General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. There has been a controversy over the last 48 hours, since the Government announced its decision over mining proposals. That controversy is because this Government, led by John Key, had proposed to open up New Zealand national parks and protected areas to the mining industry, yet the Prime Minister will not accept responsibility for the part that he played in that decision.

I hold up the New Zealand Herald with an article entitled “Muddled Govt mining stance fatally flawed”. It was fatally flawed. Gerry Brownlee does not admit it, Kate Wilkinson does not admit it, and John Key does not admit it. But their proposal, considered by their Cabinet and announced to this Parliament by John Key in his opening statement to Parliament this year, was to allow the most precious and protected areas of New Zealand to be opened up to mining. That is what it was about. This Prime Minister will not accept responsibility for the part that he played in that decision, but he should. The day before the Prime Minister’s opening statement in Parliament Gerry Brownlee and Kate Wilkinson took to Cabinet a paper that stated that 467,000 hectares of New Zealand’s national parks should be opened up for mining, yet John Key announced that it was not a Ministers’ paper, but an officials’ paper. When I was in Cabinet, a Cabinet Minister took responsibility for what he or she took to Cabinet. If one did not support a proposal, then one did not sign one’s name to it. Of course Gerry Brownlee supported the proposal, because he set it out way back in 2009 in a speech to the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and told that international mining interest everything it wanted to hear. What did this speech say? The major proposal was to gut schedule 4 to allow this National Government to go and dig up our national parks.

John Key should have known that that was never a runner. Gerry Brownlee went to see him early in 2009 and said that he had a step change for New Zealand and that he was going to dig up the national parks and we would all be wealthy. At that point John Key had the responsibility to say to Gerry Brownlee that it was not on, and that it was not acceptable to New Zealanders. It is not right for one Government to destroy the heritage of future generations of New Zealanders. He should have said to Gerry Brownlee that he was the Minister for Economic Development, and asked whether he understood that digging up our national parks would destroy our tourism industry, and would destroy our “clean, green”, “100% Pure New Zealand” brand. That is what John Key should have said. He should have told him to take the idea away. It was stupid, it was flawed, and it would never run. But John Key did not say that. He embraced the idea, he announced to Parliament that he was going to do it, and he supported Gerry Brownlee’s paper going to Cabinet.

I will say something about Kate Wilkinson. Kate Wilkinson does not understand that she has a statutory responsibility as Minister of Conservation to advocate for the conservation estate. What did she do? She signed her name to a paper that would have allowed mining in 467,000 hectares of New Zealand’s national parks. I cannot remember in my entire time in this Parliament a worse Minister of Conservation, a weaker Minister of Conservation, or a Minister who failed more in his or her basic responsibility to take the side of conservation and stand up against damaging the conservation estate.

The other thing exposed by this affair is a total lack of planning by this Government to achieve an improvement in living standards, and growth in employment and wages. This is simply the last of a series of failed plans. The Job Summit fell over, and the report of the 2025 Taskforce was discredited by even the Government within 24 hours of its being produced. I ask Mr Brownlee what has happened to the idea of New Zealand becoming the world’s financial services hub. It has gone.

That has to be one of the saddest speeches this Parliament has ever heard. I say that because all that the Leader of the Opposition, the previous speaker, could do was to bring out an issue that is seriously now yesterday’s issue, and try to rewrite history around it. In February of this year the Hon Phil Goff said he thought most New Zealanders wanted to see balance and wanted to see some less-sensitive conservation areas available to environmentally sensitive mining. That was what Phil Goff said in February of this year. He went on further in February of this year to say he thought there was scope in some conservation land to extract minerals if it was done without damage to the environment. He said Labour did that in Paparoa National Park with the Pike River coalfield. This man is grasping at whatever straw he can in order to try to impress his colleagues, rather than speaking directly to the people of New Zealand.

It is utterly absurd for the Leader of the Opposition to say that because the Government took heed of public opinion and took heed of what it learnt in a discussion document, somehow that represents a massive failing of leadership. I think that tells us that the Labour Party has never ever operated in a democratic sense. It has always relied on the sort of dictatorial leadership that Helen Clark offered the country. She had all of her Ministers doing exactly the sort of bidding that she wanted. I have not seen Phil Goff give such a vein-popping speech as that one since he was a frustrated Minister of Foreign Affairs in the previous Helen Clark - led Labour Government.

I could talk this afternoon about the 82 mines that that Labour Government approved on conservation land, and I could talk about the one mine that it approved on schedule 4 land. But I want to talk about the real issues that worry New Zealanders. They are the cost of living and New Zealanders’ place in the economy. In the last 5 years of the previous Labour Government, when we had very, very good economic times, the non-tradables sector grew astronomically. The non-tradables sector of our economy under that Labour Government grew, and it took that as an indication that our economy was in good health. The purchasing power of New Zealanders’ dollars fell under that Labour Government. We had a decline in exports of 5 percent per year for the last 5 years of that Labour Government. All the time its members talked about doing things on a sustainable basis, having an export year, and having all sorts of task forces for this and committees for that—talk, talk, talk.

This is a Government that will do things. This is a Government that is not afraid to go out and ask New Zealanders: “What about this idea?”. If they reject it, they reject it. If they accept it, they accept it. Mr Goff came in here this afternoon and suggested—very interestingly, I think—that because a Prime Minister says we are looking at something, somehow that is it; it is black and white, and cast in stone. That is the sort of legacy that those members want to re-inflict on New Zealanders—the dictatorial, listen to no one, know what is best approach. I think the pathetic efforts by the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon to say: “Our Ministers were better than your Ministers.” shows that Labour is still a party in total denial. Labour does not recognise that there is a new style of Government in this country. It is a new style of Government that does not mind asking people what they think and then acting on that advice. That is not unreasonable. That is why we have a democracy.

The other thing that struck me in that speech was the way that poor old Mr Goff’s friends—I was going to call them our opponents—in the caucus had their heads down. They were quite embarrassed and completely unable to show the animated support one would expect for a leader. I think that is sad.

It is a mark of a failed Government when nearly 2 years in, its members are still talking about its predecessor. How about talking about something they have done? How about talking about a plan that they have? How about talking about the way to make New Zealanders’ lives better? They cannot, because they have no plan. Gerry Brownlee is the man who will for ever—[Interruption] There he goes; off again.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The member knows that he cannot do that.

He will for ever be known for Brownlee’s “Law of Holes”: when in one, stop digging. The corollary to Brownlee’s “Law of Holes” is that when one has stopped digging, one should have a plan B. The funniest thing about this week is that it is now obvious to all that there was no plan B, because there never was a strategy. There is no analysis of what is fundamentally wrong with this economy and how to turn it round.

For the last 18 months we have seen a series of glib one-liners, manufactured pragmatism, and slip backs. It is now obvious to all New Zealanders that the emperor has no clothes. There is no strategy, as John Key promised. There is no aggressive growth in 2010. The Government promised New Zealanders a step change. Its members said they would do it by digging up national parks. Any idiot would have known that New Zealanders would take to the streets in their tens of thousands to defend the wilderness areas that make this country unique and that we all love. But that did not occur to those members. Now they have had to bury the idea. It should never have been dug up.

What about the other plans? The Job Summit was a nice-sounding idea. It led to a cycleway to nowhere, which created a few jobs and took taxpayers on a great ride—a great ride to spend millions to protect John Key’s reputation.

💬 Craig Foss: Which cycleway are you going to rip up?

The cycleway to nowhere. Craig Foss is embarrassed about the cost of it. The Government cancelled a 9-day fortnight, in the middle of a recession. It produced a Budget that rightly said that the economy was imbalanced, but did nothing to solve the imbalances, nothing to restore savings, nothing to help New Zealand companies gain capital, and nothing to lift exports. In fact, those members are still saying that we have the best monetary policy in the world, but the rest of the world has moved on. The rest of the world has moved on, leaving them isolated and alone, dreaming of yesteryear and making up names about the previous Government.

There is no plan to transform our economy into a high-value, high-wage economy. There is no sense of urgency about getting us on a sustainable fiscal path. There is no sense of urgency about our No. 1 long-term problem, which is paying for superannuation. Those members have just kicked out pre-funding for 10 years, and failed to honour their promise to restore pre-funding when the books were in surplus.

How long will it take before New Zealanders realise they have been told a massive lie, which claims that we can have a 65-year-old qualification with no pre-funding? The numbers do not add up, and ordinary Kiwis know that. It is time the Government told the truth about that massive issue that is coming down the pipe.

The Government is saying that young New Zealanders, Generation X and Generation Y, will be able to foot the bill. We know that when young Kiwis figure out how big the bill will be, the Bill opposite will be on his way out. Bill English will be on his way out, John Key with him, and also Gerry Brownlee, the “King of Holes.” Brownlee’s “Law of Holes” is that when we are in one, we should stop digging. But there should be an alternative plan, and that is the problem. There never was a plan, an analysis, or a strategy. It was a rolling maul of sound bites, which has fallen flat because there was never anything behind it except marketing spin. This is a Government whose marketing department rules the roost, and it forgot about ideas.

Let us remember back to 2008 when, from listening to Labour, one would have thought the sky was going to fall in, and bad employers would be named and shamed, all because we introduced an optional 90-day trial period for new employees in small businesses. It was nothing radical, just moderate and more in line with international trends and jurisdictions. We thought hard about it. It was thoughtful and moderate. We built in protections of good faith, and protections that stated that it would be only by agreement. We also built in protections that ensured discrimination and harassment rights would be retained. We enabled mediation to be available.

In the past nearly 18 months, what has happened? Has the sky fallen in? No, the sky has not fallen in. Has the trial period been abused? If it had been abused, we would want to know about it, so that as we draft and craft the amendments now we could add in more protections if need be. But there is no evidence of abuse or exploitation of workers. Nobody has been named and shamed. Opposition to the 90-day trial has been made mute.

What has happened is good news. The sky has not fallen in. Neither Labour nor the unions, which were very vociferous at the time, have been able to demonstrate that the 90-day trial period is not working.

💬 Chris Auchinvole: Because it did work.

It works. They have not been able to demonstrate that it is not fair, because it is fair. They have not been able to demonstrate that it is not reasonable, because it is reasonable. It is working. It is fair, reasonable, and it is working. It has given businesses more confidence in admittedly difficult economic times to take on workers whom they might not otherwise have taken on. The Department of Labour’s report highlights, as we know, that 40 percent of employers would not have taken on employees except for the 90-day trial period. It has given workers, especially those on the margins who perhaps do not have an employment record or qualifications, or who are new to the country, the opportunity to say “Give me a go.” They have backed themselves in order to prove themselves and get their foot in the employment door.

I went to our local refugee migrant centre in Christchurch, and I asked staff there what their biggest challenge was. They said it was getting their migrants to have a job. I asked them whether they used the 90-day trial, but they did not, because Labour had scaremongered so much. People there said it would be good because their migrants did not have a job record and did not speak English very well. They did not really know what to expect but would love the opportunity to be given a try and to get their feet in the employment door. Because of the scaremongering, some of them had not been given that opportunity.

This policy is good policy. It has not resulted in fire-at-will. It is a hiring policy. It has given more confidence in hiring. We want people to have jobs, and this 90-day trial regime is one of the tools in the tool kit to get more people into jobs. It is not radical stuff. It is reasonable and moderate, and it brings us more into line with other international jurisdictions, which are a lot tougher. Its success is one of the reasons we are extending the opportunity to all businesses. Let us look at other jurisdictions. The UK has a 12-month trial period.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Twelve months? Wasn’t that under a Labour Government?

Twelve months, under a Labour Government. What do we have? We have 90 days, which is 3 months, or one-quarter of the UK period. Similarly, Australia has a 12-month period, introduced under a Labor Government. What do we have? We have 3 months. This is good policy.

If the Minister of Labour, who has just resumed her seat, is so proud of the effective protections that come from the good-faith provisions of the Employment Relations Act, I ask why she refused to acknowledge yesterday in this House that under the 90-day trial period legislation employees can be fired without any reason being given. They will not know the reason why they have been fired. They may have given up a prior job to take the new one, but they can be fired without any reason being given, up to 90 days after starting the job. The Minister will not admit that, not because she does not know it, but because she knows that it does not appeal to New Zealanders, who know it is just not fair.

The Minister of Labour is also the Minister of Conservation. Given the controversies this week, we would have expected some defence of the Government’s performance in respect of mining in national parks, but despite the fact that that has been such a terrible mistake on the part of the Government, the Minister of Conservation did not once acknowledge her role, try to defend her conduct, or try to defend the Government position.

That is just not good enough.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Beyond belief.

It is beyond belief. I think the most serious aspect of the debate on mining that has been exposed by the Opposition in the second stage is actually the flow-on analysis of what is missing from the Government’s policy. It was always a mistake to suggest mining in national parks. It was always a mistake.

At the last election Gerry Brownlee was already on record as saying that he believed coal to be sexy. In fact, one chapter of the video blog on his website he entitled: “Sexy Coal”. I would have thought that to be a bit of a warning to members of the National Government that they should keep an eye on him. Given that the burning of coal is responsible for about half of the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels in the world, the world actually does not want to see a lot more burning of coal, I say to Mr Brownlee. It is not sexy. It is not the way forward for the New Zealand economy.

Against that background, the National Government let him go out last year and say that New Zealand was going to catch up with Australia by mining our national parks, and that mining was going to cause a step change in the New Zealand economy. For a start, it was never going to cause a step change in the New Zealand economy. Only about 10 percent of the difference between New Zealand’s wealth and Australia’s wealth in income terms arises from mining. He had no answer for the other 90 percent anyway, but now he has abandoned the cure he though he had for that 10 percent difference.

I thought question time today was quite illuminating. Where is his plan, now that he has bungled mining his way into the future? Where is his plan?

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: There never has been a plan.

Mr Cosgrove is quite right. There is no alternative plan.

Mr Brownlee said that if we asked him some other questions, he would tell us. So I put to him one of the Prime Minister’s other big ideas—that is, that somehow New Zealand will become a financial services hub for the world. I asked him what papers he had taken to Cabinet about that idea. He has taken none.

John Key hops from cloud to cloud: the cycleway, the 9-day working fortnight, mining in national parks, a financial services hub, and building broadband with Chinese money. He has had one idea after another, yet none of them—not one of them—has come to fruition. Not one of them has stacked up in any significant way.

The underlying question I ask this Parliament to consider is what has happened to the promise to catch up with Australia, a promise upon which the National Government was elected. I asked Gerry Brownlee at a select committee the other day about how we should judge how the Government is doing on that promise. I asked him what targets the Government has set, and what its objectives are. He said that it does not have any. He actually admitted that it does not have any objectives and targets, other than the ambition to get there by 2025. That is 15 years away. Not even in the worst nightmares of people who go along to horror movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street do they think that the National Government will still be in power in 2025. So I ask how the Government will be held accountable for whether it meets its ambition of catching up to Australia by 2025. Plainly, it has no plan and no targets, and it should be held to account.

Obviously, Labour has never understood the term “discussion document”. Those members have never understood that it is actually about hearing from the public—hearing, in fact, from the 35,000 people who sent in a form submission or made a full submission—then taking on board what they said. One might wonder why Labour members have so much difficulty understanding the concept of listening to the people. The reason is—

💬 Dr Cam Calder: A 9-year dictatorship!

Exactly! It was a 9-year dictatorship, and that was exemplified by the Electoral Finance Act. There were marches in the street, there were submissions, there were questions week after week in Parliament, and there was a whole campaign in the newspapers and the media saying that the Electoral Finance Act was a fundamental breach of democratic principles. But what did Labour do? It just boxed on; it just crashed on. The public could see the way that the Labour Government ignored the people. It was contemptuous of the public voice.

💬 Dr Cam Calder: Arrogant!

Arrogant! What a contrast that Labour Government is to the current Government—what a contrast. We put out a discussion document that is, as it says, a discussion document. We listen to the people, and we take on board the people’s voice.

Labour needs to ask itself a simple question: why is it that during the discussion around mining National was about 20 points ahead of Labour—the whole time through? Because people had an intuitive sense that we were actually listening, that we were actually taking on board public comment. The public understood that that was a fundamental feature of this Government. There have been enough examples, in a general sense, for people to understand that the style of the John Key - led Government is to take on board public concerns, and on serious issues—and I recognise that mining is a serious issue—to react accordingly.

Labour, of course, is extremely disappointed. It would like us to be mining in national parks. It would like us to be mining on schedule 4 land, because that would give Labour the ability to play this issue out month over month over month. But the response of a Government that listens is to take on board the public’s fundamental concerns. That is, I suggest, a fundamental difference between this Government and the previous Government.

I want to look at the economic record. I have been listening to the previous debaters, and they kept saying that Labour had a fantastic economic record. What is the truth of that?

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: They take tough decisions.

Yes, tough decisions, like the Electoral Finance Act—that was a really tough decision, Darren! That really worked for Labour! The public really gave their judgment on that one, Darren. While the Labour Government was fiddling around with the Electoral Finance Act and completely distracted by it, what was actually happening in the real world? Well, for 5 years there was declining export growth. The real economy was shrinking. Certainly, there was growth fuelled by the extra borrowing by the private sector; certainly there was growth fuelled by the expansion of public sector expenditure, which meant that the size of Government relative to the total economy grew substantially.

What did it lead to? It led to recession hitting New Zealand 12 months before the rest of the world. Why was that? We saw a succession of investment failures in New Zealand during 2007 and 2008. We were already in negative growth before the change of Government in 2008. New Zealand’s recession preceded the rest of the world’s by 1 year. That is easily forgotten because it has been subsumed in the broader global financial crisis, but that was the reality. That is why so many New Zealanders made the decision to travel to Australia. People saw better prospects there, because, frankly, the Australian economy was being managed better than the New Zealand economy. Members on that side of the Chamber are silent now, are they not? They know the truth of this.

National inherited years and years of mismanagement, and we had to fix it. What has the National Government done? We delivered a tax reform package entirely oriented around growth. It is the best tax reform package in 25 years. The Resource Management Act reforms have been significant. There have been improvements in infrastructure, roads, and broadband. The science and innovation package caps it all off.

We have just heard from the former spokesperson on the eradication of political correctness. He wants to know why we were not making any noises. It was because we were asleep.

This is a Government with no plan and no new ideas, but with lots of smiles from Mr Key, who is starting to look like a poor man’s Wizard of Oz. He is like a travelling magician who pulls out every other trick every other time that the one before did not work. But we can only trick Dorothy and the Tin Man for so long, because the people of New Zealand are starting to see there is no plan. There is no way back to Kansas.

What has the “Wizard of New Zealand” pulled out of his bag so far? We have had the 2025 task force, which was meant to show how we could catch up with Australia. What happened to that? Nothing. Don Brash failed to deliver, but “There’s no surprises there.”, as the Kiwi kid says about the Aussie kid, in the TV ad. Don is still being kept on to give another report next year, yet he has run out of money already. That is some trick for the former Governor of the Reserve Bank, who is in charge of New Zealand’s monetary policy. He runs out of his budget in the first year of the task force.

Then we had the Job Summit. How is that going? There are no new jobs. Unemployment is on the rise. The Government that my colleagues on my right and I were in halved unemployment to 4 percent when we went out of office. This Government has increased unemployment by 50 percent already, and it is still rising. Now the rate has almost returned to what it was under the previous National Government. We cannot blame that on the recession, especially when the only idea to save jobs was a 9-day fortnight. That was meant to save thousands of jobs, by getting people to work less so that they were paid less, and businesses stayed afloat. That was the idea. At most it saved 100 jobs, for the whole of New Zealand.

Then John Key came up with another wizard idea. Employees could sell the fourth week of their holidays. That means that the solution to New Zealand’s problems is to get people to work longer. Previously the solution was for people to work less, and now it is for them to work longer. Then National had this great idea of a 9-day fortnight. Employees were going to work less still, and get paid less as well. What a magician’s sleight of hand it was to suggest that employees have the choice to sell their annual leave. In my book it is just working an extra week and getting paid for it. It is not exactly rocket science. But this scheme will save New Zealand and catch us up to Australia. Oh, really? Why not take Christmas Day tomorrow, and then decide to sell it and go to work anyway? Would that fix the problem? We would catch up with Australia then!

Then we had the cycleway. This was meant to create jobs. The cycleway was the great new innovation for New Zealand. Tourist industries were meant to pop up all along the cycleway. All we have seen so far is pictures of John Key on a bike, smiling as always. It will take more than a pushbike and a cycleway in New Zealand to fix up the New Zealand economy. But, however, now we have the answer; it is mining. We will dig up the country, just like Australia is doing, and we will catch up to Australia. What happened to that idea? It was another flip-flop, because the smiling Prime Minister does not want to be unpopular. He discovered that this idea was not all that popular. Actually, 40,000 people in Queen Street convinced him of that. So that is not going to happen.

If John Key and his Government were serious about growing the economy, they would not pay just lip-service to the farming sector. That sector is our largest economic earner. The truth is that agriculture makes up 43 percent of New Zealand’s exports. Is there anything about that that John Key does not understand? Let us compare that with tourism, which he took the portfolio for. Tourism makes up 17 percent of the economy. He did not take agriculture, which makes up 43 percent of the economy. Gee, that is a no-brainer. We want to really lead the economy, so we take an industry that is less than half as important as the one we do not take, and then we do not mention it. John never mentioned farming in the 2008 post-election Speech from the Throne—he never mentioned it. He did not mention it in 2010, in his speech to Parliament at the beginning of this year. I am a member of Parliament for an urban electorate, and I mention agriculture all the time. Mind you, I was told by Helen Clark to mention it, and I did; I was a good Minister.

There is nothing wrong with supporting tourism, but there is a heck of a lot wrong with not supporting farming and ignoring it. If John Key thinks we can grow the New Zealand economy while ignoring the farming sector and building cycleways, he is dreaming. What kind of mickey mouse economics smashes the Fast Forward fund for research in the primary sector, and cancels the tax credit for business, in favour of a cycleway? We do away with the New Zealand Fast Forward fund, we do away with research and development rebates for business, but we replace them with a cycleway. Now, that will work. Yeah, right!

My congratulations go to John Key, Kate Wilkinson, and this National-led Government on the planned extension of the 90-day trial period to all businesses. National is a party that backs business and backs workers, because we know that without jobs and growth, New Zealand and New Zealanders will not get ahead.

Having a job is crucial to people’s self-esteem and to giving them choices and independence. That is why this Government has had an unrelenting focus on getting people into jobs. We make no apology for that—none whatsoever. The extension of the 90-day trial period to all businesses is about getting people into jobs and giving employers the confidence to take on new staff. An increase in the number of jobs where jobs are not currently available does not magically appear out of thin air. A business needs to see the opportunity to expand and it is important that it needs to be confident to create those new jobs. The hysteria that has surrounded the announcement has been quite astonishing. Anyone would have thought that sweatshops had been introduced. On the contrary, this is a step forward, not a step back.

Previously the 90-day trial was for small to medium sized businesses with fewer than 20 staff. Our nation’s backbone is small to medium sized businesses. The fact is that 99 percent of New Zealand businesses, which employ 60 percent of our workers, are small to medium sized.

💬 Hon Maryan Street: No, no, the figures are wrong.

Not according to the Human Rights Commission. The member should read its report. These businesses generate a big part of our wealth. When they prosper, we all prosper.

National’s plans for small to medium sized businesses link with National’s plan for growing the economy. The 90-day trial period was an integral part of our election manifesto in 2008. It was aimed at small to medium sized businesses, because they are crucial to our economy. Many small businesses do not have the human resources of larger companies. The 90-day trial will now be extended to all businesses, and that can only be good for people needing jobs, for businesses, and for New Zealand.

A recent review found that half of all employers had used a trial period when hiring workers. In relation to the last employee that an employer had hired on a trial basis, 40 percent of employers said they would not have, or were unlikely to have, hired that person without having a trial period. To put it another way, without the 90-day trial, 40 percent of businesses would most likely have not hired that person. That is an excellent outcome.

The evaluation suggests that employers view dismissals during the 90-day trial period as being unfavourable, and actively try to avoid them. Indeed, dismissals were not given on the 89th day, as some cynical members and unionists might have predicted, but were given mainly in the first few weeks. The evidence is clear from the evaluation that employers were not out to exploit those employees who were hired under the 90-day trial.

I challenge members opposite. If unscrupulous employers have been using the 90-day trial period in an unethical manner, then I ask why those businesses have not been named and shamed. The fact is that, in general, employers have acted responsibly and workers have been treated fairly. It is important to note that the 90-day trial can only be entered into by a written agreement between the employer and the new worker at the beginning of the employment relationship.

I was interested to read the Human Rights Commission’s recent publication What Next? National Conversation About Work. The publication blows a few tired old myths out of the water and exposes a few truths. The first truth is that work is a critical source of well-being and identity, and that is something the Government absolutely agrees with.

💬 Dr Rajen Prasad: Who didn’t know that? What’s the myth that blows?

It is a truth, not a myth.

One myth exposed was that all bosses are bastards. It was the observation of the Human Rights Commission that the “employers we met, especially in smaller businesses were more likely to treat their staff as extended family than as labour units.” The article went on to state that many of the employers the commission spoke to were responsive to the needs of their employees, such as family responsibilities, emergencies, and other life events, and were devastated by the emotional trauma of redundancies when they had to lay off staff. It is hardly the comment one would find in a Charles Dickens novel.

Another myth was that workers are slackers. The Human Rights Commission found that there was universal enthusiasm by employees not just for the socialisation of work but also for the tasks, functions, and professionalism required of them by change in the labour market.

So the hugely respected Human Rights Commission, after meeting hundreds of employers and hundreds of employees, found—wait for it—happy employers and happy employees. It is not the sort of picture that unions want to paint.

The extension of the 90-day trial is about opportunity. It is about giving people the chance to find a job.

After a couple of days of watching this debacle with Gerry Brownlee I tried to do some research into how best to describe him, and I can do no better than to quote from the Christchurch Press. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! If we look back to 9 May last year we find this headline in the Press: “Gerry on the job”. Mr Brownlee was described as the Ilam MP who was the third most powerful politician in New Zealand. The might, the glory, the influence! Then as I thumbed through the article—

💬 Louise Upston: You’re just jealous!

Hell no, not after the last couple of days. At the end of this article about Mr Brownlee it states “What others say”. The first quote was from a guy called David Henderson from Christchurch. Some Canterbury members may know this guy. He is fighting off bankruptcy day after day, as a property developer, as we speak. I am told by reliable sources that he is the best mate of Gerry Brownlee. Mr Henderson is a business person, whom I know the National Party and the ACT Party admire, and here is what he said about Mr Brownlee: “A nice guy but completely useless.” That is what the mates of “Gerry on the job” say about him. I disagree; there is no egg on Gerry’s face—it would not last long enough, especially if it were fried.

But what has been demonstrated over the last couple of days is that Gerry Brownlee, who wanted to put not a line in the sand but a trench in the sand—he is quicksand in Cabinet—wanted to make his mark on history. He went out like the veritable political blunderbuss that he is and said: “We’re going to dig big holes in places where no one wants us to do that. We’re going to dig up gold. There is gold in them there hills. This is going to happen.”, and that was reinforced by his Prime Minister, who was pop-riveted to this policy. Then yesterday or the day before, Gerry was stuck out on a pole—I will grant that it was a big one—at the press conference, aided and abetted by the ghost that walks, Kate Wilkinson, the person who never fronts on the hard stuff. If one asks her about the cut in general practitioner services in Rangiora, she is nowhere to be seen. She agrees with it, and I will come to that in due time. Kate Wilkinson was stuck out there at the press conference but said absolutely nothing. She would not front the issue, and it has been a complete debacle from start to finish.

I ask, as David Parker did, where the aspiration is. Where is the step change? Where is the great plan and economic development vision for New Zealand? We had one and we delivered on it through 9 years in Government, and the employment rates and economic growth proved it. But where are the words that we heard about before the election, such as aspiration? Where is Gerry Brownlee now? I feel a bit sorry for him. He is stuck out there. He has to huff and puff and stamp his feet, and try to tell everybody that he listened.

If this is now a listening, reformed, reinvented National Government, why does it not say that to, say, the 72 percent of people in my electorate on $40,000 or less a year who will get a meagre tax cut that will be negated by a 2.5 percent increase in GST and by 5.9 percent inflation, which means they will be worse off by 30 to 50 bucks a week? If it is a listening, reformed, reinvented, and now very silent, Government, will it back down on that policy, which constituents in my patch have borne the brunt of? Will it reverse the policy if it finds that the 90-day expansion will put the sword not only into young people but also into others? Will a person in a job who wants to take a promotion to a new job take a risk on a 90-day deal as opposed to a bird in the hand, a permanent job? If that proves to be correct, which it will do, will the Government back down on that? Will it U-turn on that? No. Is it a listening Government? No. Mr Key has not articulated any plan at all. From 70 jobs on a cycleway to a 2025 Taskforce that was dead, buried, assassinated, and nailed to the ground within 24 hours of its recommendations being brought out—

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: And we’re still paying for it!

According to my colleague we are still paying for it. Where is the plan? I ask Kate Wilkinson, who got up and did her usual and told us a few stories here and there about certain people she had talked to who might have supported the 90-day bill, whether she articulated a plan. No, she did not. Did Gerry Brownlee articulate a plan? No. But these people certainly have egg on their faces. It has been a debacle from start to finish. There is only one reason that they backed down and it is that the people of New Zealand revolted against them on that policy.

We are determined to see the number of jobs increase. After the announcement by the Prime Minister, John Key, on the extension of the 90-day employment trial period to all employers, the New Zealand Herald reported that the New Zealand Amalgamated Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, the National Distribution Union, and others are meeting for a war council tomorrow and Friday. The only thing is that that war machine rolling into a nearby town is likely to maim and injure the hard-working New Zealanders whom it thinks it is coming to rescue.

One employer from New Plymouth said this morning about the 90-day trial period for new employees that he spoke about it last week to all his staff, from 18-year-olds to those who have worked there for 20 years, and that 95 percent of them agreed that it was fair and were in favour of it. He said that in tight economic times it is a particularly crucial option. The union bosses’ guns are blazing for just 5 percent of the workforce who agreed with them in that place, and they need to realise that the rest of the workforce is happy because they think it is fair.

💬 Hon Maryan Street: What did you expect them to say, Jonathan?

What about the 5 percent who did not think this measure was fair? They had the courage to speak their convictions, and, obviously, the employer embraced that and enabled it to happen. That is a very good work environment that is very, very open. Another employer said this: “A very good move. It puts the employer and employee on an equal footing with equal rights.” Whether or not members opposite agree with that, the perception out there is that it has been unequal.

Another employer from New Plymouth said that it was a very positive move and another tool in the tool box for employers, who have been on the back foot in this area for ages. The employer also said: “A good employer looks to invest in his employees and does so in good faith, but gets caught when the employee does not deliver on expectations.”

We need to understand that business success is the key to creating more jobs. A fundamental truth that some people do not understand is that with Government employment not growing, and not likely to do so, more jobs for more New Zealanders will come from private sector business. The 90-day trial period is designed to make it easier for businesses to employ those New Zealanders. That is a good and essential thing.

Another employer from New Plymouth says: “I am very encouraged by it.”—members should listen to what he says—“It will give us confidence to recruit more staff.” Another says that he agrees wholeheartedly—

💬 Dr Rajen Prasad: Tell us what the workers say.

I told that member in the very first instance that 95 percent of that large firm agreed with the trial period and said that it was fair.

💬 Dr Rajen Prasad: How many?

It was 95 percent. The member does not want to hear it, but 95 percent of the employees of that firm said that. Another business owner said: “No employer hires to fire.

But it gives smaller employers the added confidence that if they get it wrong, then they are not penalised, and it gives them equal rights with the employee.” Nearly every one of those employers said this morning that they felt this was a fairer deal than they have had to work with in the past. They talked about equal rights and about no longer being on the back foot—equal footing with equal rights—and, as I said in the first instance, one employer said that 95 percent of employees in that firm agreed that it was fair. That is what we want to hear.

National’s employment law package is not about ideological change; it is about moderate change, aimed at rebalancing the system so that it is fair for both employees and employers. I believe in fairness. I believe in justice. I believe in having reasoned dialogue between reasonable people, and I believe that it can build a strong common understanding and goals. We do not want to create or support an us-versus-them environment. I am not anti-union, but, unlike the previous Government, we do not want employees to feel pressured to join a union. We are encouraging communication—reasonable people talking about reasoned ideas—between employees and employers, while ensuring that employees can join, or participate in, unions if they wish to. Sometimes things do not work out. Expectations set and expectations met is what successful work relations is all about.

I want to put the topics canvassed so far in this debate into a wider context. Yesterday the New Zealand Youth Choir returned from a spectacular tour of Singapore, South Korea, China, and Australia, and the tour finished with a spectacular simultaneous broadcast across Australia and New Zealand. Everywhere the choir went, it received the support of packed houses. It showed the massive talent that we have here in New Zealand, and it represented New Zealand with massive pride. Tomorrow the Aspiring Leaders Forum will bring together a group of young people to share their ideas and philosophies on leadership, whether in the fields of politics, the arts, business, or sport. Yet, what was the breaking news this morning? It was “Youths arrested after crime spree”. We are told that yesterday afternoon in my home town of Nelson, the police arrested two rangatahi at Taser-point and gunpoint after having set police dogs out to track them across farmland. It appears that two young people aged 15 and 17 years had gone on a spree from Christchurch to Nelson, stealing cars and evading apprehension.

It seems to me that we have the emphasis all wrong. The crime spree that I think this nation should be focusing on is the moral crime of child poverty. Just a month ago the head of OECD social policy, Dr Monika Queisser, told the Government’s Welfare Working Group that New Zealand was out of step with other countries. In her estimation, high child poverty was the third-biggest issue in New Zealand’s social policy. She noted that 15 percent of New Zealand children live in families with less than half the median income, compared with an OECD average of 12 percent, and that the gap between the material deprivation of children and older people is the biggest in New Zealand out of 27 countries. I ask where the breaking news announcement is that will stem the tide on this utterly unacceptable high rate of child poverty.

It is not just international experts who are telling us this. In a report released this month by the Government’s own watchdog, the Human Rights Commission, we were told that New Zealand needs to take a much stronger stand on child poverty. The Right to an adequate standard of living: focus on the right to social security confirmed that recent policy initiatives show that it is possible to reduce child poverty rates substantially over relatively short periods of time. However, the report challenged the Government to also remember that sustained progress requires continued commitment and specific targeting of those who are the most vulnerable.

Earlier in the year the Race Relations Conciliator stepped into the fray, pointing to the 2010 statistics that one in three Māori and Pacific young people are unemployed, and saying that there will be serious long-term effects. The grim reality of child poverty, the generally poor living conditions for low-income children, and child poverty’s disproportionate impacts on Māori have long been brought to our attention by the Child Poverty Action Group. This group has told us that one in six New Zealand children lives in poverty, that a third of children live in overcrowded conditions, and that we have the highest rate—the highest rate—of youth suicide in the entire OECD.

These are not statistics to celebrate. We must fix a vision in our sights that invests in the promise of prosperity for all children. We must promote success and be proud of the amazing achievements of our young people, such as the achievements of the Youth Choir, the aspiring leaders, the Youth Parliament, or the hundreds and thousands of amazing kids in our communities. But we must also ensure that every child has the right to a fair deal, a decent life.

The Māori Party campaigned on the aspiration of setting a deadline to eliminate child poverty by 2020. We know that this will have to work alongside other subsequent policy developments, such as raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, raising core benefit levels, and extending the in-work payment of Working for Families to all families.

We were thrilled to see that another of our policy goals was shared by this OECD expert, and that is the proposal to have a universal child allowance to tackle child poverty. She observed that the countries in the OECD that have achieved low child poverty—the Nordic countries and France—often have universal child benefits, and she suggested that New Zealand might want to explore this in more detail.

Thirty days ago—as opposed to 29 days ago, as it was yesterday—there was a bit of an event. I will reintroduce the topic of that event and draw some similarities between it and what happened over the last 9 years of what I consider to be some of the best economic times that we have seen and one of the most appalling wastes of time that this country has seen.

The 9 years of the previous Labour Government saw a great move forward in terms of our bank balance, but literally nothing happened. The plaque around the arteries got clogged up and, like my own cardiac event—they call it a cardiac event these days; they do not call it a heart attack—nothing got through. The red corpuscles did not get through to the tissues of this country.

I will do something that has not been done yet in this House, which is to congratulate Gerry Brownlee on a job well done. At least he stuck his neck on the line for his country. He stuck his neck on the line. I support the mining industry in this country; I support it 100 percent. It is the people across the Chamber who do not support our move forward and our looking after our grandchildren and children. That is what the decision is all about. That is what our decisions are based on. Our decisions are based on our children and our grandchildren’s future.

Members on that side will tell us that they have all the answers. Well, if they had all the answers, then we would not be sitting on this side of the Chamber, and they would not be sitting on that side. The fact of the matter is that after 9 long years of good economic times, the country had had a gutsful of the way that Labour had played the game.

I will talk about the whole issue of the 90-day trial period. A long, long time ago, back in the 1980s, I was a union organiser with one of the better unions around—the Northern Clerical Workers Union. Every member of the Northern Clerical Workers Union had to have a trial period. It was written in the national award that there was a trial period for every new employee. Members opposite say that the 90-day trial is just National being anti-union. I will tell members what I am anti: the people who run the unions, who think that it is their God-given right to tell workers what to do. I wonder what Andrew Little’s wage is. I wonder whether it is the wage of a normal, working-class engineer or of a member of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union. I bet members that it is not.

I bet members that some of the union boys whom I used to know—I know I am supposed to be calm, because it was only a month ago that I had a bit of an event. This matter has nothing to do with my health; it has everything to do with this country’s health. That is why at the last election people voted for us to get through the hard times. It always happens. National is put into office during hard times because a National Government is the only one that can get this country through the hard times with forward-looking legislation. We talk about our future; we know our future. We want a brighter and better future for our kids and our grandchildren, and we are certainly not going to get it if we leave it to that lot over there.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.