Boscawen John: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Boscawen John: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10776] 
JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) 
: 
 This is an impassioned debate. We have just heard an impassioned speech from the Hon Tau Henare and earlier this afternoon we heard from David Bennett. This is an economic debate. It is a debate about employment. It is a debate about redundancy and redundancy provisions and those things are very very important. I think Mr Bennett impressed us all this afternoon with his knowledge of economic theory—who could not be impressed. I was very impressed. 
Mr Bennett said to us that this measure would be a huge cost on business and that businesses would be reluctant to take on workers. Mr Bennett asked why we would want to make it harder for people to get a job which is a very good question to ask. Mr Bennett said that this bill imposes costs on employers and that it would make them reluctant to take on new employees. Mr Bennett asked a very reasonable question: why would Labour members want to make it hard for Kiwis to get a job? It was a very reasonable question. 
Why would National want to make it hard for Kiwis to get a job? If National members believe that imposing a compulsory redundancy provision on workers would have a negative impact on employment why do they believe that imposing the costs of an emissions trading scheme and artificially increasing the price of electricity will not have the same impact on jobs? Mr Bennett asked who would want to place additional stress on business. Clearly it is the National Government because it is prepared to impose extra costs on businesses and exporters and it wants to do that at a time when all our major trading partners are backing away from an emissions trading scheme. 
Just last Tuesday the Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd announced that Australia would be delaying the introduction of an emissions trading scheme until 2013. The United States does not have an emissions trading scheme China does not have an emissions trading scheme. But what does National do? It continues to perpetuate the myth that our farmers and exporters will not be affected. The Minister of Agriculture the Hon David Carter has been telling farmers at field days that agriculture will not come into the emissions trading scheme until 2015. I call on Mr Carter the Minister of Agriculture to tell the truth to farmers. He knows that Meat and Wool New Zealand has said that the cost of the emissions trading scheme to dairy farmers will be about $10200. There will be redundancies in the farming industry. 
Meat and Wool New Zealand is telling farmers that under the emissions trading scheme they will have to start paying extra for electricity petrol and the emission costs of their dairy factories but National is in denial. The Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill is an economic bill. It is about redundancies. We should be asking how we can stop redundancies how we can recover from the recession and how we can reduce our unemployment rate of 7.5 percent. The answer is to put in place economic policies that will create employment. We should ask ourselves why there is a need for Darien Fenton’s bill. How do we avoid that need? Do we have economic policies that make it easier for businesses to employ people and for us to trade our way out of recession? 
I will leave the last word to the Hon John Key the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Just 3 weeks before the last general election he said we should not be a world leader because that would come at the expense of our economy. He was obviously thinking of Darien Fenton’s bill and about the consequences of unemployment. He went on to say that he could see no sense in New Zealand exporting emissions and jobs to another part of the world. In the face of overwhelming change in the environment for emissions trading legislation and costs and when all our major trading partners have pulled away from an emissions trading scheme—just last Tuesday Australia announced it was delaying its emissions trading scheme by 4 years—the National Government is charging ahead with it. National has its head in the sand. The Hon David Carter the Minister of Agriculture told farmers in Waikato this morning that we will proceed with the scheme. How stupid is that! I can understand why Darien Fenton thinks we need a bill of this nature.