their questions by saying that within the Labour caucus there is a faction that is a bit more to the right than some other Labour members and that I thought we sort of bolstered it up. They looked at me with some incredulity and said: “Really! There are some people like that in the Labour Party?” I told them that there are some people like that in the Labour Party and that if they thought about it they would realise those Labour members are very balanced common-sense people. However I said that there is another Labour faction that is extremely left wing. They asked me to give them an example of that so I told them I would. I said that after I had listened to some of the Labour members during the occupational safety and health debate I had come to the conclusion that their world view was that all employers in New Zealand are irredeemably evil and that all employees were immaculately conceived. 
The reality is that if we want to have some balance in our industrial legislation we have to proceed on the assumption of some realities. Of course there are bad employers and bad employees and there are greedy employers and bludging employees. The whole point is that we need to get the balance right in this legislation. I do not think we have done that. The existing status quo situation is fine. There is an old adage: if it ain’t broke why try to fix it? This is a very very serious matter because whilst this legislation has been before Parliament—and I know the Transport and Industrial Relation Committee has made some improvements to it—I have had employers from different parts of this country from Dunedin where I am buddy MP right up to Auckland where I visit say to me that their real worry is that this legislation will actually be the final straw that means that some employers—and we are talking about small-business employers in the main—will actually give it away. That would be a very very sad day indeed for the future of our country. 
I say to the Government that it should be very very careful. As we know at the moment Germany has a very high rate of unemployment—more than 10 percent. When I have talked to German politicians and analysts about why that is they have said that one of the major reasons is the inflexibility of the labour market in Germany. We have before us there a living example of a nation that has got the balance wrong and those things are very hard to wind back. On this occasion the Government has given in strongly to a pretty extreme left-wing view of life. I do not think the bill has the necessary balance and for that reason as all members know we will vote against it. I sincerely hope that we will not see small-business people just give the game away and say that this is the last straw after the occupational safety and health legislation and all the other things that have come their way under this regime. Some of those business people ask me whether I know they are taking home less money at the end of the week than most of their staff. The people who own the business and who are working 70 and 80 hours a week are taking home less money at the end of the week than some of their staff. 
Small-business people have a breaking point. I am very worried and concerned that this bill will push them over it and that we will see some of those people move out of business. That would be a tragedy for our future for our economy and for the growth of this country.