Lees-Galloway IainIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Well if any member of the House was considering voting against this legislation but was not quite sure whether they should or not I think that speech will pretty much have done it. If that was an effort to encourage members of Parliament to vote in favour of this bill from the member in charge of this bill Scott Simpson then I think if anybody needs to be let go from the National Government it is probably Scott Simpson.It is true that Andrew Little said that there was some merit to the ideas behind this bill but actually I think the reason why Scott Simpson's first reading speech was so underwhelming is that he realised when he inherited the bill and actually looked at it closely that he has inherited one dog of a bill. We cannot vote for this bill for a variety of reasons but principally because it is incredibly poorly drafted ill-conceived poorly thought through and very poorly drafted.As Scott Simpson said what it allows is for employers and employees to contract out of Part 9 of the Employment Relations Act. If you would listen to Mr Simpson you would think that just means that an employee could not take a personal grievance for unjustified dismissal. Let us actually have a look at Part 9 because Part 9 does an awful lot more than that. Let us look at section 103 which relates to personal grievance. It says that an employee may take a personal grievance because they have a claim that the employee has been unjustifiably dismissed. I think that is the bit that Mr Simpson wants us to think about when he is talking about this bill. But then it also goes on to say that an employee may take a personal grievance if they have been discriminated against in the employee's employment or if they have been sexually harassed or if they have been racially harassed or if they have been subject to duress in relation to their membership or non-membership of a union. So Mr Simpson wants people to be able to contract out of basic human rights in the workplace. I say that it does not matter how much you earn it does not matter what position you hold in a company you should be entitled to your basic human rights.Let us look at what else Mr Simpson would like employees to be able to contract out of. Let us look at further tests for discrimination. Section 104 says that an employee is discriminated against in [their] employment if the employee's employer or a representative of that employer by reason directly or indirectly of any of the prohibited grounds of discrimination specified in section 105 or involvement in the activities of a union in terms of section 107— … (b) dismisses that employee or subjects that employee to any detriment in circumstances in which other employees employed by that employer on work of that description are not or would not be dismissed or subjected to such detriment;". In other words if they are discriminated against in some way under any of the following: because of their sex—so an employer could suddenly decide that he does not want to employ women any more so a woman who is subject to the provisions of this bill could be dismissed without any recourse. Because of their marital status—so some weird employer could decide that they do not want to employ unmarried people or married people or they might not like people in same-sex marriages and in fact sexual orientation is one of the grounds in section 105. Religious belief ethical belief colour race ethnic or national origins disability age political opinion employment status family status or as I said earlier sexual orientation—so Mr Scott again would have people contract out of their right not to be discriminated against on those grounds. Again that is a massive breach of people's fundamental human rights. I just think that Mr Simpson and whoever drafted this bill—it was not Mr Simpson; he inherited this bill—simply did not think through the implications of this legislation.Part 9 of the Act goes on to deal with all sorts of other matters to do with how to raise a personal grievance: how to define sexual or racial harassment and a range of other things that are all eliminated in the event that someone takes up the opportunity to contract out of it. As Mr Simpson said that then raises the question of what it would take to get someone to contract out of their basic human rights. Reading the commentary from the likes of the Employers and Manufacturers Association and Business New Zealand after this bill was first submitted to the ballot you would think that this bill was actually going to be the end of golden handshakes. Well it might be the end of golden handshakes and the replacement of them with the platinum handshake because let us be honest anybody who is earning $150000 or more—notwithstanding the fact that that threshold is far too low because it captures a lot of middle-management people in a lot of organisations—anybody contracting out at that rate or more is going to extract a very high price for contracting out of their fundamental human rights.We could actually end up with one rule for ordinary working people who are only able to get the kind of compensation levels that are accepted in employment agreement disputes—which are actually pretty capped and are not as out of control as some people would like us to think—and then there are the folks who contract out of the provisions of Part 9 who will be able to extract an enormous price. Of course because of the type of people we are talking about here I think a lot of employers will be quite happy to give not the golden handshake but the platinum handshake to people who want to engage in this.I think this is a bill with a solution looking for a problem. As Mr Simpson said people can already negotiate severance payments in the event that they do not want to go through the full Employment Relations Authority process or go to the Employment Court. So that option is already available to people but they cannot be unjustifiably dismissed because of their sexual orientation or their marital status or their race or their colour or their ethnicity or a whole host of other basic human needs. So yes you can negotiate a severance package if the employer just wants to quickly see you out the door because they are restructuring or because they are not satisfied with the way you are doing your job or your leadership in the organisation is detrimental to the employment of other people. If that is the case then a payment can already be made and out the door that person goes. This is basically saying: "We want to have that payment built into the contract at the beginning and we want to probably increase that payment to convince people to take up the opportunity to contract out of Part 9."I just think this is so poorly thought through so poorly drafted and I am afraid Mr Simpson—I know Mr Simpson said: "Oh look I'd like the select committee to tidy up a few edges here." It is not the edges; it is actually the core of this bill. This bill is fundamentally flawed—irrevocably flawed—and I think it would be a waste of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee's time to try to tidy up this poorly drafted poorly thought through bill. I suggest to Mr Simpson that if he is genuinely passionate about this—which I doubt given the enthusiasm that he displayed in his first reading speech—he go back to the drawing board and think this through. Actually if he wants the support of Opposition parties if he actually wants to talk through something that might actually work give us a call. I have not heard from Mr Simpson about this bill. I do not know that any of my colleagues have heard from Mr Simpson about this bill. So if Mr Simpson actually wants to get support to put a bill like this through then talk to members opposite and actually seek support for it. It is a dog of a bill and we cannot support it."