Volume 614 Week 45 - Thursday 11 December 2003 
Volume 614 Week 45 - Thursday 11 December 2003 
[Volume:614;Page:10653] 
Thursday 11 December 2003 
Mr Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Visitors 
Council of Ethnic Minorities National Assembly of Vietnam 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have much pleasure in informing the House that members of the Council of Ethnic Minorities of the National Assembly of Vietnam led by Her Excellency Madam Nguyen Thi Nuong is present in the gallery. I am sure that members would wish that the delegation be welcomed. 
Business Statement 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) 
: 
 Next Tuesday in the House priority will be given to the report of the Standing Orders Committee and the completion of the Holidays Bill. It is also the Government’s intention to take the first readings of the Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill and the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) as these bills are relatively non-controversial. The House will then proceed to the adjournment motion. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I wonder whether the Leader of the House could tell us why we are not seeing seabed and foreshore legislation brought into the House while the House is sitting next week. We in the Opposition are concerned that an announcement will be made by the Government after the House has sat. I wonder if there is an announcement that leads to legislation to clarify the position for all New Zealanders the Leader of the House would consider bringing us back perhaps next Thursday for a 1-day debate on that particular decision? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) 
: 
 Perhaps Thursday week would be even more suitable if the member would like to come back that day. As he is probably aware the Government has given an undertaking to the Waitangi Tribunal that a bill would not be introduced before the first week in March as part of the process for the tribunal’s consideration of the Government’s proposals. 
Points of Order 
Australian Aviator Mr Jon Johanson 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I seek leave to make a very brief plea in a motion to the House to show understanding and empathy towards the pioneering spirit of Australian aviator Mr Jon Johanson who has been refused the sale of fuel by the New Zealand Government to enable him to continue to fly his plane on from the New Zealand base in Antarctica. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to move that motion. Is there any objection? There is. 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is the time of Christmas and I think that you should perhaps take some action to try to record this House’s disgust at the way in which the Government is treating this matter. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will be opening his Christmas presents a little early if he is not careful. 
Questions to Ministers 
Burrows Family—Offender's Criminal Record 
1. MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
 to the  
Minister of Justice 
: Does he concede that the justice system totally failed to protect Coral Burrows from Steven Williams in light of the fact that he was repeatedly granted bail after a criminal career of 88 convictions and the claim by former police detective Don Finlayson that: “He should have been locked up over the last 18 months. If he had been in jail where he belonged she would still be alive. It was an avoidable death.”? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Acting Minister of Justice) 
: 
 The blame for that appalling and tragic crime must be placed firmly where it belongs which is at the feet of Steven Williams who has now been convicted of murder. Bail is a longstanding practice in all Western justice systems. The circumstances in which there is a presumption not to grant bail were extended in 2000. However decisions on bail in specific cases are matters for the court. 
Marc Alexander 
: In light of the fact that after a long history of offending Steven Williams was granted bail after committing serious drug offences did three burglaries while on bail was somehow granted bail again for those crimes then threatened to kill a 16-year-old while on bail for the burglaries and then got bail for a charge of threatening to kill how can the Minister stand by his claim in 2000 that the Government’s new Bail Act provisions would target hard-core recidivists when the same laws failed to put Williams away four times over? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: My advice was that on 26 July 2003 section 12 of the new Bail Act was invoked and there was a reverse onus where he did have to establish his right to bail. It was not granted automatically so bail was granted by the court. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Is not this case further evidence of this Government’s soft-on-crime policies that do not work when Steven Williams a man with 88 serious criminal convictions including violence drug dealing intimidation and threatening to kill gets bail breaches that bail and then gets bail again? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I reject the fact that we should be using a case as tragic as this for political purposes. 
Ron Mark 
: Is it not a fact that despite all the vein-popping speeches the Minister gave during 9 years of Opposition when she criticised successive Governments for the inappropriate use of bail Steven Williams was freed on bail on four occasions on her watch and that as heinous as the murder of wee Coral Burrows is in 2 weeks’ time when politicians have had their say and the media have moved on to another story Coral will simply be consigned to the history books alongside 3-year-old Anahera Ross Lewis who was tortured and punched to death— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The question is far too long. The member may have about three more words. 
Ron Mark 
: Is it not a fact that we can expect no changes from this Government and all we are simply waiting for in 10 months’ time is another such murder? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The bail laws were changed in the year 2000 which did lead to a reverse in the onus of proof being applied in this particular case. The matter of bail is a matter for the court. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am a bit concerned about your ruling that Mr Mark was taking too long over his question. Often Ministers in this House say that in order to give a full explanation in answer to a question they need to take some extra time. This is an extremely serious matter. It is on the front page of all newspapers today. It was leading news on television last night. I suspect that it will consume the nation over the next couple of weeks. I think it is only fair that the people asking questions have a reasonable amount of time to put more in the question than might be normal. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No. If the member had rung me before question time and told me he had a longer question to ask then as always I would have advised the House of that and allowed it. I do the same if a Minister says an answer will be longer. I advise that too. However there is a courtesy in letting me know about those things. 
Ron Mark 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am left with a niggling feeling and I would like some assurance from you. Subsequent to the Minister trying to avoid the question by pointing out that we should not be asking questions about such a horrendous and heinous crime leaving us with the view that she would rather not answer questions that are embarrassing and using Coral as an excuse for that subsequently you did shorten my question. If I were to do a word count and no doubt your staff could about the length of my question compared with some other members’ questions in this House I am just a little worried that I might not have been treated as fairly as others. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No the member has been treated very very fairly in this House. 
Deborah Coddington 
: Does the Minister agree that we are relying too much on Governments for the safety of children and not taking enough personal responsibility as parents families and communities as expressed by the Hon John Tamihere; if not why not? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I personally believe that there is a collective responsibility. We are all responsible for the children of this country. 
Marc Alexander 
: In light of the fact that the police viewed Steven Williams as a volatile time bomb with countless convictions for violence drug dealing abuse intimidation drink-driving and threatening to kill a 16-year-old why did neither justice nor child protection agencies think to question whether he should be living in a family with young children? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I am not sure whether that matter was actually referred by those agencies to the child protection agencies. What I am sure of though is that the police taking all those matters into account did oppose bail. The tragedy of this particular case would suggest that even if Steven Williams had not been granted bail Coral’s death may still have occurred but at a later date. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Why is it Government policy that a man with a violent criminal record should be permitted home detention at an address with two young children when it was today revealed that Steven Williams was not allowed near his own children and was not allowed near his sister’s children because he is reported to have attacked one of them; and why did this Government’s system allow that man home detention at Coral Burrows’ home? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I am not sure which particular provisions of the law provided for the home detention in this particular case but it was not for a serious violent offence in fact. 
Marc Alexander 
: Noting that Williams’ spell of home detention for cannabis offences did nothing to deter him from drugs or stop him from progressing to the supply of and the use of pure methamphetamine does the Minister agree that home detention is a ridiculous sentence for a drug addict; and had the matter been addressed earlier would it not conceivably have saved Coral Burrows’ life? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I am not aware of the evidence in respect of the possession and cultivation of cannabis and the moving on to the highly dangerous drug P. In this particular case I suspect that the tragedy is that it was going to happen anyway; it was just a matter of time. I think that what we should all do as a Parliament is try to learn the lessons of it to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.rather than try to apportion blame. 
Ron Mark 
: Is the Minister saying that even if Steven Williams had been in jail she believes that wee Coral would have been killed anyway; and what information does she now have that she could share with the House to enlighten us all as to what brought her to that conclusion contrary to what Don Finlayson was saying? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: What I said was that the tragedy may well still have occurred later on once he was released from jail. This man seemed to be on a trajectory starting with offences that go back into the 1990s. Everyone can look at himself or herself on this particular case. There is no point trying to apportion blame now. We must try to stop it from ever happening again. 
Foreshore and Seabed—Commercial Development 
2.  
Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does the Government plan to include commercial development as a customary right in the proposed legislation to deal with the foreshore and seabed; if so what are the implications for the aquaculture mining and tourism industries? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Decisions on legislation will be announced in due course. However I can advise the member that the advice to the Government is that a development right is not a customary right. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Is the Prime Minister aware that her Ministers and chief of staff told Te Ope Mana a Tai last week that the Government would accept a concept of customary title to the foreshore and seabed with commercial use attached and does she endorse the example they used that if there was a customary right to collect two buckets of sand from the beach they should be entitled to take two buckets and sell them? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: As my colleague said does it come down to two buckets of sand? I repeat: the advice to the Government has been that a development right is not a customary right. I can also say that the Deputy Prime Minister and other Ministers have been earnestly working to get a solution on this matter—unlike the Opposition which is more interested in dividing New Zealanders. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Is the Government committed to a fair and negotiated share of commercial development rights on the coast within the limits of ecological sustainability for local hapu and iwi? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Cabinet has not yet taken final decisions on the proposal which it expects to unveil next week. We will be keeping in touch with the Greens and United Future as proposals develop but I am not in a position today to outline details. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Will she confirm that aquaculture is part of commercial fishing and that the 1992 Maori fisheries settlement was a full and final settlement of all current and future claims based on rights and interests of Maori in commercial fishing; if not why would the Prime Minister not give that confirmation if she is not prepared to give it? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: My understanding is that aquaculture was not covered in that settlement. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Can the Prime Minister give the House the assurance that any right of customary title granted as a result of this proposed settlement will not be superior to the rights of access and ownership that will be enjoyed by all New Zealanders? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: From the outset what the Government has sought to do is balance the general public’s rights of access long enjoyed with the customary rights of Maori. I remain convinced that that can be done without unduly impeding on anybody’s rights. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Have her Ministers and officials told Maori interest groups that the Government has moved from its policy position in August to one where there will be a mana whenua title from which real partnership will flow; if so can she detail exactly what this real partnership will entail and what impact it will have on other New Zealanders? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The concept of partnership is one that I believe is inherent in the Treaty of Waitangi. As I said before I am interested in solutions that bring New Zealanders together to work together not dividing people. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Are we to understand that it is her Government’s intention to revisit the full and final provisions of the 1992 commercial Maori fisheries settlement; therefore in respect of aquaculture that full and final settlement lasted about 11 years just as the “in perpetuity” of the West Coast Accord signed by her Labour Government lasted about 12 years? 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: That member’s Labour Government too! 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Absolutely. But I was not the one who reneged on it. 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The member is misinformed. The full and final provisions did not apply to aquaculture. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm media reports that a Maori caucus revolt is imperilling Government plans for the foreshore and seabed and that “Semi bust-ups and major bust-ups are going on everywhere.”; if so what assurances can she give the House with the summer holidays on the horizon that the foreshore and seabed issue will be resolved any time soon? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I am happy to say that I can confirm no such thing nor have I even seen the palest shadow of the behaviour of someone like Maurice Williamson. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: I seek leave of the House to table the Treaty of Waitangi fisheries claim settlement of 1992 known as the Sealord’s deal clearly showing that aquaculture was included as part of commercial fishing in that deal. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that. Is there any objection? There is. 
Road Haulage Industry—Government Initiatives 
3.  
JILL PETTIS (Labour—Whanganui) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development and Employment 
: What initiatives is the Government taking to promote employment in the road haulage industry? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 As part of the Jobs Jolt programme an agreement between Work and Income and National Road Carriers has been signed to take people who have been on a benefit train them and employ them in the road haulage industry. Industry research suggests that the sector has a current shortage of some 1000 drivers nationwide with strong demand expected to continue. Tony Friedlander of the Road Transport Forum described this jobs partnership as a “very practical initiative which can return benefits to everyone involved” and as a “positive move towards solving the growing shortage of truck drivers”. 
Jill Pettis 
: Can the Minister advise what other industry employment partnerships are proposed and how many more people are expected to gain jobs as a result? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: The Jobs Jolt partnership has already signed an agreement with the hospitality industry and the road haulage agreement now joins that. Further agreements will be developed with a number of high-growth industries including tourism retailing and the trades. At the moment we are targeting 2500 new jobs through industry partnerships. They will be part of 22000 jobs overall. 
Katherine Rich 
: Given that Work and Income has worked closely with industry to address skill shortages for many many years what is genuinely new here and how will this programme overcome the financial barrier such as the high cost of learning to drive a truck and obtaining a heavy transport licence that is the main reason for the shortage? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I think the industry regards the programme as genuinely new and that is why it regards it as a very positive move towards solving the growing shortage of truck drivers as Tony Friedlander is reported as saying. The member is wrong. The main reason for the lack of truck drivers at the present time as the industry itself will say is the lack of forward planning on behalf of the industry. 
Peter Brown 
: Does this industry partnership that has been announced mean that people interested in a driving career will have access to finance via a student loan scheme or via a superior scheme? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: The most likely source of funding for people in that position would come through the standard training measure which is part of the industry training organisation funding model and not part of the equivalent full-time student model which is part of the loan scheme that the member was talking about. 
Peter Brown 
: Noting the Minister’s desire to promote employment in the road haulage industry will he be examining the attitude of some members of the commercial vehicle inspection units who on occasion stop truckies and penalise them very severely for some exceedingly simple errors in their logbooks leading to frustration and to drivers leaving the industry? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I personally will not be doing that; I am the Minister for Social Development and Employment. But if the member does have a concern and brings it to me I will pass it on to the appropriate Minister. 
Foreshore and Seabed—Maori Members' Support 
4.  
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Is she concerned that the Hon Tariana Turia is reported in the  
Dominion Post 
 today as telling colleagues that Maori members could exercise more influence from the sideline over the Government’s policy on the foreshore and seabed; if so what does she intend to do about it? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 No. 
Dail Jones 
: Is she concerned that there is clear evidence that the Hon Tariana Turia and her supporters have rejected the Government’s policy on the foreshore and seabed announced on 23 June 2003 which was to introduce legislation to give clear expression to the Crown’s ownership of the foreshore and seabed; and is the policy now in the control of a minor Minister with the tail wagging the dog insofar as the leadership of the Labour Party is concerned? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I have seen no such evidence. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Does the Prime Minister accept that the doctrine of collective Cabinet responsibility must operate in this matter and will she assure the House that if Mrs Turia does not publicly support the Government’s position on the foreshore and seabed issue she will expect her resignation as a Minister? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: As Prime Minister I will determine what the bounds of manoeuvre for Ministers are. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Will the Prime Minister grant Minister Tariana Turia an exemption from the collective responsibility provisions of the  
Cabinet Office Manual 
; if so why and if not why not? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I have had no such request. 
Metiria Turei 
: Does the Prime Minister not agree that it is entirely appropriate and indeed their responsibility for Maori MPs to exercise influence on behalf of Maori and their constituents; is that not a fundamental part of the democratic process? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I certainly expect members including Ministers to work within the Government on behalf of their constituents and I say of Mrs Turia that she contributes a great deal to Government policy and is a full and constructive contributor. 
Dail Jones 
: Why has the Prime Minister been unable to introduce legislation since 23 June 2003 that will ensure that the Crown has legal title to the foreshore seabed and other parts of the environment where ownership could be disputed and at the same time protect Maori and all other New Zealanders’ traditional rights of use; is that because she is no longer able to lead all the members of the Labour Party caucus to a mutually peaceful resolution of a problem that she foisted upon New Zealand and New Zealanders on 23 June 2003? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: There were so many non sequiturs in that question that I do not know where to begin. The Government has been working earnestly with a great range of interests to get a solution to the problem that the Court of Appeal dumped on our doorstep. 
Dail Jones 
: Should the Prime Minister not also be concerned that the Hon Tariana Turia’s reported comment signifying the failure of the Prime Minister to resolve a problem created by herself and the Hon Margaret Wilson over the seabed and foreshore issue now has considerable similarities with problems experienced by Prime Minister Blair over the education tax and former Prime Minister Thatcher over the poll tax; and is it now clear that this is the beginning of the end of her Labour Government? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I see no parallel. 
Dr Don Brash 
: I seek leave to table a copy of the  
Cabinet Office Manual 
 so that the Prime Minister and all Ministers will understand the constraints imposed by that manual. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that manual. Is there any objection? There is. 
Education—Maori Achievement 
5.  
NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Tainui) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: What reports has he received on improving Maori achievement in education? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Today I released the results of a research project  
Te Kotahitanga 
 which has shown significant evidence of improvements in Maori students’ achievement through a new approach to teaching. It considers ways to keep students enthused and excited about learning and shows that it is the quality of the in-class face-to-face relationships and interactions between students and their teachers that makes an enormous difference to student achievement. 
Nanaia Mahuta 
: Can the Minister outline what steps the Government is taking to lift Maori student achievement? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The Government is committed to ensuring that all our children have the opportunity to reach their full potential in education. We are putting a real focus on using research like this to help to lift Maori student achievement as it puts a spotlight on what works in practice in the mainstream classroom. We look forward to this valuable work being extended further next year. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Is the Minister telling the House that the former view of Ministry of Education officials that all we had to do was to teach Maori students te reo me nga tikanga Maori and educational underachievement would miraculously disappear is not in fact the complete answer to the issue? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: In relation to the final part of the question yes. I am not sure whether all the member’s earlier assumptions were correct. 
Farming—Minister’s Achievements 
6.  
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT) 
 to the  
Minister for Rural Affairs 
: What have been his main achievements for New Zealand’s farming community over the last 12 months? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Associate Minister for Rural Affairs) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister for Rural Affairs 
: It would take some considerable time to list all this Government’s achievements for rural communities but my personal favourite is the work we have done in maintaining and enhancing health services for rural people. 
Gerrard Eckhoff 
: Why does he believe that that self-styled achievement outweighs the following: enticing hundreds of farmers to march on Parliament to protest the flatulence tax his failure to advocate against the closure of rural schools a 7 percent rise in crime in Otago alone his failure to protect property rights over land access issues and the funding of rural hospitals which are losing money because their funding is race-based; which of the above would he rank as his finest achievement? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: There are a number of questions there. We have not made any decisions over land access and there is a process under way whereby the Minister will hear submissions from the rural sector on that issue. We have put more funding into rural health services and the Government is always willing to listen to anyone who wishes to march to Parliament on any particular issue. 
Mark Peck 
: Does the Minister accept the contention inherent in the member’s question that this Government has no truck with rural communities; if not what advice would he give Mr Eckhoff? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: We support rural New Zealand. We have a focus on ensuring rural people can access services. The Heartland Services centres have been rolled out along with high-speed Internet access. We are working to provide quality health and education services in rural areas. We are fostering the sustainability of and innovation in rural communities through things such as the Sustainable Farming Fund. We understand the value of rural New Zealand. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Why is it then that the honourable Minister is not seen to be publicly supportive of our major export earners—or is it simply that he just does not care? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: We have done a lot of work for the key industries such as producer board reform supporting them through good rural infrastructure and ensuring that good training systems are in place for rural communities. That is how this Government has assisted the rural sector in this country. 
Ian Ewen-Street 
: Would the Minister agree that the implementation of the national organic standards and the strategy for the organic sector both of which were Green Party initiatives have been amongst his main achievements for the rural sector; if not why not? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: I am sorry that I omitted to mention those achievements. They are part of a package of as I said before many many things that this Government has done for rural New Zealand. 
Gerrard Eckhoff 
: What does the Minister have to say to residents of his own electorate like councillor Terry Kennedy who said that the Government should be ashamed of what it is doing to rural health and education and to the chairman of Hakataramea Valley School board of trustees Peter Aitken who said that the Government consultation was “a load of ...”—the expletive has been deleted—“At the end of the day they did what they felt like and they knew the outcome before they came here.”? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: Those people are entitled to their opinions. However I support the robust system of consultation that we have had particularly over the issue of rural school reviews. I am happy to say that my colleague Mr Mallard has fronted up in rural communities and explained that they are entitled to quality education in the same way that urban people are as well. 
Air Quality—National Environmental Standard 
7.  
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
 to the  
Minister for the Environment 
: Is the proposed national environmental standard on air quality intended to protect and promote public health? 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 Yes. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Why does the standard allow peak concentrations of fine particulates 2½ times higher than the current guidelines given that the World Health Organization says there is no safe level and that they are believed to contribute to 400 deaths and 750000 restricted activity days a year in Auckland alone? 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: I agree that research including World Health Organization research has not identified a threshold below which health effects do not occur and that there is some risk with inhaling at proposed standards. However given that many of our towns at the moment significantly breach the proposed concentration on many days a year achieving that standard should bring about considerable health benefits. 
Dr Ashraf Choudhary 
: What are the likely health benefits from the proposed air quality standards? 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: Poor air quality causes severe health problems as was noted by the previous questioner. Modelling by the Ministry for the Environment indicates that achieving the proposed standards will prevent annually around 40 premature deaths 40 hospitalisations and 75000 person-days of restricted activity. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Given that motor vehicles are the main source of fine particulates particularly in Auckland is not this standard just designed not to get in the way of Mayor Banks’ extreme road-building plans for Auckland and has she seen the recent UK study in which children’s coughing was directly related to the distance they lived from a road? 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: I am very much aware that in certain areas around Auckland—and I have seen the studies—vehicle congestion adds very much so to the poor air quality. There is a distinction between congestion and slow traffic and moving traffic. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Why does the Minister think it is appropriate to set a national minimum standard at a level that is known to kill people especially when regional councils which have the power to set higher standards than this will face huge business lobbies if they try to go beyond the national standard in order to protect their communities? 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: I would beg to suggest that any standard is better than the current no-standard and that the case of the difference between proposed standards in Christchurch or Canterbury regional standards and this one are to be debated between them. It is accepted by me—and in working with the mayor and people of Christchurch at this very moment—that the cause there is more to do with housing than vehicles. The room for movement at the moment seems only to be on industry and that is where the tension lies. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Would not Environment Canterbury’s current air plan also produce higher air quality than the Government’s proposed minimum standard and is not Environment Canterbury’s main concern simply the rate of implementation in order to give industry time to adapt? 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: From my understanding the problem in Canterbury has more to do with the poverty of households impacting on their ability to lower domestic emissions which are by far the greatest problem in air pollution in Canterbury. That is why there is some tension at the moment between the flexibility that comes with industry lowering emissions versus some support for domestic lowering of emissions. 
Housing—Quality Assurance 
8.  
LYNNE PILLAY (Labour—Waitakere) 
 to the  
Minister of Commerce 
: What is the Government doing to protect homeowners in their purchase of built household units from property developers and speculative builders? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 The Government has agreed to introduce further changes to the Building Bill currently before the Government Administration Committee that will extend the warranty provisions to property developers and speculative builders. In addition such developers and builders will be required to obtain code-compliance certificates prior to the completion of contracts for the sale of household units. 
Lynne Pillay 
: Why are these changes to the Building Bill necessary? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: When someone buys a unit or house off a developer or speculative builder there is no original contract to fall back on if something needs to be fixed. Therefore the warranty provisions will provide redress should it be required. These will be implied by law and if they are not included in the purchase agreement there can be no contracting out. Homeowners who in the past have not realised that their brand new home was not code-compliant when they bought it from such a developer or builder will be welcoming this proposal. 
Hon David Carter 
: Will the Minister assure the House that any such legislative change will be more effective than the fiasco around the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act that promised access to speedy resolution and has so far out of 2105 claims resolved only 33? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The member has quite rightly identified a problem with the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service procedures which were designed to give people effective and ready access to solutions. But what we have actually seen is people spending a considerable amount of money on lawyers instead of on getting their houses fixed and I would like to do something about that. 
Criminal Offenders—Bail 
9.  
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
 to the  
Minister of Justice 
: Is it Government policy that offenders with 80 or more previous convictions are able to receive bail; if so why? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Associate Minister of Justice) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister of Justice 
: Government policy on bail was laid out in the Bail Act of 2000. That Act implemented significant reforms to bail law including introducing a presumption against bail for serious repeat offenders. However decisions on bail in specific cases are a matter for the court. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Given the Minister’s assurances at the time of the passing of the Bail Act that it would ensure public security as the ultimate goal what changes will the Government consider given a situation whereby a man with 88 convictions for quite serious offences can get bail breach those bail conditions and then be granted bail yet again? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The point I made in an earlier answer is that in that particular case section 12 of the Bail Act was invoked and the onus of proof was reversed. The court made the decision on the bail application. Bail was opposed by the police. 
Ron Mark 
: Does the Minister recall saying on 1 March 1998: “Professional criminals with multiple convictions and a track record of offending on bail need to know that immediate imprisonment will be the automatic response if they commit further crimes. Taking hard-core criminals out of circulation is the only effective way of reducing the soaring crime rate.”; and if he does not does he remember saying it was time the Minister of the day got serious about the review of bail laws to produce a system with better safeguards for the community; if so what will the Minister do now to tighten up the bail laws? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Yes and that is why the Bail Act was amended in the year 2000. 
Dr Muriel Newman 
: In light of that answer what does the Minister of Justice say in response to present and former police who agree with detective Don Finlayson that the judicial system is kicking them in the teeth and who stated: “I left and others are leaving because we are wasting our time.”? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I understand why the police would feel that way about this particular case because on that particular occasion the police opposed bail as they did on other occasions. However at the end of the day even with the reverse onus of proof it is up to the court to make decisions on bail applications. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Given that the Bail Act was previously amended because Parliament decided that judges were not being tough enough on bail given that in this case judges believed they had the power to grant bail even though people had originally breached their bail conditions and that was the reason they were before the judge is it not time that Parliament again amended the law to tighten it up and give a much clearer message to judges that a person with 88 previous convictions does not get bail? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Each individual case is decided on its own facts. Not all of the convictions were serious criminal convictions not all of those convictions happened after the 1999 election and not all those bail decisions happened after the 1999 general election either. There is no point playing politics with this appalling tragedy. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: There was too much interjection during that answer. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You are probably likely to rule that in that case the Minister addressed the question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Most certainly. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Well I ask you to consider this. It was a simple question that asked whether Parliament should have another look at these laws. No answer was given to that. A lecture was given to the House about how the current law works. We all know it is insufficient and that was why the question was asked in the first place. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That last point was not part of a point of order. The Minister did address the question. 
Ron Mark 
: I seek the leave of the House to table a report in which Mr Goff states that Parliament needs to change the law to instruct the courts to lock these crooks up. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Health Services—Rural Areas 
10.  
DAVID PARKER (Labour—Otago) 
 to the  
Associate Minister for Rural Affairs 
: How is the Government improving the delivery of rural health services in New Zealand? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Associate Minister for Rural Affairs) 
: 
 This Government’s mobile surgical services initiative has completed its second year exceeding its targets for operations. In the past year the service has travelled the length of the country delivering well over 1000 surgical procedures to people in rural communities. Just yesterday the mobile bus was winner of a United Nations – sponsored world information communications award in Geneva for its achievements in delivering first-class surgical services to people in rural areas. 
David Parker 
: In practice what does the success of the mobile surgical bus mean for rural New Zealanders? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: It means that more than 300 different procedures are available to those using the facility and it means a high number of operations carried out in each centre. For example in the year ended October 2003 there were 143 procedures in Warkworth 89 in Taihape 67 in Balclutha 63 in Gore and 56 in Dunstan Hospital at Clyde. 
Katherine Rich 
: With regard to the Minister’s reference to Dunstan Hospital what is the Minister doing about rural services in particular the services provided by Dunstan Hospital? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: I understand there have been negotiations with the Minister of Health and I think we are likely to see a very very positive outcome for the people of that region assisted by the great advocacy of the local member. 
Tauranga Surgeon—Patient Safety 
11.  
Dr LYNDA SCOTT (National—Kaikoura) 
 to the  
Minister of Health 
: Will she now take action and order an inquiry to discover why Southern Cross Norfolk Hospital and Tauranga Hospital have suddenly banned Mr Ian Breeze from surgery but seemed unable to do so previously; if not why not? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Associate Minister of Health) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister of Health 
: No. The Minister has been advised by the Medical Council and the Health and Disability Commissioner that these matters are being dealt with appropriately. 
Dr Lynda Scott 
: Did Tauranga Hospital know of any problems Mr Breeze was having at the Norfolk Community Hospital and previously at the Southern Cross hospital and vice versa; if not why are we are not having an inquiry to investigate how to solve the systemic failure of communication that prevented the whole picture from being seen? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: My understanding is that as soon as Tauranga Hospital was notified of the concerns it took action. The Government has moved to improve the system. The passage of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act has meant that anyone or any organisation with complaints can take them to one place—that is the Health and Disability Commissioner. 
Dr Lynda Scott 
: Was the failure of Tauranga Hospital to suspend Mr Breeze from practice influenced in any way by not what it knew of his error rate but by the case of Dunedin surgeon Robert Phipps whom HealthCare Otago sacked after a review of competency costing Otago hundreds of thousands of dollars; if the Minister does not know the answer to this question why are we not having an inquiry to find out? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: I am not aware of the details around that but if the member would like to write a question down I am sure we will get details back to her. 
Employment Relations Law Reform Bill—Policy 
12.  
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
 to the  
Minister of Labour 
: Does she stand by her statement yesterday regarding aspects of the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill that “The Government considers that skilled employees are in fact an asset of the business and just like plant capital and goodwill are seen as assets so should employees. So we do not see in this instance that it will be a detriment.”; if so why? 
Hon MARGARET WILSON (Minister of Labour) 
: 
 Yes because the bill requires apart from the vulnerable employee sector that buyers and sellers of a business turn their minds to what should happen to employees when a business is sold. I understand that this already happens in many transactions. 
Paul Adams 
: If such employees are always a valuable asset whose retention will not be detrimental to the business concerned why does the Minister see the need for legislation to protect them when this is surely a business decision for employers to make as they are the people most capable of recognising these skills? 
Hon MARGARET WILSON 
: That is why the legislation provides for a process not an outcome. It enables the employer and the employee to determine the best situation that applies to them in those circumstances. 
Dave Hereora 
: Why is the continuity of employment provisions important in developing productive employment relationships? 
Hon MARGARET WILSON 
: During the period of economic adjustment in the 1980s and 1990s New Zealand unfortunately lost too many skilled employees and at a time when there is a global skill shortage—and that is recognised by everyone—it is important that we do all we can to attract and to retain skilled employees. 
Hon Roger Sowry 
: Does the Minister believe that saddling the purchaser of an ailing company with its employees and limiting the ability of the buyer to make changes to staffing and management practices are in fact positive moves; if so why? 
Hon MARGARET WILSON 
: The bill does not saddle an employer with new employees. The provisions of the reform bill provide for a process to be discussed between the employees and the employer as to what would be appropriate in those circumstances. I note that the provisions do not apply to those businesses that are bankrupt or insolvent in some way. 
Paul Adams 
: Does the Minister concede that despite her view of skilled employees as assets a new owner cannot sell staff unlike plant and machinery and does she agree that if new employers have to pay redundancy then existing staff may be a liability? 
Hon MARGARET WILSON 
: That is a view towards employees that some employers might have. In my experience most in fact do see their employees as being a valuable contribution to their business. 
Hon Roger Sowry 
: Given the Minister’s answer before when she noted that the provisions do not saddle employers with the staff and she noted that they do not apply to businesses that are insolvent or bankrupt does she agree that many businesses such as restaurants will go into insolvency or bankruptcy because new purchasers will not want to hire the staff? 
Hon MARGARET WILSON 
: No the evidence is that when buying a business in those instances it is frequently important to retain good staff who know the customers and can continue the profitability of the business. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Supplementary question. No New Zealand First has had its allocated quota. 
Peter Brown 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. We had 10 questions yesterday 10 on Tuesday and we are entitled to 11 once a week. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No there were 11 yesterday—I am sorry. The member’s party has had its week’s questions. 
Sue Bradford 
: Is the Minister concerned for future employment relations and the welfare of employees should a United Future or National MP ever have Cabinet responsibility for employment relations— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I want the question asked without reference to that point about United Future or National. I want the member to ask the question she wants to ask but without reference to the parties because they are no responsibility of the Minister. The member can come back to it if she wants. 
Paul Adams 
: Does she agree that the provision in the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill compelling new owners or contract holders to take on existing staff may have the unintended consequence of forcing employers to make their own staff redundant? 
Hon MARGARET WILSON 
: The provisions of the bill that require the transfer of employees relate to vulnerable employees only. It is important to understand that point. Also the other question of whether employers would deliberately make people redundant is covered in terms of the new employer if in fact that happens as a result of the transfer. 
Employment Relations Law Reform Bill 
First Reading 
Hon MARGARET WILSON (Minister of Labour) 
: 
 I move  
That the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill be now read a first time. 
 I propose that this bill be referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee with an instruction to the committee to present its final report within 6 months. As promised this Government has reviewed the Employment Relations Act. The review showed the Act is working well but could be improved. This bill addresses those areas where the Act can be strengthened to achieve better its key objectives of promoting good faith collective bargaining and the effective resolution of employment relations. The bill also provides protective measures for employees affected by the sale transfer and contracting-out of businesses. Finally it updates the equal pay legislation to reflect the changes made to the employment relations framework. 
The review of the Act showed uncertainty exists over the good-faith obligation and when and how it applies. The lack of penalties for breaches of good faith also encouraged some parties to flout their good-faith obligations. The bill therefore clarifies what good faith is in a broader concept than the common-law obligations of mutual trust and confidence and that addressing the inequality of power in employment relationships goes beyond focusing on bargaining power alone. It also confirms that good faith applies to individual bargaining situations and that there must be genuine negotiations over individual employment agreements. Stronger incentives for parties to act in good faith are provided by the introduction of penalties and remedies for serious and sustained breaches of good faith. 
The legislative incentives for the settlement of collective agreements have been relatively weak and unions have faced significant practical barriers in organising employees collectively to effect an agreement. This bill seeks to reduce those barriers while still preserving the freedom of individual choice. The bill also directly addresses the issue of free-riding: the practice of employers automatically passing on collectively bargained terms and conditions to employees employed on individual agreements during negotiations. The test will be whether an employer intended to and did in fact undermine the collective bargaining process or outcome. If so it will be a breach of good faith for the employer to pass on the same or similar terms and conditions as those in a collective agreement that is either being bargained for or has been settled. The emphasis is on the bargaining process both individual and collective used by the parties rather than on the outcome of that process. Unions and employers will not be prevented from agreeing that the collective terms and conditions may be passed on to employees employed on individual agreements. 
The bill also provides a new form of assistance to overcome impasses in collective bargaining and facilitate settlement wherever possible. It also makes explicit the principle that collective bargaining should result in a collective agreement unless there is a genuine reason why it should not. The bill will also facilitate the settlement of multi-employer and multi-union collective agreements. Other unions and employers will be able to easily join in existing collective agreement where the original agreement allows that to occur and all parties agree. 
There has also been some uncertainty about the interaction between the personal grievance provisions in the Employment Relations Act and the intent of the Act to balance the interests of fairness to both employers and employees. The bill makes it clear that employers must consider and balance the legitimate interest of employees when making the decision to dismiss someone and the tribunal or court that determines that matter also has to take into account both the actions of the employer and the employee. Overall the test is to be an objective one. This is not a radical revamp of the dismissal law. It draws from existing case law and fits well within good human resources practice. The bill also strengthens the mediation and Employment Relations Authority processes. 
Under the bill special protection will be given to specified groups of employees who are particularly vulnerable in change-of-employer situations and lack effective bargaining power such as cleaners and food service employees. Those employees will have the right to choose to transfer to the new employer on their current terms and conditions of employment. Other employees will also be given protection through the requirement for their employment agreements to contain an employee protection provision. Those provisions will describe what steps the employer will take to protect employees affected by a sale transfer or an initial contracting-out of business. 
The bill also introduces new equal pay provisions to replace both the Government Service Equal Pay Act of 1960 and the Equal Pay Act of 1972. The new provisions will update the law on equal pay and cover both Government and private sector employees. 
This bill introduces a good balance of practical and realistic measures that will strengthen the Employment Relations Act and further promote productive employment relations and practices. I commend the bill to the House. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY (National) 
: 
 That was a bit half-hearted I thought from the Minister. She is clearly under instructions to try to make sure that she does not advocate this bill too strongly. After all this is the Minister who had to pull these exact same provisions out of the Employment Relations Bill just 3 years ago. This is all the stuff that she tried to put into law during the winter of discontent and she had to pull it all out. But the unions have come knocking at the door and the Minister has done what she does best which is capitulate and say to them: “Yes I will have another go.” 
I want to say first of all that National totally opposes this bill. We will work with groups around New Zealand to motivate them to ensure that they fight this bill very very hard. I predict today that we will win and the Minister will lose. That is my prediction on what will occur because I know that the business community is very very angry at the lack of consultation on this legislation. I know that small businesses are only just coming to terms with the sort of answer that the Minister gave in the House today which is basically that if a small-business owner is going to sell the business and the buyer does not want to buy the staff that small-business owner is better off going into voluntary liquidation. That is why a lawyer said to me yesterday that this bill is good for him. There will be more voluntary liquidations. This bill will write goodwill off thousands of businesses all over New Zealand. A business that had some goodwill in it will see that goodwill written off because of this legislation. 
I want to talk about a few particulars in the bill and start with the issue of good faith. The bill now defines much more broadly the issue of good faith and the good old Labour Party not only defines good faith in a broader way but also socks the employer some fines. The employer who does not meet good faith now will face a $10000 fine. That is good faith is it not! But that is nothing new. This is the Government that whacked the fines in on the Holidays Bill and on the occupational safety and health legislation. Every chance it gets it winds up the fines for employers because it thinks that employers are rich fat people—and pretty nasty as well—who can afford to pay the fines. I see Dave Hereora and Lynne Pillay nodding away. That is their view—the good old trade union view of how the bosses are. 
 Now any failure by any employer to consult with the union when dealing with its unionised staff in a workplace will inevitably be an issue of breach of good faith. It is as simple as that. For example rest home operators dealing with staff who are members of the Service and Food Workers Union put an offer on the table to their elected delegates who accept it and sign up. The operators have not talked to the union officials; they have only talked to the delegates and that becomes a breach of good faith. That is outrageous. That plays into the union’s hands and leads to a centralised bargaining situation which is what the Government wants. That is exactly where this legislation is heading. 
The transfer of undertakings clause is where all employment agreements are required to address what process will be followed if a business is sold or work contracted out. For example the owners of corner dairies who hire staff members will have to put into their employment agreements the process they will follow including when they will disclose to those staff members that they will sell the business. 
Dave Hereora 
: Wonderful. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: “Wonderful” say the Labour members. That means that they have no idea about the way business operates. It means that all employers will have to stipulate in all employment agreements the commercial terms they will follow in the event that they want to sell part of their business. That is an extra cost that every employer will now have to bear. 
I bet Labour members will not spend the summer holidays wandering around small retailers saying to them: “How many staff do you have? Next time you negotiate with them you will have to tell them how you will deal with them when you sell the business. That includes what the contractual obligations are between you and them and disclosing financial information to their union about the sale or transfer or contracting out of the business.” That is what I intend to do in summer. 
Dave Hereora 
: Marvellous. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: Dave Hereora says “Marvellous”. I look forward to going into businesses that have three four and five staff—retailers—and telling them that this is what they will now have to do. 
Then we have the status of this new group of vulnerable employees. These are people who just so happen to belong to the Service and Food Workers Union. That is the union that most of the Labour caucus come from. Hands up—I think there are three or four in the House today—those who came from the Service and Food Workers Union! That is why that group of workers gets special treatment in this legislation. That group of workers have to be paid redundancy if the business is sold. 
Let me tell members what happens. Someone owns a footwear manufacturing business and the staff working on the machines are low paid. It is hard work—something that Labour people have never done. If the business is sold do they get redundancy? No they do not. But the cleaner who comes in and pushes the broom around does. The lady or man who runs the tuck-shop does but the person who might be on lower wages who is the cutter of the leather does not. So it is not done on wage or status in the workplace it is done on which union one belongs to and whether one has enough mates in the Labour caucus. What a load of nonsense that is. In that same footwear warehouse—not the retail Warehouse—the guy who looks after the nuggets gets nothing but the person who works in the tuck-shop gets the redundancy. There is no equity there. It is all about who one’s mates are. It is nonsense. 
I want to finish with the drive to get all employers into multi-employment contracts. That is what this is about. This bill tilts the playing field so that employers will get dragged into multi-employment contracts. Labour members love that. They love to think that employers will all have to follow what the large employer does. There is nothing for new small employers in this bill. 
LYNNE PILLAY (Labour—Waitakere) 
: 
 This bill is about fairness. It is about ensuring that parties do bargain in good faith. It is about providing security and certainty for vulnerable workers. It is about ensuring that the principles of the Equal Pay Act are applied. Where is the fairness in the lowest most vulnerable workers in our country losing their jobs one day and the next day being told they have their job back but their pay is being cut by 50c an hour? Where is the fairness in unions and workers doing their best to bargain in good faith for a fair collective agreement only to be met with a flat refusal or a fob-off from an employer? 
 Where is the fairness in situations where unions and workers have put much time and energy—and workers have paid a fee—to negotiate a deal to see it undermined by those hard-earned terms and conditions being automatically passed on to non-union workers? Where is the fairness when employers deliberately pay women less than men for doing the same job? The answer is that there is no fairness in those situations. The Opposition members who disagree—and I can see them doing it that poor sad little group—are behind the times. They are not in touch with workers workers’ families or the many employers who do support these amendments and the polls show it. 
I am proud to commend this bill to the House. In doing that I want to acknowledge the unions the workers and the many employers who are committed to ensuring that fairness and equity happens in our workplaces. The result of that is productive working relationships—something that party would not know anything about. Productive working relationships are good for business and good for polls. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 There is much in this bill that concerns New Zealand First immensely. The explanatory note states: “To achieve this the Act acknowledges the inherent inequality of power in employment relationships and seeks to balance the interests of employers and employees through the promotion of unions and collective bargaining the obligation to act in good faith”. There will never be equal power-sharing between employees and employers as that seems to outline because basically the employer is responsible for virtually everything. He or she is responsible for the finances of the business the equipment the overall safety the employee well-being for marketing the business and for servicing the clients. It is just ridiculous to suggest that employees should have an equal balance of power in the running of a business. That is not to say that they should not have their concerns met from time to time but to suggest that they should be on an equal power-sharing basis with employers is not practical. 
The explanatory note continues: “The Bill seeks to reduce practical and behavioural barriers to collective bargaining through providing appropriate incentives for collective bargaining as well as provisions to discourage and penalise the deliberate undermining and avoidance of collective bargaining:”. Why should a union have a monopoly on collective bargaining? I asked that question of the Minister of Labour Margaret Wilson yesterday in the House and she said that it is traditional and there is no reason to change it. With due respect to the Minister that is weak. If it is good enough for the Australians to have the ability to bargain collectively without being in a union it is good enough for New Zealanders. If the Australians can do it so should New Zealanders be able to. 
The explanatory note goes on to state: “The Bill establishes a requirement that all employment agreements contain protective provisions describing what steps the employer will take in the event of any sale transfer or initial contracting out of business to protect affected employees’ interests. The details of such provisions are subject to negotiation.” I have some real concerns about that as has New Zealand First. Having said that I think Lynne Pillay made a good point about workers being sacked one night when the company is sold and re-engaged the next day for something less than they had been working for—in other words from time to time advantage has been taken of workers’ vulnerability. 
New Zealand First has long been on the record as having concerns about casual employment in this country. We have fought long and hard—ever since I have been in the House—to have that addressed. I have had experiences with a stevedoring organisation in Tauranga which overnight sacked people who had been there for years. They were told: “Don’t come Monday.” Indeed a good colleague of mine who worked his way up from planning clerk on the wharf at the Mount to operations manager of the company in the Mount and a senior role in the nationwide company was 1 week off 30 years’ service and was told: “Don’t come back.” When he got the telephone call he thought they were ringing him to tell him to come in for the reception they were putting on to celebrate his 30 years. He was told “Sorry don’t need you any more.” He had a reasonable-sized house which he had to sell. He was a grown man but when I spoke to him about that time he was just about in tears. 
There are legitimate concerns about the way some people are being employed in this country particularly at the vulnerable stage of their careers. Some people never rise higher than that. They are vulnerable their whole working lives and they have had treatment by some employers that is not good enough. 
New Zealand First is genuinely and realistically fearful of this bill but we believe there is a case for the vulnerable workers to have a better deal. We know of no other way of giving vulnerable workers the ability to air their concerns than to support this bill to the select committee stage. I cannot see if it remains as it is that we will be able to support it much further than that but we believe that low-paid vulnerable workers have a genuine concern and that they need to have a forum in which to air those views and concerns. 
Simon Power 
: Will you support it? 
PETER BROWN 
: We will support it to the select committee stage. We believe in listening to New Zealanders. That is part of the New Zealand First philosophy. I know that that does not count with the National Party. Its members all know better than Mr and Mrs Average New Zealander. 
Simon Power 
: That’s them not us. 
PETER BROWN 
: That is them over there is it? The member might be right. We have a track record of listening to the concerns of New Zealanders. 
Simon Power 
: Unless they’re immigrants. 
PETER BROWN 
: How can the member say that when I am standing here making this speech and I am New Zealand First’s No. 1 immigrant? I came here a long time ago. I have spent most of my time in this country and am very proud to be a New Zealander but I was born just north of London. Back to the bill: New Zealand First wants to see a fair deal for casual vulnerable workers. We are not talking about the high-flyers the people who can go from job to job and demand whatever they want wherever they go. We are talking about the— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: MPs. 
PETER BROWN 
: I do not know whether an MP can go from job to job. Certainly I would give the Minister advice to hang on to that seat while she has it because nobody else will pick her up. We believe that it is timely that the concerns of low-paid casual workers are legitimately and fairly addressed. It is unfortunate that they have to be addressed in this bill. New Zealand First put a few amendments to the Employment Relations Bill when it came in initially but it was voted down by the Greens the Alliance which was in Parliament for a short time and Labour. They were not interested in casual workers at that time. Now they have apparently done some work and say they will address the concerns of these folk. I hope it is genuine but New Zealand First has reservations as to whether it is practical and whether it will work. 
We have major concerns with this bill about the way it will impact on business in the balancing of power between employees and employers. We think it is totally wrong and totally outside of good faith to say that people can have a collective contract only if they are members of a union. We think that is a breach of good faith in itself. We have concerns about low-paid and casual employees and we believe that sending this bill to the select committee will give MPs the chance to hear their cases first hand. At this point in time New Zealand First will support this bill to the select committee but I tell the Government not to count on us for long-term support unless the bill is amended significantly to be fairer and in the better interests of the country as a whole. 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is delighted that this bill aimed at reforming and improving the Employment Relations Act has finally reached the House. Although we have reservations about some aspects of the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill we are certainly in full support of its key aims and objectives. It is over 3 years since the Employment Relations Act passed into law and probably like others here today I remember 2000 as a period of parliamentary trench warfare. It was a year in which National ACT and representatives of big business acted as if the New Zealand economy would collapse as a result of the Employment Relations Act coming in while those of us on the other side of the House knew well enough that all we were doing was enacting a very mildly reforming piece of legislation that would do away we hoped with the worst excesses of the Employment Contracts Act era. 
I think most people realise now that the fears of the right did not come to pass. As has been shown in practice the Employment Relations Act has not even achieved some of the quite moderate goals for unions and workers that we had hoped for back in 2000. For example I thought the Employment Relations Act would sort out the whole question of the right to collectively bargain in that employers under the concept of good faith would have to seriously negotiate with workers and their representatives once the process was under way. I was quite naively surprised when union people began to tell me that some employers simply will not and do not negotiate dragging things out for months if not years. This is simply unacceptable and certainly was not the intention of those of us who supported the Employment Relations Act. 
When this unwillingness to negotiate is combined with the decline in union membership we begin to get some pretty shocking statistics coming through. For example bargaining is shrinking in the private sector whereby in 2002 to 2003 there was a 29 percent decline in employers who were party to a collective agreement. 
I am delighted that the new bill before us today aims to ensure that some of the loopholes employers have found will be closed. Among other things the concept of good faith is clarified and strengthened. Employers must bargain on all issues before them and penalties and remedies are strengthened for serious breaches of good faith. Underpinning this the bill makes explicit that the process of collective bargaining should result in a collective agreement unless there is a genuine reason not to. 
Another area of deep concern to us has been the question of freeloading. Again like others who had worked hard to achieve the Employment Relations Act I believed that the new Act would pave the way for a steadily increased unionisation of the workforce and start to turn back the clock on the massive de-unionisation that happened in the 1990s. However the reality has been quite different. As reported at this year’s biennial conference of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions in New Zealand we still have only 21.3 percent of workers covered by collective agreements. At the same time 73.3 percent of the workforce overall remains un-unionised. 
In the private sector things have become even worse since the introduction of the Employment Relations Act and four out of the five largest unions in the private sector experienced a decline of membership in 2002. Only 12.4 percent of private sector workers are in unions and out of a group of comparable countries only the United States has a lower density of union membership than New Zealand. Those are telling figures. 
Part of the problem is that some employees continue to have an attitude entrenched in the Employment Contract Act 1990s that unions are simply bargaining agents. On top of this a number of workers know that they can get the benefit of collective bargaining by unions anyway so they do not even bother to join a union at all riding free in perpetuity on the backs of those who do care enough to pay their weekly fees. 
While that may please people like Simon Power Business New Zealand and the rest of the ACT and National parties it does not please those of us who believe that the only real way to address the ongoing imbalance of power between employer and employee is to maintain and develop strong effective trade unions. The Green Party is therefore pleased that this bill will put in place at least some measures that will assist in discouraging employers from continuing to undermine unions by freely handing out the benefits of the collective in ways that actively encourage de-unionisation. However we are concerned that the provisions aimed at stopping freeloading do not go far enough and we will be working closely with unions during the course of this bill to see what can be done to strengthen this aspect of the legislation. 
A third area where we are particularly pleased with the new bill is around employment relationship problem resolution. We look forward for example to seeing mediation services being made more flexible greater clarification around issues like what exactly constitutes unjustifiable dismissal in a personal grievance situation and a greater focus on any settlements that result from mediation being directed towards applicants rather than being a primary and ongoing source of income for a vast army of lawyers. 
Fourthly and perhaps the most significant issue for the Green Party in this review of the Employment Relations Act is around what was called the transfer of undertakings when we were working on the Employment Relations Bill and is now being called “protecting employees’ interests in change of employer situations”. During the first Employment Relations Bill process the Green Party fought really hard to try to keep the original protective clause 66 of that bill but unfortunately at that time Labour felt obliged to cave in to what looked to us like big-business pressure to withdraw that clause. Since then there have been several ministerial advisory groups working on this admittedly extremely complex issue. While it has taken a lot longer than we would have hoped it is great that the Government has finally come back to the House with a bill that includes a solid framework for employment protection in restructuring situations where the legal ownership of a business changes and the same work is being undertaken by the new employer. 
Provision is now made in this bill for a two-tier system with one lot of specific provisions providing a high level of guaranteed protection for categories of employees who are seen as particularly vulnerable such as workers providing cleaning catering and laundry services and with a second lower level of protection being afforded across the board to all other employees who are not part of that first group as defined in the bill. 
While at first glance this new framework may seem overly convoluted I believe that after all the negotiation in this area that has gone on over the last 4 years it is a well-worked compromise that goes a long way towards ensuring that in future people will have far greater protection when a business changes hands or work is contracted out. 
The Green Party is committed to equal pay and to equal pay for work of equal value—pay equity. Although the Government has seen fit to update the equal-pay legislation in this bill and we are pleased to support some improvements such as increased penalties for non-compliance we are very disappointed that it has not taken this opportunity to progress pay equity and begin the process to end wage discrimination in the workforce. With the Pay Equity Taskforce report due soon we will be discussing with the Government how any recommendations from this committee can be incorporated into this bill. 
Finally I would just like to touch on one particular aspect of the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill about which the Green Party does have really grave concerns. This relates to clause 35 which inserts a new section 100D into the Employment Relations Act and establishes a new procedure called the codes of employment practice. This new policy would allow the Minister of Labour to make codes about how the Act should be applied when industrial action is taken in the health sector. If this section of the bill is passed the Minister of Health will be able to decide after consultation what limits should be put on strike action in the interests of health and safety in both the public and private sectors. This is an extraordinary measure to be undertaken by a Labour Government particularly when one considers that private sector health employees will be affected. 
I have only to think of nurses and other staff at the Redwood Lodge in Rotorua and their current dispute where a private employer is putting high profit margins above the interests of very low-paid employees to wonder what on earth the Government’s intentions really are. Would it see the Minister of Health using section 100D to stop the Redwood workers striking for very moderate pay claims and improved staffing ratios? Will the Government seek to use this section to undermine the Nurses Organisation’s well-known plans for an intensive campaign for fair pay in 2004? 
The Employment Relations Act already contains provisions that require hospital workers to give 14 days’ notice of strike action and includes provision for mediation during that time. There are also legal limits on strike action being taken at the beginning of bargaining. These restrictions already make it more difficult for health workers to go on strike than was the case during all the years of the Employment Contracts Act. Section 100D of this new bill gives the Minister unusual power during times of industrial action by health employees. As the Minister is also ultimately responsible for the funding of health pay settlements this measure gives extraordinary control to someone who is both funder and de facto employer. 
I know that nurses and other health professionals are not saying that they do not care about health and safety during strike action; rather they believe as does the Green Party that legislation already adequately covers the issue and that voluntary codes of practice between employers and unions are a far better way forward than this kind of singular legislative control. 
The Green Party does support the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill before us this afternoon but I can assure workers and unions around New Zealand that we will be doing our best to improve this bill as it goes through the select committee process. 
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to oppose this bill. We are not convinced that we need this bill. The Prime Minister told the Council of Trade Unions conference this year that opponents of the Employment Relations Act must be very disappointed that the legislation had been successful and a stabilising influence on employment relations. Business groups say that the reason the Employment Relations Act has not turned out as badly as they thought it would is that all the controversial parts were dumped. If the law is working so well now then why does it need to be amended? The Government wants to review the Employment Relations Act because the law has not helped out its old mates the unions as much as it had hoped it would. 
Advocates of the Employment Relations Act hoped that the union density—that is the proportion of unionised workers in the labour force—would rise from the 17 percent it had sunk to under the Employment Contracts Act. According to a study by the Industrial Relations Centre at Victoria University union membership has grown by around 10 percent in the past 3 years but union density has remained virtually flat at around 20 percent since the mid-1990s. That stagnation has occurred despite the fact that under the Employment Relations Act unions have been given the exclusive right to collective bargaining. As the old Employment Contracts Act agreements expired workers either had to join an established union form one of their own or revert to individual agreements. Few employees have elected to join unions and those who have done so joined unions formed of members in one workplace. They are not affiliated with the Council of Trade Unions and tend to be regarded sceptically by the union movement. It is probably not surprising that employees in the public sector are five times more likely to be collectivised than their private sector counterparts. Slightly over half of all trade union members are employed in the public service. So this bill is all about trying to increase the influence of the traditional unions beyond the public sector. 
The unions claim that the reason they are not succeeding under the Employment Relations Act is that non-union employees free ride on the same terms and conditions secured by collective agreements. So this bill makes it a breach of good faith for employers to undermine collective bargaining if they pass on the same terms and conditions to non-union employees without presenting them with the opportunity to join a union. I think that in practice it will be very hard to establish whether an employer has undermined collective bargaining. Even the union leaders have said that the bill will not give them enough ammunition to stop freeloading. I wonder what would happen if an employer decided to pay non-union members more money than union members receive. He or she would be in trouble. That would be seen as an incentive for people not to join the union. That is the trouble when we get legalistic on this stuff. People need to be given a break and allowed to work one with the other as they negotiate things. So this clause is just a symbolic gesture to the Government’s supporters. 
But the bill does make it legal to give a bargaining bonus to members of a union. What wonderful words those are to a member of a union who negotiates a collective agreement. Can members remember when 6902 Public Service Association members at the Inland Revenue Department the Ministry of Social Development and Land Information New Zealand received a total of almost $4.5 million in bonus payments for successfully negotiating a new collective agreement? At the time we knew that United Future and other parties in this House questioned whether that was a breach of section 9(1) of the Employment Relations Act which prohibits preference on the basis of union membership. But only unions can negotiate collective agreements so at the time the agreement is made the one-off nature of the bargaining bonus effectively restricts it to union members. The average bonus received $712 would have covered each member’s union fees for the year. How nice that was! Fonterra and the unions tried to do the opposite of that and to get non-union workers to pay the fees of the union members because they had negotiated the collective employment agreement. But that has been challenged in court. The Minister must have been worried about the legality of the bargaining bonus for Public Service Association members because now we have a new clause in this bill that amends section 9 of the principal Act to state that it does not prevent a collective agreement from containing a term or condition that is intended to recognise the benefits of a collective agreement or the relationship upon which it is based. The Government knew that the bargaining bonus was dodgy so now it is covering it up. 
I turn to what I think is the most contentious part of this bill and that is the idea that in certain industries new business owners have to take on the staff of the old business. Even a political party does not have to take on the old staff if there is a change. 
David Benson-Pope 
: The National Party does. 
PAUL ADAMS 
: Not always. That is not true. Those who win a contract to provide a service will be forced to employ the staff of the outfit that lost the contract. People are people. 
Simon Power 
: That’s a very good point. People are people. 
PAUL ADAMS 
: That is a very good point. It was quite a revelation to the member. 
Simon Power 
: You were quick off the mark. People are definitely people. 
PAUL ADAMS 
: I was; I realise that. I am pleased to inform the member of that. He can put it in his memory bank now and he will be right. People are definitely people. Some have leadership ability and some do not. Some are soft-hearted and some are hard-hearted. Sometimes a business with a soft-hearted leader can go down the gurgler whereas a new person can come in take up the leadership responsibility pick up the business and take it on to greater heights. But under this legislation that person will not have the ability to deal with the business as it may need to be dealt with. He or she will be forced to employ the staff of the outfit that lost the contract. 
A new owner might have the chance to improve a failing company and take the business on for the very reason that he or she can do it at a lower cost. Lumping the new owner with the old employees will create an additional cost either in redundancy payments or in terms of a higher wage rate. What if the new owner has to make his or her own people redundant in order to make way for the old crowd? That will happen mark my words. This bill may make it impossible to sell a failing business. Instead the employer may just close it down. Where will that leave the workers? What if the failure of the business was in part due to incompetent staff? The bill talks about making the best use of existing talents but what if there was no existing talent? 
The decision to take on workers is one for a business to make. The Minister said in the House yesterday that skilled employees need to be seen as an asset of a business. But unlike plant and machinery a new owner cannot sell staff and get a return. I would have thought that the whole idea of contracting out for services is that the entire assets of the business are transferable and able to be dispensed with entirely if the person paying for the service is not satisfied. The explanatory note of the bill claims that compliance costs to business are likely to be relatively insignificant but anyone who takes on a new business or contract will have to factor into the price the increased cost of the liability of the old workers. 
 If we are to review the Employment Relations Act let us put in the things that are really needed—things like trying to stop employees from taking out unjustified dismissal claims when they are sacked just so they can cut down the stand-down period before they collect the dole. What about John Tamihere’s great idea? I can relate well to that man. He has a good head on his shoulders and he understands the reality of the world that we live in. He has a great idea of allowing small businesses a 1-month probationary period to assess new employees which he has been arguing for as part of the review of the Act. If those sorts of things were in this bill then we might have something different to say but we are not voting for this bill. 
RODNEY HIDE (ACT) 
: 
 This bill splits the House into those political parties that are looking to the future and those that are looking to the past—those political parties that want to support enterprise and a prosperous nation versus those that want to prop up the dinosaurs. Sue Bradford was quite right when she said that this is a bill to re-unionise New Zealand. When New Zealand workers are faced with a choice they do not want to be saddled with a dinosaur union the head honchos of which do not look after the workers. Unions do not produce the wealth of New Zealand. Working New Zealanders understand that and they are saying no they will not pay their fees to a union that does not deliver. That does not satisfy Labour Party members who like to have drinks with their mates in the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and to discuss the brave new world. The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions cannot sign up members so the Labour Party aided by the Greens told it not to worry because Labour would put a bill into the House that would force people into the hands of the council. Labour has done that because the one thing this Government cannot do in the private sector is what it did in the State sector: pay people to be members of the union. That is what happened in New Zealand. This bill is about supporting dinosaur unions to shackle enterprise in New Zealand and the ability of New Zealanders to go ahead. 
Clause 8 shows that this Labour Government is given over to spin and dissimulation. I know that the Minister of Defence does not know what that word means let alone how to spell it but I cannot use the appropriate word here in the House that one would use in common parlance. Millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money have been paid to civil servants for joining the union—true or false? It is a true story. In fact in the civil service it is called compensation for joining the union. 
Simon Power 
: Compensation? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Yes it is the payment of civil servants’ union fees. They get $400 $700 up to $1000 and in some cases as much as $1200 simply for joining the Public Service Association. Is that true or false? It is a true story. It happened in the Inland Revenue Department in Work and Income in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and in two or three other Government departments. That is clearly illegal under section 9 of the current Act because it discriminates against workers who are not members of the union. 
The Minister of State Services came down here to the House and said those payments were all legal and consistent with the Employment Relations Act. Yet every employment lawyer that I spoke to said that the Minister was talking through a hole in his head unconnected to his brain. 
Simon Power 
: Not an easy thing to do. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: If one is Trevor Mallard it is very easy. The member does that every day without even thinking about it. Members should just ask the teachers and the parents of New Zealand. In fact the member’s mouth is so unconnected to his brain that he got a psychologist in the Ministry of Education to write to all the schools of New Zealand saying they should not allow their children to come along and heckle him because that made him look bad. That is what he did; Trevor Mallard was scared of school pupils. Trevor Mallard stood up in this House and said no those payments were quite consistent with the Employment Relations Act and that there was no problem. Our State Services Commissioner who is paid over $400000 a year—New Zealand’s top civil servant—said that the payments were all within the law and he had no problem with them. But the State Services Commissioner took his direction from the Minister of State Services Trevor Mallard the bully boy of New Zealand politics and he was scared of getting the boot. 
Then suddenly we see in this bill that section 9(1) of the Act is to be changed. Clause 8 states that the following subsection will be added to section 9: “(3) To avoid doubt this Act does not prevent a collective agreement containing a term or condition that is intended to recognise the benefits—(a) of a collective agreement: (b) arising out of the relationship on which a collective agreement is based.” The Government had to do that because it has been handing across millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money straight to its mates at the Public Service Association. It goes to the workers first—all they have to do is to sign a little form that sets up an automatic payment to the Public Service Association. Therefore taxpayers have had to pay money to the health system to the education system and to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry for border security—to all those things—not for services but to pay for a Public Service Association that civil servants themselves would not sign up to unless they were paid for doing so. 
How useless a union is that? People do not want to join the Public Service Association. They want to join it only when they are paid to do so. They have to be subsidised and on top of that paid to join it. Is it any wonder then that the number of civil servants who are signed up with the Public Service Association is growing yet in the private sector union membership lags well behind that rate? Is it not clear from this bill that what was being done was illegal? If it had been legal we would not need to change the Act would we? 
Simon Power 
: We would not need the new clause. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: We would not need the new clause—the one that Trevor Mallard said we did not need because the payments were legal. Our top civil servant the State Services Commissioner Michael Wintringham said the payments were legal but now we have to change the Act in order to remove any doubt. Well Dr Don Brash of the National Party said the payments were illegal Rodney Hide of ACT said they were illegal the United Future party said they were illegal and now the Labour Party agrees with us on that because the Government is changing the Act. Yet Labour is just not big enough to agree with us that the payments were illegal. 
The Labour Government does not understand what it is that drives up wages. Why is it that we are now paid more than our grandfathers and grandmothers were paid 50 60 or 70 years ago? Labour members think that is because of the union movement. No I am sorry to say it is because we are more productive. We have been invested in in terms of plant and capital and we can produce more. We no longer use shovels; we use hydraulic loaders and the like. Being invested in makes us more productive. Michael Joseph Savage understood that. It is investment that drives up wages and conditions not the unions. 
There is one final thing that this Government does not understand and this has also been alluded to by other speakers. Let us imagine that a person is contracted to a business and is making a hash of it. If another contractor comes along who is much more efficient the efficient contractor may compete for the business and win it. Is that not the way that the capitalist system works when a contractor is not up to scratch? But this bill requires the successful contractor to take over the unsuccessful contractor’s workers on the same terms and conditions that they already had. What is the point of that? It disadvantages the efficient workers and the efficient contractor to the benefit of the inefficient ones. Is that a picture of the sort of economy that this Labour Government wants? I do not think so. But Labour is so held in the sway of its 19th century view of the workplace— 
Darren Hughes 
: The 20th century! 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I tell Darren Hughes it is a 19th century view—and is so held in the sway of its union mates in the Council of Trade Unions—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: The ACT party—the Flat Earth Society—I mean it’s a dinosaur! 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Is that not great? The Minister of Immigration calls out that the ACT party which believes in low taxes and a free labour market is the Flat Earth Society. But over there on the Government benches supporting the dinosaur unions in New Zealand is somehow— 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member’s time has expired. I call Winnie Laban. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I am going to respond to those points. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member will be seated. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: OK then. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member will sit down in future when his time has expired. I call Winnie Laban. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I will sit down when my time has expired as I always do. But I also expect that if someone yells out right at the end of my time and thinks he or she can get a free hit that will not succeed particularly when it comes from the Minister of Immigration who is making a complete hash of her portfolios and now thinks she is an expert in the labour market. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member will be seated. That is not a matter for a point of order. 
LUAMANUVAO WINNIE LABAN (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Kia ora talofa lava and warm Pacific greetings. I am very very proud to be a member of this Government. New Zealand is in good economic heart and it is a very fair and decent society. The principles behind the employment relations legislation are about participation opportunity dignity and fairness. I am very proud to stand and support this legislation especially the change-of-employer situations. Special protection will be given to specific groups of employees who are particularly vulnerable in change-of-employer situations and who lack effective bargaining power such as our cleaners and our food service employees. These employees finally will be treated with some dignity. They will have the right to choose to transfer to a new employer on their current terms and conditions of employment. I am so proud of that clause and we need to say thank you to and acknowledge not only the employers and the business people but the workers and the unions who all contribute to a strong economy and a decent society with a heart. Other employees will also be given protection through a requirement for their employment agreements to contain an employee protection provision. I thank the Minister of Labour the Service and Food Workers Union the employers and our New Zealand society. 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I remember vividly sitting in this House when the Employment Relations Bill was passed. I remember the Hon Lianne Dalziel leaping to her feet and applauding and hugging as I recall on that day when the Employment Relations Bill was passed. I remember members on this side of the House saying at the time that that piece of legislation was flawed and that it would not be the last time we saw the legislation come back to the House for further amendment. 
Upon the beginning of the first reading of the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill I consulted the Clerk about how many amendments there have been to the Employment Relations Act since it came into force in the year 2000. As predicted by members on this side it is an imperfect piece of legislation. [ 
Interruption 
] Mr Hide will be interested to know that this is the twelfth amendment to the Employment Relations Act signalling what we on this side of the House knew all along—that is that the original Act was never going to work. 
 Part of the reason that the House is being required to look at this bill today is precisely the reason that Mr Hide made out—that is workers have not chosen to flock back to the unions with the passing of the Employment Relations Act. Workers have decided that other bargaining agents including funnily enough themselves are capable of negotiating agreements with their employers. Union membership has not increased in the way that the Council of Trade Unions and other unions would like. That is because this country has grown up and employees and employers are able to sit in a room together and make constructive decisions and agreements about how their working relationships are to be conducted. That has not made the Government’s backers happy at all. That is why we are seeing this piece of legislation in the House today. It is another step on the line back to compulsory unionism. Who does one push out there to sell this to business? Good old Margaret Wilson will step up to the plate and take the employers on. She is a list MP. It does not matter to her. She has no constituents to answer to and she is capable of being pushed out there by the Prime Minister to sell these very unpopular measures when workers themselves have chosen not to go back to the unions. That is telling in itself. 
I want to spend a little bit of time looking at some of the detail of this bill. I find myself not saying this easily but I will anyway—I actually agree with Sue Bradford. That is disturbing on many levels but on the first level is the fact that what Sue Bradford said about the fact that the only people who will benefit from this piece of legislation are lawyers is exactly right—so there is some good in it! Lawyers will be the only people who benefit from this legislation. Let me just take Government members through as to why that is the case. Whilst members opposite try to pass legislation that will allow for continuity of employment let me just tell members opposite how the sale and purchase of businesses works. Usually on a sale and a purchase agreement for a business the purchaser and vendor would agree by way of a clause inserted in that agreement as to how they would deal with employees at the point of sale. I have to say that in my time in drafting those documents and being involved in those transactions 95 percent of staff passed with the business to the new purchaser. There was never any problem with that. What we will see now with the provisions in this legislation is lawyers inserting a different clause. 
I just say to Winnie Laban whose goodwill and genuine interest in these matters I have never doubted that what will happen is this: a new clause will be inserted by lawyers in the sale and purchase of business agreements and that will be to liquidate and to wind up the businesses at the point of sale and a new business will be formed on the date that the settlement of the sale of that agreement occurs and that will be designed purely to get around the provisions of the legislation that is just about to be enacted. Whilst members opposite might think that the intentions are good let me just assure them that there will always be ways around these types of things. When people start to insert clauses like that into sale and purchase agreements for businesses who misses out? The workers miss out when those sorts of businesses and those sorts of clauses are included in those agreements. I have to say that when parties to a contract are forced to include clauses or legislation that are being moved by the Labour Party now the tighter the fist gets clenched around that contract the more it will squeeze clauses out the other end to deal with these issues. I warn members opposite that the people who will suffer as a result of these new clauses being included in agreements like this will be the workers. It might not be the unions but it will be the workers. 
I want members opposite to think about this. Margaret Wilson said in her press release about this bill coming to the House that there would be no return to compulsory unionism compulsory arbitration or the national awards system. She said: “The approach remains one of free choice flexibility and fairness to all.” She then went on to say: “will provide appropriate incentives for collective bargaining.” How on the one hand can Margaret Wilson talk about the fact that there is free choice around entering into these employment relationships and on the other hand in the purposes clauses of this bill blatantly say: “This legislative proposal will provide appropriate incentives for collective bargaining.” Where is the free choice there? There is no free choice there. Incentives do just as they sound and will drive workers into a situation where they are not able to exercise free choice at the point of employment. I was unaware until Paul Adams mentioned it that John Tamihere was in favour of a grievance-free period at the start of an employment relationship. I have to say that I agree with John Tamihere on that because it is those types of clauses that encourage businesses to employ immigrants young people and people over 55 and to give them a trial. Those types of clauses give people the first step into the workplace to see whether they are any good—they give them an opportunity they would not otherwise get. 
The thing about employment law from this Government that makes me really wild is that it may or may not depending on one’s interpretation do things to protect workers who currently have jobs but what about those workers who are looking for jobs? What about those workers who have not yet got jobs? This legislation does nothing at all for those people. I say to members opposite that this legislation will be nothing but trouble. We will know how successful this legislation has been when 6 months after it is introduced we see a whole lot more Mercedes-Benz cars on the roads and we will know what is going on there. It will not be the workers driving them; it will be the lawyers. This legislation will create so much controversy and so much disruption in the workplace that only one group of workers will benefit from it and that will be the lawyers. Members opposite should think closely and carefully about what they continue to do to the ability of two adult people to contract at a point on arrangements and terms that suit them both. Call me old-fashioned but actually the union is not a party to an employment agreement. 
Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 In response to that member I remind him of one thing. The unemployment figure in this country is the lowest that it has been in a generation. That is the result of this Government’s policies. I read for the member a portion of the explanatory note: “Fair and productive employment relationships are an essential ingredient in developing a more innovative economy while protecting the more vulnerable in society.” That is what this bill is about. That is why I am proud to support it. 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 There is very little indeed that is more blatant than this bill. This bill is designed for one reason alone and absolutely nobody in this country should be under any illusion what that reason is. This bill is all about building union membership. That is what it is about. 
The Government has put out Margaret Wilson as the Trojan Horse to build union membership for one reason alone: union membership stands at only 12 percent in this country and the unions are not happy. The Government caucus is full of union representatives and they have looked at the numbers. They had their first shot when they restructured the Employment Contracts Act but they have said that that was not good enough that they should bump up the numbers and build up the union movement in this country and that one way to do that is to get Margaret Wilson to restructure the Employment Relations Act. That is what the Government is doing today— 
Simon Power 
: For the 12th time. 
JOHN KEY 
: It is a disgrace. The Government is doing this to build up the unions so that they can get more fees to prop up what is nothing more than an ailing Government that is about to get booted out in 18 months’ time. Government members might laugh but we will see who has the last laugh when employers get a load of this claptrap. 
When Margaret Wilson tabled this bill in the House she said she was just as concerned for the 80-odd percent who are not covered by a collective agreement. She was concerned all right—she was concerned about how she could get them on a collective agreement! That is her agenda. That is where we are going with this legislation. It is absolutely no different from what we saw last night when Trevor Mallard introduced the State Sector Amendment Bill and with all the arrogance of this Government delivered the same bully-boy tactics that the Government is using to try to push through this legislation. I simply have this to say to Margaret Wilson: if this was the moon—and frankly sometimes I wonder what planet Margaret Wilson comes from—and Margaret Wilson was the first woman to walk on the moon as Neil Armstrong was the first man to do that 34 years ago as she was planting the New Zealand flag on the moon she would simply say: “One small step for the employee; one giant leap for the unions.” That is what this bill is about. 
Inch by inch this Government will drag us back to the 1970s and the 1980s. They were not happy times in industrial relations in this country. I may be young enough still to have my youthful looks but I remember the days of strikes at Kawerau and Kinleith. I remember the days when productivity was driven down to the point where New Zealand had a growth rate of half a percent because the unions held this country to ransom. No one should forget about that. I remember the days when the inter-island ferries did not operate because people were on strike due to there being no chocolate biscuits. That is what the unions did for those people and GDP grew at half a percent. 
Simon Power 
: Cold meat pies. 
JOHN KEY 
: And no chocky biscuits. The ferries were on strike and no one went anywhere. The strikes always happened around Christmas and Easter. There was no respite for those New Zealanders who wanted to go on holiday because the ferries went on strike. Inch by inch that is where we are heading with a bill that is designed to give the unions more power and be very very harsh indeed on employers. 
I simply ask what that will do for job creation in this country. What will that do for small businesses when they want to take on new staff? What will that do for the most vulnerable workers whom Labour Party members argue so wilfully they are there to represent? Absolutely nothing! This is robbing the food off their table—make no mistake about that. The very people who will be affected by this bill will give absolutely no thanks at all to this hapless Labour Government. 
Yesterday the OECD produced its 159-page report on New Zealand. It released its report and had these words to say about the labour market. I hope the Minister of Labour is paying attention. 
Rodney Hide 
: The OECD is a right-wing plot according to them. 
JOHN KEY 
: A right-wing plot it may be but it said that labour market flexibility should be preserved. That was the report’s opening line. The next line was: “In recent years there has been a clear trend towards greater rigidities higher labour costs and there are further such changes in the pipeline.” If members want to deliver—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Let me take the member up on that. Yes unemployment is low. The OECD said that unemployment is low and growth is high solely because of the policies of the 1980s and the 1990s and absolutely nothing that this Government has done has encouraged that—not one thing. It has increased taxes increased compliance costs and increased rigidity in the labour market. The OECD said that growth in New Zealand per capita is going down. Make no mistake about it: we are talking about a basket-case economy if we leave this hapless Labour Government in office for too long. So Labour members should not be too smug about it. A low exchange rate competitive prices and a whole lot of migration do not make them magicians. Even if they believe their own press releases it does not work that way because the OECD is a bit smarter than their press releases and it has worked out what is going on in New Zealand and it is bad bad news. 
I want to look at some of the particular parts of this bill because they are very disturbing indeed and employers will be very concerned about their provisions—in particular the issue related to collective bargaining. One of the provisions requires an employer to attend at least one meeting when a multi-employer contract agreement is to be reached. It sounds innocuous enough but when it is tied to the good-faith provision I think it is very important that people understand exactly what “good faith” means in this legislation. “Good faith” in the bill means that parties bargaining for collective arrangements must attend 
at least one meeting unless there is a genuine reason not to do so. Parties to good-faith arrangements are to be “responsive communicative and supportive”. 
It is as my colleague Mr Simon Power said nothing short of a bonanza for lawyers. This is not the kind of legislation that will make employment relations go forward. It is a bonanza for lawyers and those wealthy and highly paid lawyers in Queen Street are licking their chops as this Labour Government delivers them a complete mishmash of legislation that will drive New Zealand back to the 1970s. One of those lawyers the very esteemed Rob Towner a partner at Bell Gully and a specialist in employment law at least had the guts to say this: “There is nothing to suggest that the employer has discharged its obligations by simply going to the first meeting. They will be held around the table to negotiate a whole lot of collective arrangements even if it makes no sense for them to be there for fear of being fined.” Individuals and companies will be whacked with a $5000 to $10000 fine if they are seen to be in breach of their good-faith arrangements. So this bill will do nothing for growth in New Zealand. 
Before my time expires I want to touch finally on the issue of business restructuring. It is important to understand the provisions for business restructuring because they are very important indeed. They will do one thing and one thing alone for businesses in New Zealand and that is not grow them. So while Labour members are out there telling the people of New Zealand that they have their innovation and growth strategy I suggest they get it out of the bottom drawer along with their credit card dust them off and have a look at what they were telling the people of New Zealand while they were trying to bluff their way into office. It was not listed on that credit card that they would make goodwill evaporate in businesses up and down the country but that is what this employment relations bill is going to do. Government members as I stand here today are very quiet because they know as I know that this is a terrible step back for New Zealand. 
Earlier someone mentioned the position of union membership in the United States of America. Let me just tell members that every man woman and child in America has a standard of living almost double that of people in New Zealand and if this Government or any Government wants to deliver a Christmas present to the people of New Zealand then it should give them more money and more opportunity but it should not give them this rubbish that has been designed in a bathroom somewhere in this fair building. 
JILL PETTIS (Labour—Whanganui) 
: 
 I always love it when we have debates in this House about industrial relations because they show how far removed the National Party is from reality. National members should get out and see the real world during their 4 or 5 weeks’ holiday—and they will vote against that bill as well. Last night in the debate on the Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill which we are going to go onto again in a moment Simon Power who spoke just before was actually advocating paying striking workers. It just goes to show how removed National members are from reality out there in the real workplace. They are only ever used to being the masters in master-servant relationships. They would not have a clue what it is like in a role reversal. This is a very good bill. It is good for vulnerable workers. Let us get on and do the best we can for them and get it passed quickly. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: There will be no comment from the gallery. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill be now read a first time. 
Ayes 76 
New Zealand Labour 52; New Zealand First 13; Green Party 9; Progressive 2. 
Noes 44 
New Zealand National 27; ACT New Zealand 8; United Future 8; Independent: Awatere Huata. 
Bill read a first time and referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. 
Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
Debate resumed from 10 December. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 I will continue the ACT party’s opposition to this amendment bill which brings in an education levy. It is being brought in to punish all private providers of English language education all private providers of tertiary education. Why has the Government seen fit to bring it in? It is mainly because of two organisations that failed the Modern Age Institute of Learning and latterly Carich New Zealand. If we look at the Modern Age Institute of Learning to see why it failed we see that it did not fail because of all the other private providers; they had absolutely nothing to do with the failure of those two institutions yet they will now be forced to take responsibility for them and for any other private institution that fails. 
The New Zealand Qualifications Authority had already identified that the Modern Age Institute of Learning had serious problems but the Qualifications Authority did nothing. It just sat on its hands and let it carry on. It saw that courses were being run without Qualifications Authority approval and it did nothing. It saw that trust accounts were not being operated properly and it did nothing until it was too late. Then it decided that the institute’s failure was a good excuse to bring in another tax—and this Government calls a tax a levy. The Qualifications Authority requirements were not met and the Serious Fraud Office has now been asked to investigate. It did not need to get to that stage; the Minister could have called the Qualifications Authority officials into his office and asked them what on earth was going on and why the situation was allowed to continue. 
To compound the situation and make it even worse when the Modern Age Institute of Learning failed the Minister of Education immediately decided that he would bail out the students. He was about to depart for China on a spin-doctoring damage control mission and wanted to take good news with him. He did not have to do that; the State did not have to step in bail out those students then recover the amount from the private sector because an insurance company had covered those students and would have bailed them out. The State stepped in and let the company off the hook. It just shows the folly of Government interfering in the private sector and how clumsy it is. The Government is now trying to redress that situation but it should not have acted so precipitously. Other private providers acting out of goodwill moved to look after those students. No one wanted them out on the street if their home-stays kicked them out but that never was in danger of happening. 
On that note I notice that New Zealand First spoke against this bill. I would suggest that party which has been fanning the anti-Asian sentiment has to take some responsibility for what has been happening with these private providers of English language training. I just take an example of a Vietnamese home-stay girl whom I had a student who came home one day and said: “What is meant by this word ‘bleeping Asians’?”. I suggest that if there were English students crowding up and down Queen Street people would not even notice or they would say how wonderful it was. The anti-Asian racist sentiment is contributing to a dip in our export education. 
This levy goes on all private providers to cover up for the unscrupulous behaviour of a few. There is no equivalent levy being placed on public providers to cover situations when their English language schools or their general operations run into financial difficulties. The cost was $40 million for one polytechnic and altogether $100 million of taxpayers’ money has been used to bail out polytechnics. This measure is sending a message of similar morality to the private providers. 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be supporting this bill to the select committee. We are taking a position consistent with our original support for the first bill which enabled a levy on private providers and the export education industry. We consider it appropriate that there be such a levy. 
We are interested in hearing from submitters the various issues that are raised around the activities of the industry and the attempts that industry is making to ensure that it protects the students for whom it charges fees and things. We are also interested in finding out whether the levy is performing the functions—and providing the protections—for the students that it was originally intended to do. 
We do not consider it unscrupulous behaviour on the part of those companies that have failed but rather an unfortunate consequence of being involved in an industry such as this. We look forward to hearing from those companies and from those who remain successful about the nature of the export education levy and its effects on them. We will be supporting this bill. 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 According to Trevor Mallard who is bringing in this bill international students would have more confidence in New Zealand’s export education sector by paying more tax. Then private educational providers were made to collect this additional tax as a reminder of Labour’s loathing of private enterprise. 
It is a move that would push international students into State schools. We have already seen State schools’ enrolment increase for 2004 probably at the expense of private providers. Our State schools have come to rely more and more on international students because funding for education has been channelled into bureaucracy. In the past 2 years funding for bureaucracy in the education sector has increased by 50 percent while schools are crying out for more resources. Schools are put on a compulsory diet while bureaucracy fattens. 
Labour would argue that the additional tax imposed on international students could be justified on the grounds of user-pays. So let us examine then whether these users are getting good value for paying the existing tax of $183 per person plus 0.45 percent of their fees. This provides them with the reassurance that the institutions they enrol with are accredited with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority that institutions are monitored that any necessary follow-up actions will be swift and effective that trust accounts will be kept for prepaid tuition fees and accommodation funds and that the standard of qualifications will be high. 
Well the failure of Carich Training Centre alone illustrates that reality is falling far short of expectation. Apparently all tuition fees were to be paid into a trust account for the first week of enrolment because students were entitled to a refund if they withdrew from that institution in the first week. However I have in my hands a bank transfer form that clearly demonstrates that tuition fees were paid directly into Carich’s Visa account rather than into a trust account. 
That reminds me of the trust account at the failed Modern Age Institute of Learning. There was no money left in the trust account when that institution collapsed. Incidentally the New Zealand Qualifications Authority had done two quality audits at the institute and as late as May of this year—just 2 months before that institution went into liquidation—had obtained a reassurance from its accountant that the trust account was operating satisfactorily. It was hardly in the interests of the accountant an employee of the Modern Age Institute of Learning to tell the New Zealand Qualifications Authority that the accounts were not in order. How trusting! 
I was approached by former Christchurch Carich students who found out that they could not enrol at Christchurch Polytechnic because the equivalent computing course offered by Carich was not compatible with the standards required by the polytechnic. Did Carich have the accreditation to offer that course? If so does the New Zealand Qualifications Authority apply the same standard of accreditation to all institutions? The Auckland Carich students could not get a firm answer from either the New Zealand Qualifications Authority or the insurance company Contractors Bonding Ltd as to whether they could obtain refunds from the insurance cover. They did not even have access to a copy of the insurance cover and I have still not managed to get the insurers to send me one. 
This is a system of user-pays where the users have absolutely no say as to which alternative provider they can go to. The insurance company calls the shots. Some students went to an institution approved by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and ended up sitting in classrooms without computers for 2 weeks. Some went to another institution and then got a letter from that institution asking them to make up the shortfall from the insurance company. That is why there have been reports of students being auctioned to the cheapest provider. 
On the topic of Carich I have in my hand photos of the Minister for Information Technology the Hon Paul Swain at the opening of the purpose-built Carich international students campus in the heart of Auckland on 30 May this year. Labour Ministers do love photo opportunities do they not? When Carich was in obvious trouble 5 months later the Hon Paul Swain was nowhere to be seen. 
The lip service paid by Labour to export education is obvious when one reflects on the different treatments of other export industries. Our largest export industry is dairy earning $6.4 billion followed by tourism at $6.1 billion forestry at $3.4 billion with export education coming in at $1.7 billion. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry administers 98 pieces of legislation and over 100 regulations to go with them. Tourism New Zealand got its own dedicated legislation. In the 2002 year the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry spent $68 million on enforcement and industry monitoring and a further $82 million on biosecurity. Tourism New Zealand had a budget of $58 million. The Government appropriated an additional $15 million to target the US market and earmarked $34 million for the America’s Cup challenge. 
In order to maintain our reputation we pay so much attention to ensuring that a single can of export beef reaches a high standard before it leaves this country yet when it comes to export education Labour is callous and careless in ensuring the well-being of our young people mainly from Asia. Not only do those international students have to pay for the systems of monitoring and follow-up they also have to pay more when the system fails. They have no say in paying higher taxes and no control over how that money is spent. When this Government and its officials fail they blame the private training institutions. They make successful institutions collect extra tax to bail out the Government. 
Trevor Mallard’s so-called charm offensive trip to China this year was a disgrace. Mr Mallard was quoted in the Chinese media as saying that New Zealand did not want that many students anyway. I wonder why taxpayers wasted their money in funding his trip to China when he is trying to convince the Chinese not to send students over here. If Helen Clark is serious about holding individuals accountable she should remove Trevor Mallard from the export education portfolio and give it to someone who cares and can provide leadership. Passing legislation to tax international students studying in private training establishments because of the failings of her Minister and officials is totally unacceptable. The National Party will certainly not support this legislation which is a total outrage. 
HELEN DUNCAN (Labour) 
: 
 I support this excellent bill which will correct a very difficult situation for New Zealand. 
JILL PETTIS (Labour—Whanganui) 
: 
 I too join with my colleague Helen Duncan and all other Labour and Progressive colleagues in supporting this bill. We should get on and get it passed. 
Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY (Labour) 
: 
 I take this opportunity to support this bill along with my colleagues. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
Ayes 63 
New Zealand Labour 52; Green Party 9; Progressive 2. 
Noes 57 
New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8; United Future 8; Independent: Awatere Huata. 
Bill read a first time and referred to the Education and Science Committee. referred to the Education and Science Committee 
Families Commission Bill 
Third Reading 
Debate resumed from 9 December 2003. 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 There are a couple of issues that I want to cover today in relation to the Families Commission Bill. I am in a generous mood today because the sky is bright the sun is shining and I am a National Party MP and boy am I proud of it! One of the things I will say to the people of New Zealand today is that I can save them $28 million because I can tell them what children need. It is nice that United Future members are in the House to listen because they are the ones who are so keen on spending $28 million. I will give it to New Zealanders for nothing: children need love. They need care they need commitment they need education they need health they need boundaries and they need discipline. They need to know their whakapapa. They need to know who their father is and who their mother is. They need to know that they belong and most of all they need wherever possible two great parents. 
Two parents will do a better job any day than one great parent. Two great parents will do a better job any day than one not particularly great parent and the new partner that he or she has this week. It is about time that we acknowledged it. We do not need $28 million being spent on a bureaucracy so that United Future MPs will have a job to go to after the next election just to prove that. This bill does not acknowledge anywhere that two great parents are better than one great parent. Nowhere does it acknowledge that children need and should have whenever possible two great committed parents. 
The 
Lancet 
—the journal of the British Medical Association—has recently published a Swedish study. Sweden is one of those very liberal countries that are held up to us by the great feminist leader whom we have at the moment in New Zealand. That particular country is a very liberal country and it is now starting to look at what its liberal views are doing to its children. Researchers studied one million children for a decade—not for a day but for a decade—all the way into their mid-20s. The study found that children growing up in single-parent families are twice as likely to develop serious psychiatric illness and addictions later in life. The researchers also found a tremendous amount of other information and all of it was bad. When we compare oranges and oranges children will be better off in two-parent families almost without exception. 
Nowhere in this bill is there a reference to two-parent families. Two-parent families are simply being reduced in this anti-capitalist feminist agenda given to us by the Labour Party and its cohorts—and unfortunately supported by United Future something I just cannot understand—to a historical patriarchal aberration. Those parties think it is all about male domination. They obviously have not lived in any family that I have been part of. It certainly is not about male domination either my parents’ or my own. 
Bernie Ogilvy 
: Aw! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I say thank you very much to Mr Ogilvy the former doctor. Let us have a look at the real cost of the Families Commission. When I look at this bill I think: “What else could we do with $28 million?”—apart from buy a few doctors’ degrees. We could get 5.6 million hours of free childcare. That would be good would it not? We could have 2.18 million Plunket Line inquiries. That should last for a few years. We could have 357379 booster seats. [ 
Interruption 
] Is the member I hear over there the one who called out to my colleague Katherine Rich to go home to her children? We could have 2.9 million 20-packs of baby nappies and 5.3 million hours of early childhood education for under-twos. My goodness we need childhood education for our under-twos in this country! It is a useful thing to produce is it not? 
Or we could have United Future cronies all working away in a bureaucracy so they can all have a job once we get rid of that party in 2005. Which shall we have? Or we could have 55000 inquiries to the office of the Children’s Commissioner. That should keep it going for a little while should it not? We could have 1.8 million Births Deaths and Marriages inquiries. Members may wonder why I would put that in. I will tell them why—it is because 17000 women in this country cannot or will not name the father of their children and I cannot believe that these people are being allowed to have children. We are paying for them and they do not even have the nous to say “What’s your name mate?” before they decide to go and mate with them. 
 Frankly that is just appalling because there are 17000 children plus all the others as well—their brothers and sisters from goodness knows how many fathers—all with no fathers no whakapapa and no idea of where they came from except it happened to be a stray sperm swimming around. 
It is just appalling that we have this situation in New Zealand and we do not need $28 million spent on some bureaucracy to tell us that. The money could instead be spent on 627400 two-year subscriptions to  
Kiwi Parent 
 and that would be a lot more use than a Families Commission that does not even know how to define what a family is and needed its own Supplementary Order Paper to tell us all that the term did not really mean that it would be a criminal gang. It took an entire amendment to do that and an awful lot of argument and money has been spent saying: “Oh boy it is not a gang.” 
Something even better could be done I suggest by tripling—three times—the amount of funding available for the Parents as First Teachers programme. Would that not be a good thing? In my electorate I am very lucky to have the Home Instruction Programme for Pre-school Youngsters which was set up and run by the Pacific Foundation—a wonderful organisation that is not bureaucratic and actually does something. It is a wonderful thing; it is not a Government department it does not have a bureaucracy it actually does something. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: Aw! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: What that organisation does—and I would like to have a little less cynicism from the Minister of Transport—is that it teaches parents how to be parents. Most of us learn our parenting skills from our own parents but now that intergenerational hopelessness has been bred by woolly-woofter liberal ideas there are parents who are not capable of being parents without a tremendous amount of work. What this programme has is very very good people who actually help. 
I have been to the graduation ceremony. I have seen people who had no self-esteem before and unbelievably little confidence who now talk proudly to me about reading to their children making sure homework is done before the children do anything else and being great parents. That is what money should be spent on not yet another bureaucracy stuck in Wellington doing nothing for anyone out there. Those are the sorts of people we need to help this country. 
JILL PETTIS (Labour—Whanganui) 
: 
 It always amuses me when National Party members take umbrage when one is speaking the truth of the situation to them. Yes indeed when Katherine Rich got up to speak I did interject and say “absent mothers” because this bill is about helping families. When it is considered how many times those National women in particular vote against pro-families legislation I always think it is a bit rich. This is a good bill and I look forward to it being passed through the House. 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 It is with a degree of sadness that I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in this third reading of the Families Commission Bill. It is sadness as this is a model of a Families Commission that will never save one child in this country and will not deliver what is required for the children and the families of New Zealand. I think that all of us in this House looked forward to this legislation because we recognise that the strength of the family is the foundation of our nation. New Zealand First has said on many many occasions that the quality of the future that we leave to our children will be determined by the quality of the children that we leave to that future and the quality of those children is determined by the quality of family relationships. 
We absolutely support some of those ideas that were mentioned by the Minister about the strengthening of the family and how important the family is for the future of the nation. We support that but this Families Commission is a bureaucracy that cannot and will not deliver what is required for the children and families of New Zealand. The bottom line is that this legislation is flawed and it will return to this House. In its election manifesto United Future talked about establishing a commission for the family. Among its many roles it would provide a family mediation service that would support promote and develop the provision of marriage and relationship counselling services. Then there is this legislation where none of that is mentioned. 
United Future members have said at previous stages that this is their vision. This afternoon the people of New Zealand will see that this commission is a nightmare—a $28 million nightmare. It must be noted in the records that opposition to this legislation has elicited the most incredibly vitriolic response from United Future. We have seen press releases that were totally erroneous and the leader of that party wrote to each of the submitters stating that their views were totally ignored by the Opposition. This is totally inane unprofessional behaviour. All submitters were listened to and questioned by the committee and due process was followed in our select committee. It was a totally disappointing performance from the party that prides itself on bringing common sense into politics. If that is the sort of common sense United Future brings into politics I am totally disappointed with those members. 
New Zealand First has made no secret of the fact that we would have supported without reservation a Families Commissioner that worked in with the Children’s Commissioner. We all know that that organisation is working as an advocate for one of the most important elements of the family—children. It is working very successfully too. That organisation has a proven track record and additional resources could have strengthened up its office and it would not have required $28 million either. The $28 million that was required to set up this Families Commission as was pointed out by my colleague Judith Collins could have been better spent on more practical help for families than will be provided by this Families Commission. Organisations like Plunket Early Start programmes and other community groups that were working in the areas of parental support could also have been used. I must say that United Future agrees with that. These organisations already have a proven track record. They are of great assistance to families and they are successful. Some of this funding could have been given to some of these groups. 
Practical help is required—rather than research which this Families Commission is going to carry out. There is already a lot of research carried out even by the Ministry of Social Development on New Zealand families. We already know what is required for successful families. The resilience factor I think is mentioned in this legislation. Things like quality housing health care adequate nutrition education employment a loving family and two committed loving parents are required. As has already been pointed out meeting all these needs is absolutely paramount. Why do we have to spend $28 million to prove what we already know? 
There are a whole number of areas in this bill that make it totally impossible to support. United Future received some of its electoral support—I know some of this from the worm as well—because of its focus on families; families that were easily definable by most New Zealanders. It is very evident that United Future was speaking with a forked tongue about families and consequently has gone from a hero to a zero rating in the estimation of many people. Even the submitters have contacted us on this issue as well. 
New Zealand First put forward in the Committee stage a definition of “family” that would have been accepted by most New Zealanders. But guess what? United Future voted it down. My colleague Peter Brown will speak further on that. We also have some grave concerns about the number of commissioners who will be part of this commission. 
Judith Collins 
: How many? 
BARBARA STEWART 
: There will be three full-time commissioners and three part-time commissioners. United Future told us last week that these roles have already been advertised. There were hundreds of requests for applications. I do not know how many United Future MPs have applied as yet. Next time around perhaps! The total irony and the total arrogance that is shown here is absolutely astounding. It shows how much notice United Future was ever going to take of any contributions from anybody in this House in the Committee stage. Everybody here wants to achieve something while he or she is in Parliament. All I can say is that the legacy of a huge bureaucracy that United Future members want to create has turned their heads. Common sense has gone out of the door. 
This House has not even passed the legislation and already United Future members have raced ahead with advertising for these roles. One must now ask what their role will be in the selection of these family commissioners. Pride always comes before a fall. It is unfortunate that this is going to be a very expensive fall. The cumbersome structure and the duplication of tasks that are undertaken by other agencies will ensure that the goals of this commission and the lofty purpose outlined in this bill will never be realised. It will never be achieved at all. It is totally ironic that at a time when we know more about the family and its dysfunction than we have ever known we pass legislation that will assist in ensuring that there is just as much dysfunction. 
This commission cannot advocate for anybody. The Children’s Commissioner has always been able to advocate for children yet this commission cannot even do that. It cannot talk about any problems that certain families are experiencing whether it be solo parent families nuclear families or problems that grandparents are having with their grandchildren. The commission cannot advocate for those particular groups. 
What will we get? We will get a very generalised message that will not mean a lot to anybody. It cannot be everything to everyone. We can only hope now that this Families Commission because it will come into being can achieve something worthwhile. We doubt it. New Zealand First will look forward to monitoring the outcomes of this $28 million talkfest and ensuring that the commission’s performance is efficient and effective as is outlined in this particular legislation. It is for all these reasons that New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill. 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 As anyone who has been following this debate will know by now the Green Party is completely opposed to the establishment of the Families Commission. We believe that it simply represents an unnecessary duplication of the work already being done both by a number of community sector agencies and by the Ministry of Social Development. It is also a waste of the $28 million over 4 years that has been allocated to it. That money could be spent far more productively on supporting the community organisations that carry out the same kinds of functions as will the Families Commission. Part of that money could also be put with good effect into providing adequate resources for existing bodies like the office of the Children’s Commissioner which is severely underfunded at around $1.7 million a year and has only 12 staff despite the critical work it attempts to carry out for New Zealand’s children. 
The Families Commission is purely and simply a creation of political expediency—the result of a post-election deal between Labour and United Future. There is nothing inherently wrong with such deals and I would be the first to acknowledge that they are likely to always be an integral part of MMP parliaments. However it seems a pity that at a time when many children and families live in daily poverty and barely survive from one crisis to the next we should as a result of electoral expediency be committing resources to something of such nebulous value. There was no public outcry for a Families Commission prior to the rise of Peter Dunne and the “worm” in the 2002 election campaign. It was not something that community organisations were ever organising around. The church and community groups that I worked with around the country in the late 1990s were and still are on the whole much more interested in whether they have enough funding to survive the next 3 months so that they can continue to provide services for children and families than they are in the establishment of a Government commission to carry out more research into the New Zealand family. Those groups already know a lot about the realities of life right now for parents and children and for wider whanau—after all they work with families every day. 
A lot of research has already been done and continues to be done into the true situation for families in all sorts of difficult circumstances that result from 20 years of structural unemployment low wages low benefit payments and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor. Research or no research groups like the People’s Centre Homebuilders the Waipareira Trust the Downtown Community Ministry (Wellington) Inc and many others know what is going on with families a whole lot better than most of the MPs sitting in this House and better than most of the public servants busily analysing policy in their Wellington offices. We do not need to have a whole lot more research and analysis or between three and seven family commissioners to help to direct research operations. What we do need is a Government that is prepared to read the reports listen to people understand the results of the research that has already been done—including research from the Ministry of Social Development itself—and then to take action on the recommendations from all that plethora of research. What families need is action and solutions not more paralysis by analysis. What families need is a Government that is prepared to take the drastic step of committing more of its annual budget to measures designed to bring families out of poverty rather than to continue to give national priority to channelling billions of dollars into Budget surpluses debt repayment and the Superannuation Fund. 
I can hear supporters of the Families Commission respond that its core functions include far more than research—and that is quite true. The commission’s functions also encompass things like acting as an advocate for families generally encouraging informed debate on matters relating to the interests of families increasing public awareness of matters relating to the interests of families—such as the importance of parenting—and facilitating the development of Government policies that serve families. All of that is well and good and there is nothing wrong with any of it. But surely all of that is already being done by a diversity of organisations and various parts of the public service. 
Organisations ranging from the Plunket Society and Parentline through to Unicef New Zealand and Barnardos New Zealand and literally hundreds if not thousands of others advocate constantly and well—in their local communities and nationally—in the interests of New Zealand’s parents families and children. The Child Poverty Action Group and a range of associated individuals and organisations continue to do an amazing job on very limited resources of researching and championing the needs of the nearly one-third of the country’s children who still live in poverty. The Children’s Commissioner has just had a whole new bill passed in this House to strengthen the functions and powers of that office—with a particular commitment to working with the Government to enact the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—without the funding increase that office needs in order to really get moving. The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services—which represents the social services of the Anglican Baptist Catholic Presbyterian and Methodist churches and the Salvation Army—continues not only to offer hands-on assistance for families and children from over 550 locations around the country but also to carry out research and make policy recommendations in the interests of families and children. 
Just to take the work of the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services as one particular example it would be far more useful if the Government were to spend $28 million on implementing even some of the specific recommendations from its latest report issued a couple of weeks ago on preventing the cycle of debt than on establishing the Families Commission. That report uses a literature survey and case studies to highlight the growing impact of debt on low-income families both in and out of work. It identifies key issues that are causing the debt crisis to escalate and provides a whole series of recommendations through which this or any Government could begin to address the problems. 
Those suggestions are wide ranging and include among them raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour calling for a public campaign to inform low-wage workers of the income support entitlements that are available to them an increase in childcare availability and a lowering of childcare costs investigating ways of providing casual workers with certainty of income setting benefits at levels adequate to ensure a decent quality of life extending the child tax credit to all families and amalgamating it with family support adjusting all family assistance payments to account for past inflation and indexing them for further inflation ensuring that all those who are eligible for benefits receive their full and correct entitlements allowing Work and Income the discretion to waive or reduce stand-downs in cases of hardship and more discretion in granting non-recoverable assistance increasing the investment in State housing and in third sector housing initiatives investigating and implementing ways in which the Government can stop being the driver of unsustainable debt investigating and implementing ways in which the Government can do more to help and protect people who are excluded from mainstream credit looking at methods of improving the financial literacy of ordinary people and much much more. 
I present this long list—in itself just a partial one—because I think it is time that MPs political parties and the public service woke up to the fact that there is already an enormous amount of knowledge experience and passion out there in our communities geared towards advocating for and solving the problems that confront New Zealand families today. I have used only one example here of a report with recommendations that has been carried out on one particular aspect of family life: families struggling with low incomes and debt. There are of course many other areas of activity around families from domestic violence and abuse through to parenting problems and solutions and from mental illness and its impact on children and families through to the special needs of families whose members have major physical or intellectual impairments—and many more. My point is that in each of those sectors there already exists a multiplicity of organisations with their own in-depth specialisation research and knowledge. In every case I am sure that one could quickly find any number of well-thought-out and useful recommendations for action that any Government could pick up on without having to go through the extra expense and bureaucracy of establishing a Families Commission as an extra layer on top of all the other work that is already happening. 
If Labour and United Future are really serious about supporting families I hope that over the coming year and a half they will do everything they can alongside relevant Government departments to pick up on the recommendations I have just outlined and others that are coming out of different parts of the community and voluntary sector. I also hope that they will consider supporting my member’s bill next year to establish a universal child benefit as a signal that they are genuine in their desire to do something a lot more real for the families of this country than this Families Commission can ever hope to offer. 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 I rise to speak in this third reading which will see the creation of the Families Commission. My first question is to the members who support this bill. What would the Families Commission have done for the Cremen family the Burrows family or the Williams family? For those families who are genuinely in need in this country the Families Commission will not do one single thing. 
National does not support the establishment of a Families Commission as proposed. While the commission has some worthy goals the cumbersome structure the duplication of tasks that are being undertaken by other Government departments agencies and non-government organisations the unwieldy objectives and the politically correct definition of the family will ensure that those goals will never be realised. The commission set up under this legislation will be hamstrung. It will not be able to speak out on behalf of individual families or individual cases as the Children’s Commissioner is able to do. It will not be able to contradict Government policy of the day. We believe that the proposed structure will leave the commission open to ministerial manipulation and will raise potential problems with regard to public perceptions of the commission’s independence. 
Our primary reason for not supporting this bill of course is that it is unworkable. It contains the unworkable all-encompassing definition of the family which basically means almost every New Zealander. I have argued strongly that we already have a House of Representatives here to represent New Zealanders. That is what we are here to do. The Families Commission with its budget of $28 million will be all things to all people. If one stands for everything then one stands for nothing. If one stands for all forms of families and champions all forms of families then one will not be able to make any comments that will be able to help people to improve their lives. The Government’s adherence to the doctrine of diversity is to the detriment of the traditional family structure which for centuries has been proven to be a successful way to bring up kids. Sure not everybody has that kind of family but we should be able to say that there are some structures that do work and that do ensure that we maintain the best opportunities for children that they can have. Those who originally supported the Families Commission imagined it would be a champion of the traditional family. When Barbara Stewart stood up and quoted from the United Future manifesto she was right in saying that the original intention was to have something that would be able to say that marriage and traditional families were good. Well the commission has been diluted down into a politically correct version of that so I wonder how the United Future members are going to be able to stand opposite their supporters and explain what has happened. 
The commission that is being created by this legislation does nothing for the protection of our social fabric. It may well undermine the particular things that we already know to be historic truths about families. The commission will be established at considerable expense—$28 million for just another bureaucracy set up here in Wellington—and it will be just another talkfest that will not really do anything for New Zealand families. I know the Minister of Finance over there on the Government benches did not want to spend $28 million on it. I am sure he had a lot of other good projects in mind but he knew he had to do that in order to get United Future’s support. That $28 million would have been better spent on a number of non-governmental organisations that are already helping out the families who are most in need. I am thinking of organisations like Plunket Parents as First Teachers the Parenting Council and Barnardos—a whole group of organisations that are already helping the families who are most in need and that are already making a difference rather than being something that is just another bureaucracy here in Wellington. 
The Families Commission will be a weak puppet and it will not be able to deliver on all the objectives that both the Government and United Future expect it to deliver. Political support has been given to the commission simply to maintain United Future’s support for the Government and for no other reason. We could tell that by the way that the Minister sat in the chair during the Committee stage of this bill. His head was low. He was embarrassed that he had to put his name to something that would be unworkable and would not achieve anything except for paying a few salaries here in Wellington and keeping the bureaucratic machine going. 
I say that we are here not to create feel-good legislation but to put in place laws that will make a difference to families. If the answer was to set up another committee then I think those involved certainly asked the wrong question because what is needed out there is not just another committee with a bunch of earnest commissioners who will travel the country chanting: “Families are good families are good”. All of us in this House know that that is the case. I find it absolutely bizarre that those people who support this bill say that those who are against it are anti-family purely because they do not support the establishment of this commission. Well that is just absolute rubbish. Just because we do not want to spend $28 million on something that we feel is already being done by the Ministry of Social Development and a lot of other Government agencies Government organisations and non-governmental organisations does not mean that we are anti-family. It means that we have a common-sense approach to the expenditure of money. 
Let us do something a little extraordinary. Let us say here today that the $28 million will be spent on something that will make a difference. Let us give it to the Parenting Council to Parentline in Hamilton or to the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. We all know that the Department of Child Youth and Family Services needs a little bit of extra funding to deal with the problems that it has—in particular the 3000 unallocated cases of children who are waiting as we speak to see a social worker. Let us give that $28 million to Plunket so that it will not have to cut the number of visits it gives New Zealand woman who are having children. Let us give it to Parenting with Confidence to the Triple P programme the Home Instruction Programme for Pre-school Youngsters or the Parent to Parent programme. The organisations I have mentioned are all doing work out there to support families and in particular the families who are most in need. 
I think it is just extraordinary that people think that another little committee sitting here in the middle of Wellington will be the solution to all societal ills. The Families Commission would have done nothing for the Cremen family for the Burrows family or for the Williams family. It would certainly have not been in a position to do anything to change the life of Coral Burrows. Yet when we look at all the people who support this bill we see that that is the sort of ideal they are holding up—the sort of Utopia that they think this Families Commission with a budget of $28 million will somehow make possible. For the last 67 years this party has shown the importance of families and that is why we are saying that if the Government is to spend $28 million it should do it on something that will make a difference to them. 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I seek leave of the House to table a press release that the Hon Peter Dunne has just put out. It contains a particularly vitriolic attack on myself and suggests that I be demoted even further. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is. 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I want to start with the point that the previous speaker ended on. She talked about the National Party’s proud 67-year history of commitment to families. It is so proud and it is such a deep commitment that just 9 weeks ago for the first time in those 67 years it appointed a family spokesperson—the member who took a point of order recently. 
I have listened to this debate today with extraordinary amazement. I have been in this House long enough to think I have seen most things but I have seldom seen a debate like this one which is so lacking in argument and substance and so dripping in petty jealousy from members opposite. Their arguments have nothing to do with whether a Families Commission should be established; they have everything to do with the fact that we promised that one would be established we are establishing one and we will ensure that it is adequately resourced to do the job it is expected to do and those members opposite do not like it. 
They claim that we should support all sorts of other organisations. They fail to say that every single one of the organisations they have named supports the establishment of the Families Commission. Every single one of them says it wants this commission in place it sees the value it can bring and it looks forward to it beginning its operations because it wants to work alongside it. The only problem is the National New Zealand First Green and ACT parties have a different view. 
Well I want to say—and I will say it to John Carter because he is the one person opposite who is capable of listening and understanding it if he gets off the telephone for long enough—United Future will not support any future Government that does not support the Families Commission. My comment about the member who is just leaving the Chamber is that her comments today in strong opposition to the Families Commission would I suspect come as a surprise to her leader Dr Brash because he is starting to talk about building wider coalitions. Let me repeat what I have just said: any party that does not support the Families Commission will not have the support of United Future if it is in Government period. That point needs to be understood not as a game of one-upmanship— 
Jim Peters 
: We’re all shaking over here. 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: The member opposite does not count. He knows it. He will go back to the far north go fishing and we will be none the sadder for his departure. Let me make this point. 
Jim Peters 
: The member doesn’t know about these issues. 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: The member opposite knows does he? Let me say to Mr Peters that he may not know it but most people around New Zealand laugh at him. I will move on from there. [ 
Interruption 
] This commission— 
Jim Peters 
: The member doesn’t know! 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: It is the truth. The member might not like the truth but it is the truth. People will be rocking in the aisles right now at the thought of that member interjecting. As for Mrs Stewart they do not even know who she is. 
I come back to the Families Commission. This commission is being established because when we look a little bit under the veneer of New Zealand society we see that the statistics about the state of our families are appalling. We have the world’s second-highest rate of single-parent families. We have 65 percent of our young male offenders being brought up in homes without a father figure present. We have 40 percent of our criminals aged between 14 and 18. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The member who is interjecting said that the problem is we are taking too diverse an approach. I say to that member that the reality is families in New Zealand come in all shapes and sizes. Families in New Zealand do have a whole variety of structures. If we are to tackle the problems—and let us get real for a moment—yes the two-parent mum and dad family is the ideal we can strive for but it is actually a minority in contemporary New Zealand. If we are to strive for that ideal we should not start by saying to a whole range of family structures and their children that they are automatically excluded and do not count. We will not make progress in that way. We have to say that the ideal is as we have said and will continue to say the two-parent family but the reality is often somewhat different and we need to work with all groups if we are to achieve that ideal in time. I cannot understand members opposite who seriously think that by somehow setting New Zealander against New Zealander—because that is the implication of what they are saying—we will build a cohesive society we will build a country where our families feel included and we will do something about addressing those statistics I mentioned a moment or two ago. 
The member who spoke before asked about the situation in the Wairarapa and those families there. We will not turn dysfunction round overnight but we also will not make any change by carrying on the way we are. This House has seen more emphasis on families in the last 15 months since this party has had a prominent role than in the years beforehand. I say to the Minister of Finance that in the Budget this year by my count 15 family-specific initiatives were introduced. That is far more than in any previous Budget in my time in this House. If it takes the influence of United Future to achieve that and if it takes the prospect of a Families Commission to achieve that well and good because it is a vast change from the days of yore when members opposite were in Government and nothing happened. The legacy of their tenure is reflected in many of the problems we face today. 
For those same people now to say that a constructive effort—$28 million over 4 years to deal with a problem that conservatively costs New Zealand $5.6 billion every year—is excessive irresponsible and wasteful is simply nonsensical. We have to make a start. If we really believe that this country functions well when its families function well if we really believe that families are at the cornerstone of our society if we really believe that every child deserves the best possible start in life then we will get behind structures organisations policies and plans to achieve that. We will not sit here whingeing moaning and begrudging positive effort. That is all that this debate is about. When one sums it up the Opposition is saying: “It’s not fair—you’re doing it and we’re not.” There is nothing more to it than that. That is the reason Opposition members play games in the select committee. That is the reason they do not like their game playing being pointed out. That is the reason for the bilious interjections we are getting at the moment. It is simply a case of “You’re doing it and we’re not. It’s not fair.” 
Up and down New Zealand the families of New Zealand do not take any notice of that. If the Families Commission is such an appalling idea and is ridiculed up and down the country why have there been 170-odd applications for appointment to the commission? Why has every family group and social agency up and down New Zealand been attacking my office and the Minister of Social Development’s office pleading for application forms in order to nominate people whom that group or agency thinks can make a contribution to the work of this commission? 
The reality is New Zealand is crying out for some leadership in this area. It is crying out for a body that will at last put an emphasis and a focus on family life in New Zealand. It is a great tragedy—the previous member drew in current circumstances so let me say this particularly as I see the member for Wairarapa—that at a time when family stress and tension are in our national consciousness that members opposite play the sorts of games they are playing at the moment. It is a great tragedy that we cannot come together at this time and say that as this initiative has a chance of succeeding let us get behind it and let us make it work instead of playing narrow cheap political games sneering moaning whining and otherwise behaving in a generally obnoxious and unacceptable manner. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I think the honourable member has voiced some concerns about families and to be fair to this side of the House if we thought this bill would deliver the solutions we would be supportive of it. I tell that member that before this bill even emerged in any way at all my colleague Dail Jones had a families commission bill in the members’ ballot. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Lifted it straight from our policy. 
PETER BROWN 
: Dail Jones was not in the House before the election. He could not have put the bill in before the election. A clause in that bill identified a family as being what I think we all believe a family would be. If the member over there thinks this bill will address the issue then I invite him to read his own bill—the purpose clause. There is no mention of a family in it. The nearest it gets to mentioning it is to state that the bill’s purpose is to establish a Crown entity for the purposes of the Public Finance Act 1989 to state the commission’s functions and powers and to require the commission to have regard to certain matters and to comply with certain other obligations. 
We looked at the functions clause. There are three functions under the main function clause. The first is: “The commission’s main function is to act as an advocate for the interests of families generally.” We thought that was quite good. It is a move in the right direction. But look at the second: “That function does not include acting as an advocate for the interests of a particular family or particular families in connection with a particular case or issue.” Families have to go somewhere else; the commission will not handle that. 
Basically this bill is too liberal and is hugely bureaucratic so the select committee would not support it. It sent it back to the House. As a response the honourable leader of United Future sent a very damning letter to all the submitters or at least most of them which referred to “an unprecedented and venal political stunt by these four parties”. I ask that member what is unprecedented about a bill coming back to this House. The member has been here a long time far longer than me and he knows that many bills have come back to this House without the support of the select committee. He knows that. He is shaking his head. Maybe I should refresh his memory because I can think of at least one. [ 
Interruption 
] In my 7 years? That member has been here five times those 7 years. 
His letter goes on to state it was a venal stunt. “Venal” is probably the worst word one could use in politics to describe a fellow MP. There cannot be much worse than that. I do not take offence at a great deal and to be honest if the member called me venal in the House I would not object. I would live with it. But he wrote to submitters to say that people in my party are part of a venal political stunt which means they are open to bribery and corruption. I invite members from United Future to reflect on that. That is what the word means; that is the dictionary definition. If the member does not believe that I invite him to check the dictionary. I know he knows what it means. I invite the member to reconsider and do what he did when he spoke about Professor Jane Kelsey. In September he said something quite damning about her and 1 or 2 months later he was in the House retracting it. I invite the member to think because he has a precedent of withdrawing those sorts of comments. If he thinks we are not taking it seriously he should think again. 
There is more to families than children although they are very very important and I do not want to imply otherwise. I believe that with extra resourcing for the Commissioner for Children most cases involving children could be handled. At least the Commissioner for Children advocates on behalf of children. But does this bill cover families of mature people older people people who might be worried about their finances health and end-of-life problems? 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Have you read the bill? 
PETER BROWN 
: I have read the bill. I cannot see anything that says the commission would consider supporting things like end-of-life concerns as advocated in my Death with Dignity Bill. 
Hon Member 
: Wouldn’t do that. 
PETER BROWN 
: One of his members is saying he would not do that. The commissioners are not allowed to look at end-of-life situations and concerns that older people older families have. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Helping people kill themselves? 
PETER BROWN 
: Older people are worried about end-of-life situations. Mr Dunne should not make light of that. It is a serious concern for many people in New Zealand. If the family commissioners were asked to look at it would the member endeavour to stop it? 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: What? Helping them kill themselves? 
PETER BROWN 
: It is not helping them kill themselves. The member is being frivolous about a genuine concern. 
What does this definition of a family mean? Let me read the definition. The bill states: “(2) In this section family includes a group of people related by marriage blood or adoption”—all very good thus far—“an extended family 2 or more persons living together as a family and a whanau or other culturally recognised family group.” The little bit there that concerns me is “2 or more persons living together as a family”. Would the family commissioners be looking at for example—I am asking the United Future members—two homosexual men who are living together and have a passionate desire to adopt children? Are they embraced as a family under this bill? Oh the members are silent now. Paul Adams is silent. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: They are not embraced. 
PETER BROWN 
: They are not embraced under this bill. Well let the honourable member tell me how he is going to control the family commissioners because the family commissioners will be appointed under the equal opportunities legislation and the Human Rights Act. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: They are appointed under the Families Commission Act. 
PETER BROWN 
: But they will have to be governed by the equal opportunities legislation and the Human Rights Act. Is it impossible that one or more of the family commissioners could be homosexual? 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Who knows? They haven’t been appointed yet. 
PETER BROWN 
: But the member will not deny that they could well be homosexuals and want to promote this— 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: They might even be Asian people. 
PETER BROWN 
: I hope at least one of them is Asian. But I am pointing out to the member that if we have homosexual people as family commissioners it is not impossible that they will promote homosexual men being able to adopt children. Does United Future stand for that? I tell members that on this side of the House New Zealand First has real concerns about that. It is illegal at the moment and we have real concerns about that happening. If members are opening the door there they should be aware of it. 
Bernie Ogilvy 
: It’s illegal. 
PETER BROWN 
: The member says it is illegal now. There is a bill likely to come before this House within the next year that will make it— 
Bernie Ogilvy 
: One at a time. 
PETER BROWN 
: I am asking those members how they will control it with this bill. This bill is opening the door wider and I think they are fooling themselves if they think it is not. I say to honourable members that New Zealand First is not prepared to experiment with the lives of children. The research that we have seen shows that children brought up in homosexual families are put at a disadvantage and we are not prepared to experiment with the lives of children. I cannot get that assurance from the United Future people. They say we do not support this bill because we are frivolous and because we are jealous. Nothing could be further from the truth. New Zealand First would be keen to support something that develops families in this country and principally develops the traditional family which has served this society of New Zealanders so well in its 150-plus years of history. 
Marc Alexander 
: As long as they are not from other countries I presume. 
PETER BROWN 
: Does a member have a question for me? I am willing to answer a question. 
Marc Alexander 
: Would you include people from other countries? 
PETER BROWN 
: How stupid is the member! I come from another country. How stupid is the member not to recognise that! I am the foremost immigrant in New Zealand First and proud of it. New Zealand First would support any legislation that legitimately addressed the concerns the Hon Peter Dunne raised but this bill does not. It is far wide of the mark and it will be very costly. There are better ways of spending the money. Widening the breast-screening age range to include women aged from 40 to 70 would be a better way of spending the money. Regrettably New Zealand First cannot support this bill because it is too liberal and too bureaucratic. But when we are in Government next time we will amend it. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I call Muriel Newman. 
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Just to clarify things United Future is interested in people having a better life not a better death. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: That is not a point of order. 
GORDON COPELAND (Whip—United Future) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I would like to raise the point that on the list agreed to by the Speaker and published Muriel Newman was to have taken the sixth speaking slot. She neglected to— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: That is not a point of order. 
GORDON COPELAND 
: I would like to finish my point of order because— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I am not going to let you finish because it is not a point of order. 
GORDON COPELAND 
: It is about the speaking order and it must be a point of order. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: No. It is a procedural matter that I am quite aware of. I have called Muriel Newman and I do not intend to change that. 
GORDON COPELAND 
: Discussion occurred on this at the Standing Orders Committee and I was informed by the Speaker that he would undertake to advise yourself and the other Assistant Speaker that in a situation where a party did not take the call in the order agreed to by the Speaker it would drop down to the bottom of the list. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The member is wasting time. The first three positions are set. The others can move around. As far as I am concerned and while I am in this chair ACT has not had its call and it is going to get it. I call Muriel Newman. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party has opposed this bill right from the beginning. We see it as a $28 million bureaucracy and we have to remind ourselves that the Commissioner for Children operates on a budget of less than $2 million. We also see it as a direct payback by the Labour Government to United Future that—and I say this advisedly—pathetic little party that is the Government’s lapdog. I have to say that having listened to the Hon Peter Dunne’s contribution to this debate. 
The major reason that the ACT party is not prepared to support the Families Commission is that it will be manned by political appointees. We know we have a Labour Party that is opposed to the family—that is its socialist origins and ideology are anti-family. The real concern is that New Zealand will be given a $28 million spin machine to promote Labour Party anti-family propaganda. Given that there is no way that a party like ACT can support that machine. If the commissioners were not political appointees we probably would not have supported this bill but at least we would have considered it. 
In his speech earlier on in this debate the Minister for Social Development and Employment mentioned that he was supporting this legislation because it was pro-family. Yet in a recent speech he said: “I know of no social science that says the nuclear family is more successful than other kinds.” That is the real colour of that Minister—he is anti-family. Coming from somebody who was a sociologist before he came into Parliament that comment is quite extraordinary. The comment that there is no social science that shows the nuclear family to be more successful than other kinds flies in the face not only of evidence within New Zealand but evidence around the world—and also common sense. 
The married family is the cornerstone of society. Marriage is the best child-rearing institution ever invented. Contrary again to what the Minister has said in this debate it is an institution that dates back thousands of years and children raised in a successful married family in general go on to be successful themselves. But the interesting thing is that in being successful—in other words in having good jobs good prospects and all the rest of it—many of those children grow up to be centre-right voters. That is why the Labour Government and “Mr Progressive Party” sitting there are so opposed to the family. The married family creates people who believe in centre-right philosophies of limited government more prosperity and all of those things. 
However I do want to acknowledge on behalf of our party that that is not to say that other forms of family do not also succeed really well in building a good life for themselves and their children. But on the balance of probability other forms of families do face increased difficulties and their children do face greater risk factors in life. Back to 1987 when Professor David Ferguson was working in Christchurch on his child development study of some 1200 children who are now in their 20s he warned the Lange Labour Government against accepting the enthusiastic claims about family diversity as being good for children. Back in those days—the 1980s—he warned against sole parenthood and de facto relationships because he saw that they created instability for children. 
Over the years we have also had warnings from Government departments—right up until very recent warnings from the Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Child Youth and Family Services—that family instability and sole parenthood are risk factors for children. Those two factors are the strongest predictors of infant mortality; childhood injury; physical emotional and sexual abuse of children; neglect of children; poor school performance; youth crime; youth suicide; and teenage pregnancy. If this Government cared about the future of children it would be promoting stability in this bill about the Families Commission and it would be promoting marriage. That is not to say that marriage is the be-all and end-all for every couple in this country but at least if it forms a successful type of relationship in which to raise children it should be promoted by the Government of the day for goodness sake! 
What is really bizarre is that United Future could not even persuade the Government that it should recognise marriage in this bill. That again is an extraordinary situation given all the pro-family rhetoric of United Future. But United Future could not end up promoting marriage Labour could not promote marriage so all of those comments about those parties being pro-family I am afraid are hollow ones. The proof is not in the pudding. The proof is not in this bill. The word “marriage” does appear in the bill because it was in the previous legislation but it is not promoted in the actual content of this bill and the reasons for it—as many submitters wanted it to be. 
When we think about it the Labour Party and United Future have instead been promoting instability in this term of Parliament. They have voted for a more generous welfare system. In fact United Future voted for a weakening of the restraints around the domestic purposes benefit. If members talk to community groups out there they will say that the domestic purposes benefit creates the greatest incentive for marriage and family breakdown of any single type of benefit or even type of incentive. United Future has supported the Government in raising taxes and again that has put lots of financial pressure on families. That sort of pressure unfortunately often leads to family breakdown. 
But what is worse is that when families do break up United Future and the Labour Party appear to be committed to marginalising fathers. I know that United Future will say that that is not correct but the proof will be in what happens to the Care of Children Bill and whether it supports shared parenting in that bill and also supports the opening up of the Family Court. Those two changes to the law would significantly help to reduce the marginalisation of fathers in New Zealand and help connect them to their children even though their families have broken up. I will wait to see the results of the United Future party’s and Labour Party’s deliberations on shared parenting and opening up the Family Court. 
During this debate we have heard a sanctimonious contribution from the leader of United Future who appeared to blame all the other Opposition parties for playing politics. I say that it is the United Future party that has been guilty of playing the most terrible game of politics over the Care of Children Bill by telling all the submitters that because the bill was discharged from the committee because there was not a majority on the committee to pass it we were not taking any notice of all those submitters. United Future described the Opposition parties as “bloody-minded” and “rat cunning”. 
I have never heard such a disgraceful rendition of what has happened to the parliamentary process in New Zealand as I have from the United Future party. It is an absolute disgrace to Parliament that United Future members could use what is a normal procedure when there is no majority on a select committee. I say it is that party that has been playing politics. United Future is very unhappy because we are not going along with its views but we cannot do that because this is not a sound initiative. 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 The first point I would like to make is the simple political one: I would not even be in this Parliament and United Future would not be here with eight MPs if any other party in this Parliament had bothered to pick up with a degree of sincerity and energy the question of the New Zealand family. The National Party when in Government New Zealand First when in Government and the Labour Party when in Government have all had numerous opportunities to do that but they all dumped it. We came along and put it on the political landscape and as a result we are here. I am therefore delighted that today the Families Commission Bill will become law and that we have this wonderful initiative in the life of our country and our families. 
We were surprised and disappointed at many of the comments that came from the other parties at the select committee stage because the comments demonstrated in our view a complete lack of in-depth understanding about current thinking in family practice internationally. They looked for example at the strengthened provisions of clause 7 which cover the main functions of the commission and asked what “families’ resilience” was and what was meant by “families’ strengths”. That terminology is not some trendy fad that one drops into conversations at a cocktail party to sound PC. Indeed those concepts reflect an enormous weight of research and family practice that is well documented and is considered by those working at the grass roots level with families to improve outcomes as being the way forward. Instead of limiting the debate on how best to help families in purely income-related terms which has tended to be the emphasis of Parliaments in New Zealand over a considerable amount of time we need to better understand why it is that some individuals and families faced with serious threats and challenges to their well-being manage to cope well while others faced with similar circumstances do not manage to do so. Scholars and others interested in that question have developed the concept of resilience to explain that quality that holds family life together through the scheduled and unscheduled transitions in life. 
Families with low resilience factors do not experience improved outcomes just by increasing their income although that may be part of the solution and we would certainly do all that we can to ensure that families are well resourced and we have a range of taxation policies that will do that. The only other point I would like to make in order to keep this fairly brief is one that we have spoken on before. For many years in Parliament when it comes to the New Zealand family we have put huge resources into putting additional ambulances at the bottom of the cliff. That is right and proper because we do need to face the realities of family breakdown in this country. But this bill and at this point in history I believe is the time when it is incumbent upon us as a Parliament to start to put a fence at the top of the cliff so that we begin to understand why it is that so many people are in such dire straits in the first place and to come up with strategies and policies that will ensure that family life over the next generation in New Zealand begins to improve and hopefully improve dramatically. We all need to be part of that and the Government the State itself needs to give a lead. 
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 Next week a thumping 32-vote majority in Parliament will vote in favour of extending the minimum annual holiday provisions to 4 weeks. We will do that because the majority of this democratically elected and representative Parliament wants to play a positive role in strengthening families. For the Progressive party there is no division between our commitment to strengthening families our campaigns against drugs in our society the campaign for 4 weeks’ leave or the commitment to a strong economic and regional industry development programme. The Progressive party will vote in favour of the Families Commission because our commitment is to making New Zealand a safer more decent and happy place in which to live work and raise families. An absolute majority will say yes to this progressive legislation. We have 62 votes thanks to the cooperation between three parties that are serious about helping to strengthen families and about auditing and monitoring all the work that we do against those criteria. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Families Commission Bill be now read a third time.  
Ayes 62 
New Zealand Labour 52; United Future 8; Progressive 2. 
Noes 56 
New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; Green Party 8; ACT New Zealand 7; Independent: Awatere Huata. 
Bill read a third time. 
Holidays Bill 
Third Reading 
Hon MARGARET WILSON (Minister of Labour) 
: 
 I move  
That the Holidays Bill be now read a third time 
. I am pleased to see this bill come before the House in its final stages today. It takes its place in a line of much needed improvements to our employment relations framework and it follows on from the Employment Relations Act paid parental leave and health and safety legislation. All these measures are part of building an employment relations framework encompassing fair minimum standards and promoting productive employment relationships. Everyone agrees that the Holidays Act was sorely in need of review. This was largely due to the fact that it is an Act that brought together legislation from the 1940s without attempting to update any of the provisions. Because of this the Act is impossible for anyone to apply and interpret in a consistent manner and it is single-handedly responsible for more than a quarter of all calls to the Department of Labour and almost 80 percent of all complaints to labour inspectors. 
This bill has been over 3 years in development and its contents follow the work of two advisory groups which included both employer and union representatives. It accommodates a diverse range of working patterns in the workforce and the way in which holiday and leave entitlements can be applied in all these situations. I wish to thank the members of the two advisory groups for all their work in this area. The compromises reached by these groups on what issues the Holidays Bill should address are one of the reasons why the changes are possible. I wish to especially thank the representatives of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand which both continued good work beyond the advisory group and made an invaluable contribution to the drafting of the bill. As well as the advisory group members Department of Labour officials have been unstinting in carrying out their responsibilities to the Government this House and the public. Also I give particular thanks to the drafters in the Parliamentary Counsel Office. 
The dedication and diligence of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee members is manifest in the bill. They put a significant amount of time and effort both into hearing submissions and considering the bill in detail. The constructive process used is a tribute to the members. They have recommended sensible changes to clarify what is needed in this legislation. The 3 years of work by the select committee members of the advisory group have now resulted in a Holidays Bill fit for the 21st century. Now we look at the next critical stage which will be ensuring strong implementation. The Department of Labour’s information services will be available to help people find out about their entitlements and obligations. 
In terms of the content of the bill I would like to focus on one element in particular: the minimum entitlement of annual holidays. The bill provides a minimum of annual holidays entitlement of 4 weeks effective from 1 April 2007. This long lead time recognises employers’ needs to manage the change and give effect to any changes necessary. I consider 4 weeks’ annual holiday is an essential element in helping employees to achieve a better balance between their work and personal lives. I am heartened by the support given by the Green Party and New Zealand First to this measure. 
As we head off to the Christmas break the opponents of 4 weeks’ annual holidays should spare a thought for those parents who have only 3 weeks at most to spend with their children during the summer break. The reason for the increased annual holidays is that we believe New Zealand is a great place to live and this is a practical way of showing it. Four weeks’ annual holiday will contribute to reducing stress and enhancing productivity. It is the best way to invest in the workforce so that businesses can be productive and essential. I am proud to be part of a Government that has done so much to restore balance to New Zealand workplaces. The Holidays Bill marks another milestone in achieving a fair and reasonable employment relations framework. I commend the bill to the House. 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 The National Party made its position on the bill very clear when the Hon Roger Sowry led the debate through the initial stages—the first reading second reading and the Committee stage. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: The National Party is taking a holiday—yours! 
SIMON POWER 
: That is pretty funny coming from the “Minister for Lunches”. The bill presents a number of confusing key issues but more important by way of a last-minute inclusion was the entitlement to 4 weeks’ annual leave. This entitlement has been described by various people in the House during the course of the last series of debates on the bill as the great Labour Party election bribe which will come into effect on 1 April 2007. As other members have said during the passage of the bill through the House why not just make the date 2015? Why not make it 2010? What is so special about 2007? I see Sue Bradford nodding—that makes me a bit nervous actually. If the Government intends to delay the implementation of the bill until 2007 why not just push it right out? Either Government members are serious principled and committed to the entitlement of 4 weeks’ annual leave or they are not. 
I have to say that whether or not one agrees with 4 weeks’ annual leave—and I will come shortly to the reservations that we on this side of the House have—what the Government is doing rather cheapens it a bit. The Government’s view is that: “ OK we’ve been pushed into a corner on the issue by Matt Robson and by the Council of Trade Unions and the best way for us to get through this—given that Steve Maharey promised he would not introduce 4 weeks’ annual leave—is to let it hang out a bit over the course of the next election.” The Government thinks that it can have this leave issue out there as a piece of bait for the electorate in general. That just confirms what I was saying in the general debate yesterday and that is that this Government does not operate on principles at all. Either Government members believe in 4 weeks’ annual leave or they do not. If they believe in it they should implement it—get on with it. What is the hold-up? 
Debate interrupted. 
The House adjourned at 6 p.m.