White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): We're sitting in the House today and I've got five minutes to explain to you why what you're doing what—sorry Mr Speaker; explain to the Opposition or to the Government—Hon Members: That's right!HELEN WHITE: —why what they are doing—yes that's right: you're the Government and I am so sad that you are taking this action today. I want to explain just why—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Direct your comments to the Speaker.HELEN WHITE: —this is going to hurt people out there. So I just want to take one worker and I don't want to take a dramatic example; I want to take one worker who I think is a realistic representation of the kind of person that you're going to impact on.So let's take a worker in my electorate of Mt Albert. That person has been working at a local cafe and they've learnt how to make a coffee. They've got three kids; their kids are 12 and 14 and two. By next Christmas they've been offered a job—just before next Christmas and they're going to be offered a job at Starbucks. Now Starbucks is a multinational. It has well over 50 employees. By this time next year—in fact quite soon—Starbucks will be able to offer that person work without any obligation to keep them employed after 90 days.So this worker has got a dilemma. She's got three kids. She's on minimum wage and she might get a little bit more at Starbucks so she might decide to go and work there. If she goes to work there she'll be subject to a restraint of trade. She probably doesn't know that because it's in the bulk of the collective agreement. It says that there's a restraint of trade in there for six months. So she'll be stuck in that job because that will be part of the contract.Hon Judith Collins: Why did the union agree to that?HELEN WHITE: Now I'd appreciate if you'd listen to me Judith Collins Minister—I'd appreciate you listening to this because this is a real-life situation.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): If the speaker could have the conversation with me.HELEN WHITE: Thank you. I'd appreciate a little bit of respect. Listen to this story because it's an interesting story because it fleshes out what's actually happening here.So this person has three children. They all get on a bus to go to school because there's only one car in this family. They all are going to pay full price so that worker is already going to have that issue. She's going to start at her job—if she is daring to start at that job because she may know that that makes her very precarious. She's in a risky situation so she's less likely to move from her minimum-wage job to one that pays slightly more. When she gets there if her children get sick and she has to actually stop and look after them she's going to hesitate isn't she? Because she's not going to be willing to take the risk that in those 90 days she does anything that might make her a target for an instant dismissal.Carl Bates: Hypothetical.HELEN WHITE: It's not a hypothetical; it's a reality. Because that will be the fear of the woman in this situation—that will be the fear. So she's likely to come to work when her kids are sick. She's already got one child by the way who's two and she won't be getting any of the benefits that she would have got which was the free childcare. So again she's less likely to work. Now that person is sacked. They're sacked and we're held to a restraint of trade in that situation. They are sacked. It might be for a good reason; it might be for a bad reason. They've got no natural justice attached to it. We wouldn't know would we? We wouldn't know whether it was a good reason or a bad reason.That person is then without work just before Christmas next year. Who will be picking up the tab? Will that be Starbucks the multinational? No it will be the taxpayer—the taxpayer will pick up the tab. So what we've actually effectively done is we've taken all the risk associated with that worker—who by the way was not the mythical take-a-chance person; they were in fact the worker who was just trying to get ahead just trying to get above minimum wage. And we're going to have them actually on the books next Christmas as a person that the taxpayer's paying for because that's what we do. We subsidise Starbucks under this arrangement.But by all means don't have a submission process around this! Don't try and glue some of the very important boundaries to this in place! No just do it because why would you listen? I mean you've been in Government for 6½ minutes and you're already not listening to people. You don't want to know what the reality of what you do is because you're stuck in an old-fashioned ideology that didn't work and hasn't for a long time.