Beaumont Carol: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3690] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 This is a very important matter and I find it very troubling that Mr Brownlee thinks that this is silly or trivial. We are not being silly or trivial. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: He said you’re silly and trivial. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I apologise to my colleague. Mr Brownlee certainly did not say that you were silly or trivial as Tau Henare has accused him of doing. If we are going to have those interjections I think that he has to get them right. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I thank the member for that. Members should make sure they are relevant when they are interjecting. 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: This matter is not silly or trivial. 
I want to support the amendment that my colleague Steve Chadwick has put up. This bill affects assets of $28 billion but more important it affects the working conditions of 6300 workers. These workers are people—people with families people with mortgages and people who are our neighbours and families. Frankly it is important that we get this right. We have raised a legitimate concern about whether the actions of the Government have put at risk people’s right to paid parental leave. This is something that is certainly seen as very important on this side of the Chamber and something that a number of us on this side of the Chamber campaigned very hard for. That is why this bill should go to a select committee so that we can make sure that important things like people’s right to paid parental leave are not at risk. I would be very glad if they were not at risk but there seem to be at least two possible reasons why they may be. 
The first of those is the removal of clause 36(1) and the second one is that later in that same clause there is an explicit reference to continuity of employment for the purposes of KiwiSaver. There is a principle of statutory interpretation that if one explicitly refers to one thing it means that if other things are not explicitly referred to they are not covered. At least it has raised some very significant questions. As my friend and colleague Sue Moroney said this could be a cock-up or it could be a conspiracy. Either way potentially there are risks. A cock-up is highly probable given the way that this bill is being rammed through the House. It is entirely possible that this is a cock-up and that that is not the intention of the Government. That at least is a little reassuring. 
However it could well be that this is yet another example of attacks on workers and attacks on women by this Government. As evidence of that in the last few days this Government has got rid of the pay and employment equity unit at the Department of Labour. Why? Does it not matter to people that women are paid fairly for the work they do? On the conspiracy side of the equation the fact that we have a Minister of Women’s Affairs who does not seem to have the slightest idea about anything in her portfolio area— 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: Who is the Minister? 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: —I think her name is Pansy Wong. She does not seem to have any idea of what is going on in her portfolio. We have a Minister of Labour who seems hell-bent on reducing workers’ rights. We have tried during this debate to make sure that workers’ rights are looked after. A new part was put up this morning about personnel provisions. We talked about getting some principles like good-employer principles into this legislation. I want to ask what is wrong with that. Why are members opposite opposed to good-employer principles? In other local government amalgamations that have taken place it has been an absolute cornerstone of the legislation to make sure that employment rights are centre stage. 
Getting it right for the people who work for local authorities is important not only to those workers but also to the people in that area in order to make sure that those workers are able to get on and do their job without worrying that they are going to either lose their job or have their wages and conditions of employment reduced. Queensland is a very good example of this. I am holding up now the code of practice which was agreed by all parties to ensure that people were not made redundant that people’s jobs were actually guaranteed for 3 years and that their wages and conditions were fully guaranteed as was their right to be represented by unions. Queensland was able to conduct one of the smoothest local government amalgamations that has been seen. That is in direct contrast to what happened in South Australia where a whole lot of people lost their jobs. There was a lot of nervousness and concern and in fact there were very significant service provision problems for the people of South Australia not to mention the effect that the amalgamation had on the workers and their families. 
Frankly I think it is really important that Steve Chadwick has put up this amendment and we should think very seriously about whether you are going to make sure that people are not disadvantaged. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Not me. 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: Sorry of course you would not be doing this. The members opposite need to be very very confident that they are not making workers lose their entitlements. To go back to the matter at hand this issue is important because—and I say this for the benefit of those who do not know—to get paid parental leave a worker has to have had 6 months’ continuous service with an employer. I will give a little example—a very current example—which involves the National Party and a staff member working for the Labour Party who came across from Ministerial Services. Her employment contract ended and she had to take a new contract with the Parliamentary Service. She was pregnant at the time of the election which meant she missed out on getting paid parental leave by 1 month. We tried to deal with that matter with National and I say for the record—and this perhaps goes back to the conspiracy side of the equation—that National was completely uninterested in trying to resolve that problem for that particular worker. Perhaps some of the women over on the other side of the Chamber should think about what that means. Paid parental leave is a very important employment right in the current economic environment where things are very tough for people.