Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Chair for the opportunity to start what will no doubt be a lengthy debate on the committee stage of this bill which is what we on this side of the House regard as the misnamed Fair Pay Agreements Bill and I hope the Chair will indulge me a few opening remarks. When it comes to this legislation and what we're dealing with here our proposition is that we're dealing with mandatory union deals passed by legislation. Once this legislation brings us back to sector-wide or occupation-wide agreements that cover the entire country—and we're thinking in the context of shopworkers or supermarket workers from the largest Pak 'N Save in central Auckland to the smallest corner superette in the Hokianga Harbour or Invercargill—it's applying similar rules and requirements and details right across the board and also very significantly lifting the role of unions in that. So when we come to this our fundamental proposition is that this legislation will make our workforces less flexible and less agile at a time when they need to be both those things to be competitive in a modern competitive global workforce. It will certainly add costs to the fundamental structure of our workplace—that's the purpose of it of course; to have higher wages and higher costs—and our proposition is that that will certainly not be helpful to the fight against inflation which the Government is losing at the moment very much to the detriment of the many households up and down the country who are struggling to make ends meet in the face of higher costs. When we come to this part—CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Yes. Now you have been well indulged Mr Goldsmith—Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yeah thank you—thank you. Well I think it's only appropriate—CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): —so you now may—I'll just indicate to other speakers that that indulgement won't be forthcoming. We now will be required to speak to the parts of the Act that we are discussing. Chris Penk: The bill rather than the Act. CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The bill—I'm sorry. Thank you for that correction. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you Mr Chair. So one of the most interesting things that we find when we come to Part 1 of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill—misnamed—is that right at the start the Minister has changed the purpose of the bill which is quite interesting. You would think that when you introduced legislation into the House you'd be reasonably clear on the purpose of it and that you wouldn't sort of change your mind after you had introduced it and change the purpose of the bill. But indeed they have and so I suppose my first question to the Minister is: why didn't he and his Government have a clear view of what the purpose of the legislation was when they introduced it? They started off with a purpose clause which said that The purpose of this Act is to provide a framework for collective bargaining for fair pay agreements that specify industry-wide or occupation-wide minimum employment terms." This it appears proved inadequate and I think this has something to do with the fact that the Minister came to this House with a large piece of legislation and then on the very same day that he introduced the legislation he introduced a very significant amendment to the legislation fundamentally changing—Hon Michael Wood: A parliamentary paper. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —significant parts of it—a parliamentary paper. So having spent a number of years preparing the legislation he found himself in the position of introducing legislation that clearly wasn't going to work and he had to introduce another big chunk of a parliamentary paper to bring it back into shape. So I presume that the change of the purpose is to accommodate that because the new purpose says that "The purpose of the Act is to enable employment terms to be improved for all employees by providing—(a) a framework for bargaining for fair pay agreements that specify industry or occupation-wide minimum employment terms; or (b) in certain circumstances for the Authority to determine those minimum employment terms." That seems to me to be a rather fundamental shift. Originally the purpose of the bill was just to introduce collective occupation-wide minimum employment terms and fair pay agreements. Now the purpose is twofold: it's to do that and also to provide for the Employment Relations Authority to determine such things and minimum terms. So I suppose the first question is why did the Minister not have his thinking straight when he first introduced the bill and he is now changing the purpose; and second what gives the Minister such confidence that the Employment Relations Authority which of course amongst the employment organisations and businesses around the country including Auckland is a byword for very slow determinations and the very slow grinding wheels of justice in that part of the area where it takes months or sometimes years to hear anything back from the Employment Relations Authority—what gives him great confidence that this institution has the expertise and the administrative ability to take on this very substantial totally new task and to find the wisdom within itself to figure out what best suits the needs of businesses large and small up and down the country in terms of their arrangements so much so that they are better than the thousands of individual businesses and employees having conversations between themselves and figuring out for themselves what works best when it comes to hours of work when they're going to have breaks when they're going to have holidays and whether or not the pay and conditions are appropriate for them and their businesses? These are the sorts of issues that will be dealt with by this bill. So the fundamental question is: where does this confidence lie and come from for the Minister to put such a heavy burden on the Employment Relations Authority? If we sit back and think about the consequences of all this what the Minister is saying fundamentally is that he doesn't have confidence in the ability of the tens of thousands of small businesses and large—but particularly small businesses—across the country. If we take for example the checkout operating area such as in small little superettes up and down the country in places like Hokianga and places like Eketāhuna and things like that where you've got a little business. They know their community they might have a relatively small turnover they might only have one or maybe two staff working at any given time and they know what they can pay—and of course we're all living in a country where there is a minimum wage and there are certain minimum entitlements in terms of sick leave and the Government has been very active in increasing all of those things. So they've got this floor there already but they're working out what else they can do in relation to what their business can afford and if they've only got one or two employees what they can manage in terms of rules around breaks and rules around holidays and all those sorts of things. The Minister is fundamentally saying that he doesn't trust them to make those decisions. What he would prefer and what this Government would prefer is that the industry—which let's be honest will be guided and driven by the big players—will meet and decide collectively with the unions what the rules should be and they will apply regardless and if they can't make an agreement fundamentally it will be the Employment Relations Authority that decides. So there will be a few people probably in Auckland sitting around a desk who possibly have never run a business in their lives and who are making a decision about these realities on the ground. Where does he get the confidence?"