Employment Relations Law Reform Bill

In comparison with Part 1, which was quite a substantive part, this is a very, very small part. In fact, it is all of about nine lines. This part brings itself into line with clause 32, which has just been passed by the Committee. I can recall, having sat here for the entire time, that no one spoke on clause 32, and there are no amendments to clause 32.

This part is a small amendment to the Health and Safety in Employment Act. It simply states that the Minister may approve occupational health and safety training, which I am sure every member of the House supports—

💬 Hon Richard Prebble: No.

Well, most sensible members of the House would support that. Clause 97 simply provides that the Minister may approve occupational health and safety training, and that it does not have to be done by notice in the Gazette. It could be notified in the Gazette, or over the radio, or in newspapers, or on the Internet. This brings the provision in line with clause 32, which we have already passed. This is a very, very small part, and notwithstanding some initiative within the Opposition debating team, I expect there will be relatively limited discussion on it.

One of the points that my colleague will no doubt raise as a point of order is what looked like it could be a direction to the Chair. I would like to think that is not the case.

The Minister, I believe, has actually misrepresented the part, and the reason why he has misrepresented it is that he says it is a simple change, and one does not have to notify approvals through the Gazette. But what he did not say was what it is actually all about. It is about a whole range of so-called education programmes set out in section 19G, which was inserted by this Government into the Health and Safety in Employment Act. Section 19G is headed: “Minister may approve occupational health and safety training”.

On the face of it, that seems perfectly reasonable. It is actually a cover, because what the clauses enable is union-based occupational training. Section 19G is referred directly back to section 72 of the Employment Relations Act. That section is all about union education courses. Union education courses are a sop, I guess, to the unions—and thus to the Labour Party—because what the clause enables is millions of dollars of training to be undertaken at the expense of the employer. In fact, there is a table in the Employment Relations Act that sets out the number of hours that unionists are able to take for this training. That is what clause 97 is really all about.

The Minister may pretend that the clause is just about the removal of a notification provision, but actually it is a secrecy provision. No longer does it have to be publicly notified. No longer is it subject to review by the Regulations Review Committee of this House, because that would be the implication of it being notified in the Gazette. It could be just a secret agreement between the Minister and the relevant unions under the Health and Safety in Employment Act.

I spoke in my last contribution about issues relating to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Are these kinds of training programmes going to make specific reference to the principles of the treaty, which will now be a compulsory part of codes of behaviour for employment agreements between public sector unions and district health boards? That is what is going to be the case, and this is a way whereby secret training will now be undertaken, at the cost of the employer, to boost union funds. Firstly, it will be done to give the unions more money, and, secondly, funnel that money to the Labour Party, which will use it to campaign in the general election. Whilst the Minister may pretend and try to convince the public that it is all quite innocent, it is in fact very surreptitious. It is a secrecy provision so that the Labour Party can get up to its nefarious games with the unions to boost its own funding.

💬 Hon David Benson-Pope: Another conspiracy theory!

I am not surprised that Mr Benson-Pope, a Minister in the Chamber tonight, who is actually very slippery—he was trying to stand on the head of a pin in question time today, saying that things are not what they are—would be supporting secrecy clauses, because secrecy clauses are all about what is called in American politics: “Follow the money”. This clause is all about following the money. There will be secret provisions, secret deals, between the Minister and unions, for trade union education, at the cost of employers. Unions get paid for it, with special provisions in Department of Labour allocations—$10 million, and another million dollars announced today. I wonder how much of that ends up in these special programmes, funnelled through to the unions, and funnelled through to the Labour Party. It is all part of Labour’s election campaign.

I believe that the Minister owes the Committee much more by way of explanation than he has given us so far. I support my good colleague Dr Wayne Mapp when he said the Minister was quite misleading as to the import of clause 97, particularly, in Part 3. It is important that members go back to the principal Act, the Health and Safety in Employment Act. As Dr Wayne Mapp has pointed out already, there are all sorts of matters in there that make it clear that there is far more to this matter than just the simple omission of the words “by notice in the Gazette”. I believe that the Minister owes the Committee an explanation of why this measure is necessary. Let me deal with the issue about why it is necessary, and then why I am concerned about the dangers of it.

I ask why this change is necessary because for generations the official way of notification to the people of New Zealand from Ministers has been by way of notice in the Gazette. One of the beauties of that system is that it saves compliance costs for business, because people do not have to look in various places for decisions made by Ministers. They know the one place they can find that information is in the Gazette. If something is in the Gazettee, an employer knows that that is it. So my first question is why there is this change. Putting notices in the Gazette is a very simple thing for the Government to do, and it saves employers compliance costs, because they do not then have to go and search in order to find out where something is notified. They do not have to wonder whether they have to search the transcripts of radio news for announcements made by a Minister. I admit that most employers have access to the Internet, but not all do. Those who do not would have to have someone go and search the Internet, and that person would then wonder whether to go to the Government website, the Minister’s website, the Department of Labour website, or just where else to find the information. My first question is why is there this change? There has to be some reason for it, and I think the Committee needs to know the reason, because it does not cost the Government a lot to put notices in the Gazettee, and it will add to employers’ compliance costs as they now seek to verify information.

I want to go on to why this measure causes me even more concern than that. One notes from clause 97 that section 19G(1) of the principal Act is the bit that is being amended. When I went back to that section to find out exactly what it was all about, I found that actually section 19G(3) caused me the most concern. I found from that section that the Minister may delegate his or her power under section 19G(1) to one or more persons. That becomes a concern to an employer if a union member can come along to the employer and say the Minister has approved that member to have delegated authority to specify training courses. Presumably the Minister can delegate that under section 19G(3) to one or more persons. Now, I would not mind betting that the Minister intends to delegate some of these powers to unions. What guarantee does an employer have when a union delegate says there is an official course he or she must follow that afternoon? How does the employer verify that? Quite clearly, the Minister will not have put a notice anywhere, because he has delegated his powers. Where has the union put a notice? How does the employer verify that?

I believe the Minister owes an explanation to the Committee. On behalf of the Government he should tell us what is up here. What trickery is up here that requires this amendment? It was bad enough before that the powers could be delegated, but at least there had to be a notice in the Gazette. If a union delegate said to an employer that he or she had been delegated the authority to set up a course and that the employer was to let the delegate go that afternoon, at least there had to be a notice in the Gazette where the employer could check up that it was bona fide for the health and safety employment officer to attend the training programme. It may well be a union training programme, but at least there was some assurance to the employer that it was bona fide. This provision removes that protection.

First of all, I very much resent the way the Minister purported to speak for the Committee. He said—and no doubt it is accurate—that no member had spoken to clause 32. But he failed to mention that he had answered the question himself as to how many clauses there were. The Government had put all the provisions into one part. I defy the Minister to say that is not correct. If the debate had been taken clause by clause does he really believe that members would not have spoken to clause 32? I see he is silent now.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: Maybe.

Come on, Minister! Does he really think that I would not have spoken to clause 32? I would have taken four calls, if I had been allowed to do so.

I also resent the Minister’s suggestion that everyone has gone along with his socialist view that the Government ought to provide for everything. The ACT party does not go along with that view. We do not support safety programmes run by trade unions. The ACT party never has. The Minister knows that. One thing that I note about the trade union movement is that when all else fails it pulls out the safety card; it turns it into a safety issue. In my experience most of those safety issues were bogus. In my experience as an employer, I have never agreed to pay danger money. Any time the trade union came along and started playing the safety card, I have said that I am not prepared to pay people extra for something that is unsafe. But I have certainly seen unions raise bogus safety issues on many occasions.

I believe that many of these education courses approved by the Minister will be a monstrous waste of taxpayers’ money, employers’ money, and employees’ money. I do not care whether the Minister publicises his approval of them on the Internet, in the Gazette, or on movie screens. It will still be a waste of money. I believe that this bill is another example. We ought to have a decent system of the rule of law. People should be held responsible for their own actions and the full consequences of them. If we did that, we would not need to have the Government acting as granny, and the trade union movement acting as auntie, to try to do all these safety measures. We never used to have them.

When we look at recent safety accident rates, we see they have gone up. The real reason—and I do not want to go into any detail—is that no-fault accident compensation has made New Zealand more dangerous than Iraq. That is what has happened. That is why we have all these regulations. All we need is good old common law that states that people as adults are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions. If we had that, we would not need the Minister having to gazette safety courses—in fact, so many of them that he now wants to publicise them on the Internet. But how much money will be taken from the taxpayer? This Government thinks that it is its money. It is not. It belongs to employers and to the public.

The ACT party will vote against this clause, just as we voted, if the Minister had noticed, against clause 32. We are being completely consistent. We say that this bill has no redeeming features. It is not often we have a bill that has no redeeming features. This bill is a huge step backwards. The Minister can call it health and safety as much as he likes, but that does not mean that it will improve the health and safety of New Zealanders. It will just increase their costs. It is just more socialist bureaucracy and more pandering to the trade union movement.

It is with pleasure I talk on behalf of the National Party on Part 3. Despite the Minister’s rather dismissive view that Parliament would have no interest in this part, I will make this prediction: not only does Parliament have an interest in this part tonight but Parliament will have an ongoing interest in it for quite some time. I make the prediction that the whole bill is nothing more than a nationwide recruitment drive for the unions. This is just part of the whole clandestine activity that will take place whereby unions will organise very important health and safety training courses that are secretly approved by the Minister on some sort of communications device.

If the training courses had to be gazetted, then there would be a clear and an easy track for someone to follow. But this will be the great line: “I’m off to a health and safety employment course.” When the employee is asked why he or she is going, the employee will reply: “Because I heard it on the radio. It was a party-political broadcast brought to us by the Minister of Labour, Paul Swain. I heard it on the radio.” “Swainy and boys” will invite employees to a health and safety training course to listen to how to improve health and safety. That will be great, will it not? How many people record the radio when they are listening to it? If an employer says to an employee: “Can you just show me where you actually heard that?”, the employee will reply: “I heard on the radio that ‘Swainy and the boys’ are having a cup of tea and a health and safety course. It happens to be at 2 o’clock tomorrow afternoon, just before the running of the Melbourne Cup, so why don’t we go down and have a listen?” That is the kind of clandestine behaviour that we can expect.

The Minister said that there would not be much activity. He said that there has not been much discussion of this part, and there would not be much discussion of it tonight. I make the prediction that not only will there be discussion tonight but that this part will be the subject of many parliamentary questions on behalf of the Opposition, going forward. We want to know how many courses the Minister will send New Zealanders on.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: Listen to the radio.

We will be listening to the radio, looking at the New Zealand Gazette, and searching the Internet. We will be searching, and included in our favourite sites will be: “Health and safety employment courses brought to employees by ‘Swainy and the boys’.” We will look at that sort of activity.

This is very, very concerning behaviour. Earlier tonight my colleague the Hon Roger Sowry came to the Committee, and, much to my surprise, he announced that a press release had been put out sometime earlier this evening, I think, in conjunction with the Minister, stating that $1 million is to be put aside for work in this area—that is, $1 million will be available to the unions. I wonder how much of that $1 million will go towards radio advertising, gazetting, and the running of health and safety training courses. Maybe the Minister may want to take a call to tell the Committee how many courses will be run. The next question the Minister may want to answer is what that will do to the productivity of New Zealand. Not very long ago this Government was telling New Zealanders that we would get back into the top half of the OECD by 2011. We will be in the top half of the OECD for the number of health and safety training courses attended by workers in New Zealand. I have no doubt that we will be in the top half of the OECD for that. If “Swainy and the boys” set up some sort of private company we could be in there very, very quickly, but we will not be back in the top half of the OECD.

I bow to Mr Brown’s knowledge. He is the most knowledgable member about the waterfront in New Zealand and our shipping industry. Earlier on he said we should not be frightened of unions. I am a young man; I am younger than I look. I am only 43 years of age, and I remember seeing on television on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve hundreds of cars at Picton that could not get on the inter-island ferries, because of the strikes for chocolate biscuits. Now the issue will not be chocolate biscuits; it will be training courses.

I move, That the question be now put.