Bayly Andrew: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBayly Andrew: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 08 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6364. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): It is a pleasure to be talking on this Employment Standards Legislation Bill and it is great to hear everyone from the other side broadly supporting what we are doing tonight. I think it is an excellent thing.Do you know what? This bill really addresses four key issues. The first one is in respect of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act and it really complements what we did in the 2014 Budget when we increased paid parental leave to up to 16 weeks and obviously next year we will increase it to 18 weeks. But this bill makes two key changes. The first is it reduces the time limit from 12 months to 6 months if people are to access up to 12 months’ paid parental leave and that is a good thing. The other thing that it has done is it has extended the paid parental leave for those parents who have babies who are born early in their term and again I think this shows a very generous and a good and appropriate response to an important issue. We do want to help families with premature babies and enable them to grow up in a caring environment.The second thing that this bill does is in relation to the Employment Relations Act. What we have set out in this change is we are making it much more explicit around some of the requirements in terms of the holiday leave entitlement the minimum reporting standards and also minimum wages. I think that probably the most significant thing is we have increased the fines from $10000 to $50000for an individual and from $20000 to $100000 in respect of companies. These are quite significant penalties and again they reflect what we believe is a very appropriate change that needs to be brought into play quickly.The third element is around the Wages Protection Act. It was good to hear my colleague Clayton Mitchell talking just before about this dreadful practice where employers have been charging employees for actions caused by third parties. Of course we are all aware of the petrol stations but I think the examples my colleague mentioned before around restaurants and things like that are also very very relevant. It is good that we are addressing this. Again it shows a Government that is responding to what is happening has been aware of what is happening and is bringing in legislation to deal with it.The fourth element is in relation to the zero-hour contracts. What we have actually done contrary to all the hyperbole—and I have heard that word a lot this afternoon—around it is require that employers actually specify in their contracts and actually state the minimum number of hours that they want employees to work. We have also prohibited the practice of employers doing two things: first of all requiring an employee to work more than those specified minimum hours—and they might be quite a small number of hours—unless there is an agreement and also unless there is compensation paid. The second thing is that in the event that a shift is cancelled without reasonable notice then compensation is also required.When you look at those four key changes I think these are very important and worthwhile amendments to be making to these various Acts and I support these changes.