Employment Relations (Trial Periods) Amendment Bill

Now is not the time to be debating the merits of the trial itself but simply the difference between large and small to medium sized businesses and its application. Had we not introduced the repeal bill, medium businesses, of which there are many, would be disproportionately affected. Medium business are businesses that are neither small nor large and don’t have the budget to have HR departments, as members opposite speak to, so why is it that they should be excluded? This extension bill includes medium business and large businesses and the extension of the 90-day trial is simply to include them, but members opposite are debating the purpose of the 90-day trial in its entirety. It is simply an extension.

So the importance of amending the legislation to extend it to all employers is great, but we are not required to discuss the importance of the 90-day trial itself. We wish to extend 90-day trials to all employers, not just small businesses, and that is what we are here to support. So, with that, I commend this bill to the House.

New Zealand First also rises to support extending the availability of 90-day trials. New Zealand First has always been in favour of these 90-day trials. We think they do add flexibility in the labour market. They do give employers the opportunity to take a punt on an employee that they may not be 100 percent sure on. It does give better opportunities.

What I did want to say, though—really, because this is something that I had something to do with in the last term in Parliament when we were in coalition with the Labour Party—is that we actually fought really hard to keep these 90-day trials for businesses with under 20 workers, which is the issue here at play. For those hearty souls that are watching this morning for the gripping finale of this debate, and had been watching, through to midnight last night, the protestations and the dire predictions and the desperate virtue signallings from the Labour Party, the 90-day trials already exist for businesses with fewer than 20 employees. The Labour Party had three years with an absolute majority to take these mechanisms out but absolutely refused to. So if they are such a travesty to the working New Zealander—those New Zealanders in bakeries and dairies and local cafes are already subject to this legislation or this mechanism. The other thing I would be really tempted to do is a few Official Information Act (OIA) requests.

Were the Green Party lobbying behind the scenes and protesting to their Labour colleagues who had an absolute majority, who they were in confidence and supply with? Were they appealing? Were they appealing? I hope they were—I hope they were. Because the record will show that they, within that governing arrangement, failed to convince their colleagues that this was a travesty and should be repealed. Te Pāti Māori, who, I’m sure, will get up and rail against this in the following speech—what did they do? Did they appeal? Is there OIAs there that would show that sort of course of action from Te Pāti Māori to suggest that they were so concerned about the 90-day trials that they would like to see them repealed.

So New Zealand First see this—and always has—as a very sensible mechanism and balance between employees and employers, and continues to support this bill. Thank you.

A five-minute split call.

Tēnā koe, kia ora. Tēnā tātou. E te Pīka, tēnā rā koe. Mātika ake nei au ki te whakaara i ngā kōrero a te iwi Māori mō tēnei o ngā pire i tēnei pānuitanga tuatoru ōna. Otirā ki ngā pire katoa kua panangia nei i roto i te wā iti, me tā rātou pānga ngau kino nei ki runga i te tuarā o te iwi Māori, tēnei rā te whakatairanga ake. Nō reira ka tau hā, whakatau ko te rangi e tū iho nei. Ka tau hā, whakatau ko te papa e takoto ake nei.

[Yes, thank you Mr Speaker. Greetings, hello. Greetings to all of us. Mr Speaker, thank you. I rise to heighten the opinions of the Māori people about this bill in its third reading. Indeed about all the bills that have been pushed through in a short time, and their impacts that very adversely affect the Māori people, those that are being elevated here. So welcome, welcome the sky that stands above. Welcome, welcome the land that lies here.]

As usual, it is te ao Māori, the Māori people, the tangata whenua of this land, our Pasifika whanaunga, our rangatahi, our whānau hauā who will bear the brunt of this Government’s anti-whānau, anti - Te Tiriti o Waitangi policies and policy-making procedures.

Helen White: Point of order, Mr Speaker. We can’t hear anything and I don’t think there’s a translator, and I am actually very keen to hear the whole speech. So I wondered if there could be an extra time given, and perhaps the speaker given the option of telling us what he said so that we are able to listen.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): All right, we’ll add a minute on, and if the speaker is happy to do his own translation of that, that’s at his own discretion. Are you happy to do that? We’ll add a minute on.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Tēnā tātou. The opening was just as most everyone’s opening was, just a formal way to introduce this kōrero to the Whare.

So kia hoki anō au ki ngā kōrero nei e mea ana. This Government is continuing the age-old colonial practice of treating tangata whenua as second-class citizens in our own country; akin to the treatment that our koroua who went and fought in the Second World War, in Te Hokowhitu a Tū, received when they returned to Aotearoa.

This policy, unequivocally, will make life worse for Māori and anyone else who doesn’t conform to the general stream, the tikanga Pākehā stream, in Aotearoa. It will allow employers to fire their workers with absolute impunity, treating people as products that can be discarded and repurchased every 90 days merely to cut the costs of providing secure employment such as annual leave, training, redundancy. We all know this to be true. It’s clear to me that this side of the Whare has no capacity and, more alarmingly, no will to apply any form of Tiriti analysis across their party’s policies. It’s also glaringly obvious that they have no evidence base of the historical impacts and ramifications of policies like this one on to iwi Māori—and there has been decades of experience to demonstrate it—showing a blatant disregard of the Government’s obligation to provide active protection in all areas, including economic activity, for their Tiriti partner. No regard for mana ōrite in the living standards of whānau.

The fact that they are willing and indeed eager to push this bill through, and many others, in the last two weeks without any consideration or regard to their Tiriti partner—in 2023, 48 years after the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal, whose aspiration was to right the societal imbalance between the partners—is, quite frankly, unacceptable. It’s unacceptable, and I’m 100 percent sure that the recoil from te ao Māori will be swift, it will be determined, and it will be on a scale that Aotearoa has never seen before. And my advice to this side of the Whare—

Carl Bates: Fearmongering.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: My advice to you, e hoa, is to be sure that you’re here when they arrive and that you’re ready to stand up and explain yourself, and I hope that before that time happens, the Government have acquired a clear understanding of what their role and responsibility to Te Tiriti o Waitangi is, what their role and responsibility to the Crown’s Tiriti partner is, and are capable and happy to articulate it, because to be here at this early stage of the game, so willing to show no regard to consult, no commitment to evidence—Māori evidence, any evidence base—no capacity to apply any Tiriti-based analysis across these policies, if this is their starting point, then it’s going to be a long three years indeed for them.

Nō reira ka hoki atu ahau ki te whakapūrua i te moko o Te Pāti Māori e mea nei, e mea ake ana ki a koutou: mā te iwi anō te iwi Māori e whakaora. Kua roa ia e tahuri kanohi mai ki tēnei o ngā Whare me te whakawhiwhi ki ngā hua, kore, kore, rawa kore. Kore rawa atu! Tēnei o ngā Whare me ōna māngai kīhai i āhei ki te whakahua i te kupu Māori tika, ki te kawe i te reo Māori kia tika, ki te hiki ake i te hoka taringa kia whakarongo ki ngā kōrero Māori ka tae ki tēnei Whare. Me taku mōhio, me te whakahau ki a koutou, ka ākina ō koutou taringa ki te reo Māori ao te pō, pō te ao, toru tau, pau te kaha.

[So I will return to emphasise what Te Pāti Māori is saying, saying to all of you: the Māori people will restore the Māori people to health. For a long time, they have been turning their faces to this House to receive some benefit, nothing, nothing, destitution. Absolutely nothing! This House and its representatives that have not the ability to correctly pronounce Māori words, to accurately convey the Māori language, to raise the earpiece to listen to the Māori statements that come to this House. And I realise, and I urge you, your ears will continue to be assaulted by the Māori language all day, all night, for three years, to the limits of my strength.]

Nō reira, I reiterate: Te Pāti Māori vehemently reject and oppose this bill, this anti-worker, anti-whānau, anti-mokopuna, anti - Te Tiriti o Waitangi bill. Tēnā tātou.

Malo le soifua manuia i lau afioga le Taʻitaʻi fono. Greetings, Mr Speaker. I’m really excited this morning, not about this bill but definitely about this being my first contribution to the House. I can see that my friends over the hall there are very excited too, so I’m going to enjoy the next five minutes. Sir, congratulations to you, again, for being reappointed to your role in the Speaker’s Chair.

Today I think we begin the journey to nowhere. This being my first contribution to the House, I was thinking, “I’m so excited about speaking to the House.” I came here thinking, “Wow, I’m standing for Te Pāti Kākāriki because we can make a difference. We’re going to stand up for workers, we’re going to stand up for businesses too.”, but what have we got? What have we got? We’ve got the reintroduction of these 90-day bills that do nothing for our young people, that take away the aspirations of our young people.

These are the people who went out and said, “We’re about aspirations; we’re about a future.” A few years ago, they were talking about a brighter future, and look at where they’ve got us. Absolutely nowhere. Today, we’re back in the same spot where we’re telling our young people there is no future because you’re always going to be on trial. This sounds like your corrections policy.

You see, what we’ve got to do is stand up for our young people. I used to work at the University of Auckland. We used to say it was New Zealand’s premier university, great university, and where we graduated with my friends here, sitting to my left—to my left; hear the beauty of that; to my left. One of the things we used to do—my role was to go out into predominantly low-decile schools and encourage young people to think about the world of work, that beyond school they’d be able to go to work and earn money and support their families, eh? But now they’re always going to be, according to the Minister, who spoke last night and said, “Well, they might not tick all the boxes.” Oh my goodness, imagine—imagine—ticking nine of the 10 boxes and then after 90 days they say, “Na, na, na, get out. We want someone with the 10th.” Goodness gracious me! What kind of theory is that? That’s not going to help anybody. This is giving our young people, our future, absolutely no assurance whatsoever that there is a future for them in work. You’re not giving us the brighter future; this is dark and dim and harsh and horrible.

I encourage you to look in the mirror. [Interruption] I know you’re getting excited. I know you’re getting excited. So am I, because your contributions are not adding to the future of our young people. In fact, you’re stealing our future. The Grinch of Christmas has arrived, eh? The Grinch of Christmas has arrived, and they’re all looking at me now thinking, “If only I chose to stand for the Green Party”, rather than where you are today, taking away our hope. Let’s see what Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) had to say, because you’re so driven by evidence! I can see it; I can see it right now: you’re driven by evidence! Let’s see what MBIE says. “We consider that the main impacts”—and we’ve heard this before, so I’ve got to reiterate it, because I don’t think people are hearing; I don’t think people are really opening their minds to this discussion.

So I’m going to invite you just to pause for a moment. Open your minds. Open your hearts to the young people you’re telling today that there’s no future and work for them. “We consider,” says MBIE, “that the main impacts of the 90-day trial policy are perceived insecurity for employees who are on a trial period and reduced costs for employers that choose to dismiss”—they choose to dismiss—“an employee on a trial period.” Is this the future you want? Shame! “We consider”, says MBIE—this is the department you’re about to gut—“We consider”—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Mr Collins. Very liberal use of the word “you”. You are speaking through the Chair and through the Chair to whoever you are addressing.

FA’ANĀNĀ EFESO COLLINS: My friends opposing me, consider this: “We consider”, say MBIE—and I apologise for that, Mr Speaker—“that smaller employers are more likely to benefit from trial periods because they are less able to absorb the costs of a poor match or dismissal. In comparison, larger employers can be … equipped to manage any dismissal processes and absorb [those] costs. We consider that the option to extend trial periods to employers with fewer than 100 employees may lead to greater uncertainty than … other options.” This is deplorable. It’s deplorable because we’re taking away people’s ability to be able to negotiate and say, “This is what I want.” Instead, what we’re going to do is create fear, and that’s not the future that we want, so I do not commend this, because it is nothing but hopeless and poor and terribly thought through. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

This is a great Christmas. We go into Christmas this year with a Government that is for all New Zealanders—employers and employees—a Government that believes in providing opportunities for businesses to grow and create economic growth, to have the confidence that it is the right time to take on another an employee, and to employees to put their best foot forward.

I look forward to seeing the success and the opportunities provided to both employers and employees at both the Whanganui Regional Business Awards in 2024 and at the 2025 Te Manu Atatū Maōri Business Awards, because this bill supports both, and I commend this bill, the Employment Relations (Trial Periods) Amendment Bill to the House.

On the first day of Christmas, the far-right race-baiting Government gave to me a kick in the guts to the workers. We’re making union-busting bosses jolly. They are a disgrace—they are a disgrace. It was lovely to hear Efeso Collins—beautiful. We had high hopes for him but he swapped sides, but kei te pai. We had high hopes for him.

The question’s got to be asked today: what was the price here? What was the price in terms of this legislation? Well, let’s kill 5,000 more people a year in terms of the smoke-free legislation. That stands out.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Surprise, surprise!

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No, that’s a fact. Dr Duncan Webb knows. We’ll kill 5,000 more people to keep our rich mates happy so we can give our rich mates their tax cuts, yes. That is the price in terms of this legislation. Oh, and we’ll beat the Māoris. We’ll kick all the Māoris out, but we’ve got two or three with us so—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Mr Jackson, if you’re going to be provocative, be provocative on the bill we’re talking about.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Thank you, Mr Speaker, but it’s all related, Mr Speaker. This anti-worker agenda has already been tried by National and ACT—already been tried with their 90-day trials. And the research from 2016 commissioned by Treasury clearly states—we’ve said this several times—that there’s no evidence that the ability to use trial periods significantly increases firms’ overall hiring and no evidence that the policy increased the probability that a new hire by a firm was a disadvantaged job seeker.

There you go. How many times has our great spokesperson Camilla Belich said this? How many times do you have to get it through their thick heads? I say that with all respect, of course. What did the Treasury commissioned research find? No evidence that the ability to use trial periods significantly increases firms’ overall hiring. Adding to that, the Treasury commissioned research into National and ACT’s previous 90-day trials concluded that the main benefit of the 90-day trial policy was a decrease in dismissal costs for firms while many employees faced increased uncertainty about their job security for three months after being hired.

So this law is not about helping workers; it’s about helping big business exploit those workers. That’s what this is about. These are the friends of the National Party. These are the friends of the ACT Party. They want to just placate them, look after them, and, sadly, so many of these people have forgotten their roots. I look across at the Māori members; they’re a disgrace to Māoridom—there’s no doubt about it. They sit there. They will be too scared to go back to their tribes this Christmas. They will be too scared because their tribes will tell them to get lost, like they said to David Seymour. He’s been kicked out. OK, I’ll come back to the bill—OK, Mr Speaker.

So the employment law that this new far-right race-baiting Government are ramming through under urgency, with no public submissions, helps abuse workers for the benefit of bad bosses. We are open to small business under 19 workers having this option, but giant companies will only exploit this law and use it to intimidate and bully workers so that they can pay their fees to the National Party. This is a fact. This is an undeniable fact. The members are always right. FIRST Union general secretary Dennis Maga knows this legislation—good man; good union fighter—will drive wages down and increase unemployment and underemployment. Dennis says putting an extreme libertarian ACT Minister—this is what he said. Have a listen. I’m glad you’re listening. He said that putting an extreme libertarian ACT Minister in charge of workplace relations and safety is like putting a vampire in charge of a country’s emergency blood supply, which is very unfair, of course, because it suggests Minister Brooke van Velden has a heart, and this law-bashing law is clearly the work of a heartless person.

Todd Stephenson: That’s unparliamentary, mate.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Ah, shush up, you ACT idiots. OK, this isn’t employment law; it’s extremism—the extremism of the ACT Party, the extremism of New Zealand First, and, sadly, the deterioration and extremism of a National Party who have betrayed their people and succumbed to David Seymour and Winston Peters.

It’s telling that this new legislation, this new far-right race-baiting Government’s attempt, is actually going to hurt ordinary people, going to hurt workers. Enabling bad bosses to cause injustice doesn’t build up a country; it tears it down.

That’s why I’m sad, like good National people like Jim Bolger, who found his roots and principles with the Labour Party; Jenny Shipley, who joins us at Waitangi every year. They’re embarrassed by this lot on the other side.

Cameron Brewer: Rubbish!

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No, no, they are. You need to ring Jenny up. Well, I don’t know if she told me this but I know she’s going to tell me this one day.

Labour, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori, we all look after the many. See, we’re all in coalition now, collaboration. Even the Māori Party says some nice things about us sometimes, you know. We’re here to look after the few and not the many. But here’s the point, the moment a Labour-led Government is returned in 2026, we will change this law—we will change this law. Oh, that’s right. Winston will have a meltdown by then. I say again, many Kiwis are shocked by the extremism of this new Government, and this ongoing attack on workers’ rights will not go unchallenged. This is just the start. We’re just being all nice now.

But, listen, you wait till workers and Māori hit the streets. Voters supposedly wanted stability in the form of a National, ACT, and New Zealand First Government. But what they’re getting is an extremist agenda in terms of bashing workers, renters, beneficiaries, the environment, and the Māori nation. This isn’t a Government; it’s a right-wing revenge fantasy. National are eroding workers’ rights and this policy is focused on benefiting employers rather than employees, giving them more power over our average worker. It’s another example of this new Government’s aversion to evidence-based policy, which has been well traversed particularly by our legal team over here, led by Camilla Belich over here, Helen White, Rachel, Arena Williams. They’ve been so articulate in terms of making it clear. Are we interested in evidence-based policy or do we just create policy for our rich mates in the ACT Party, New Zealand First, and National?

That’s what this is about. During a cost of living crisis, workers need more protections and better job security, not less. This policy will reduce workers’ sense of job security. This exacerbates the inherent imbalance of power in the employment relationship and makes it harder for workers to secure wages. Together with the Government’s other employment relations reform, this will depress wages and keep New Zealanders locked into low wages. It does nothing to help workers with the cost of living, which is something this other lot has been waffling on about over the last year or two.

Lower job security will particularly impact Māori, women, Pasifika, workers. It just goes on and on. Along with the fair pay changes, it’s one of the worst pieces of legislation that’s ever hit our community. It focuses on benefiting employers and the rich mates of the National Party. The sad thing is, given that New Zealand already has one of the most relaxed sets of labour laws in the developed world, 90-day trials will put Kiwi workers at another serious disadvantage.

Mr Speaker, I could go on and on, of course, as you well know, but in this last 30 seconds I want to wish everybody a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. You know, even though it’s been a terrible last couple of weeks from the evil Government, I do want to wish them and their whānau all the very best. This is what it’s all about. We get up, we contest, we want to, you know, strangle each other, and then we ended up having a beer with some of them last night. So I want to say to them, ngā mihi ki a koutou. Meri Kirihimete me ngā mihi o te Tau Hou ki a tātou katoa. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You could only but speculate about what they’ve had for breakfast over on the other side of the House there this morning. Perhaps I could actually return to speaking about the Employment Relations (Trial Periods) Amendment Bill. I reiterate that this bill is about creating opportunities—opportunities for both employers and employees, including those that have or have had challenges—providing an opportunity for employment; an opportunity to have purpose; an opportunity for those that may not have the skills, may not have the experience, but want to be given the chance to learn. This bill provides exactly that. Therefore, I’m pleased to support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a short call on what is a terrible piece of legislation, the Employment Relations (Trial Periods) Amendment Bill. Not only is it a terrible piece of legislation but it is terrible that we are considering this under urgency and without the scrutiny of a select committee.

During the committee stage last night, there were a significant number of questions, many of which were very relevant, particularly those raised by me and my colleague Camilla Belich about the process around an unfair dismissal. I have a prediction, which is that employers will go ahead and use these 90-day trials just like they did the last time it was available to all employers, and they will get it wrong. They will get that process wrong. It’s quite interesting because they’re heckling over there and saying, “Oh, that’s what they’ll say.” It’s actually what happened last time under the exact same law. So just go and look at the Employment Relations Authority decisions website and you’ll find all the examples.

So I predict that we will see employers use it. They will get it wrong, and they will ultimately pay a price. And the winners, with apologies to colleagues on both sides of the House, in all of this will be lawyers. The winners will be lawyers because employers will get it wrong, people will take a case, and we will end up in the same situation we were in last time. It’s all to do with the fact that we didn’t take the proper amount of time to have a scrutiny period through a select committee process.

In many of the contributions we made, we came back to the real impact that this law has on real working people, and I want to reflect on the contribution made by my colleague Jan Tinetti, which was a far worse example than the example I used from my family member. But I will bring that back again, because my family member was dismissed under a 90-day trial. It happened in the most humiliating of circumstances. He was on day 88 or 89. He had had no issues raised with him. He was taken into the middle of a busy cafe and told to take his knives and leave. He was in his early 20s. That had a real issue.

We talk about mental health a lot in this House and in this country. He ended up in a significant mental health state for a long time—years. The big issue for him in that situation was we had people suggesting that people should just ask their employer why they were sacked, but people fundamentally do not understand the power imbalance in the employment relationship. It just goes to show that people have not actually put themselves in the shoes of other people.

It was always very interesting—and there are going to be heckles, but whatever—when I worked for a union that one of the things that new managers in supermarkets would often say to me is, “Why did that person not come and talk to me about this thing they were concerned about?” But the very title “manager” meant that a 19-year-old was actually scared of that person. They were scared of that person with the title “manager” who was in their 40s or 50s. We have to take ourselves back to when we were kids and we thought, “Oh, my goodness!” Going to the manager to raise an issue freaked the heck out of me—I mean, my father was a chief executive, and he used to freak the heck out of me when I worked for him briefly. We need to think about these things. There is, as I said in the House last night, in the object of the Act, not a perceived but a very real inherent power imbalance.

I believe that this law is inconsistent with the object of the Act, and I’d actually love to see someone take a case on that matter. It would be very interesting to see if they actually said this law is inconsistent with the object of the Act, because there is no process involved.

Another prediction that was made last night, which I thought was a very good prediction, is that electorate MPs are going to have people coming in who’ve been sacked under these situations, and I as an electorate MP had a number of people come to me about employment matters. It’s a regular type of constituency issue that you’re faced with. So I’ll be very interested to hear what electorate MPs will do when someone comes in and says, “On day 89, I was sacked. I’d been turning up to work on time. I was sacked, and the next day they went and hired someone else because they didn’t want to continue”—

Carl Bates: I’ll meet with them, I’ll engage them—I’ll do my job.

RACHEL BOYACK: Well, good. I hope you’ll help them, and I hope that you’ll properly consider repealing this terrible law that will harm New Zealand workers—our most vulnerable workers—and I do not commend this bill to the House.

I support this bill, the Employment Relations (Trial Periods) Amendment Bill, because this bill does support the workers. The other side of the House talks a lot about the workers, but this bill supports businesses and workers, and I’ll give you an example. I’m the MP for Tukituki. In Tukituki, we are the powerhouse of New Zealand horticulture. Horticulture provides thousands and thousands of jobs, thousands and thousands of opportunities, and this bill is an opportunity to not only grow our economy; it creates opportunities for workers. It is a win-win, and we believe it supports the workers and businesses. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I too was an employment lawyer for 25 years and I would agree with my colleague that what you’ll see out of this is actually a real issue of disconnect between the object of the principal Act, which recognises the inherent inequality of power between an employer and employee, and the law that is about to be passed in this country, the Employment Relations (Trial Periods) Amendment Bill.

Now, I was listening to a woman recently called Claudia Goldin—she won the Nobel Prize for her work on the pay gap—and it was a very interesting discussion. I’d urge you to look at that work if you really want to work on bettering the lot of New Zealanders. I’d love it if the Government MPs would actually look at that work, because it’s science based. It’s all based on her work as an economist. She has looked at the things that make a difference in people’s lives, and she’s done it quite dispassionately. She said that there was a difference between people who look at the world as historians and people who look at it as economists. I did a history degree, and so I look at the problem before us and the piece of legislation before us partly through a historic lens. The reason she says that that’s different is she says the economists look at things in terms of markets and that the historians look at things in terms of power imbalance, which is interesting because it comes up in this situation. So I look at the world differently from many people in this room who would look at it in the market view. But the issue with markets, which is effectively systems, is that this doesn’t really hold up under either form of scrutiny, in my opinion, and I want to explain why.

The historic lens that I take to this is that I’ve always been aware that there are major issues with power imbalance, and I can see that in the work I’ve done as an employment lawyer. Really, in the early days, I was involved just as we had awards, etc., and we had some form of collective representation. Then the world changed and we ended up in the Employment Contracts Act, where that was stripped away completely and people were treated in an atomised way. I worked under that and I found it really, really hard, because in these situations where you put somebody into a position where they have very little power, it’s a very sunless world.

We changed to an Act which recognised for the first time that power imbalance. That was the Employment Relations Act, with part of that Act about objectives there fair and square before us, holding us to account in terms of making sure that the things we did around employment—because employment is so important to the bread and butter of people’s lives—were fair, were actually reasonable, and took into account the nature of human beings, which is that there are power imbalances.

I saw a change to trials for groups under 20, and I thought, “OK, I can live with this.”, because what you’ve got in that situation is smaller employers who also are in a situation of less power than the big businesses. But this is a change that is all about giving the powerful more power. That’s what, effectively, the Government are doing today, taking our biggest entities, taking our big powerful institutions, and making them bigger. And we’re making the workers who work in those situations, who’ve just begun their employment, much smaller and more vulnerable. That is what we are doing today.

I want to explain how that works at a human level. I gave an example earlier in my speeches, and I want to give you another one. Take a childcare worker. Take a childcare worker living in Mount Albert who has her kid at Kōwhai Intermediate, another one at Mount Albert Grammar, who’s looking to this Government for a little bit of relief. They’re renting and they’re not earning a great deal of money. They might be earning $70,000; that’s not unreasonable. This Government promised them an easier run. It promised them in tough times they would get a tax cut and they would be better off. What they face instead is a situation where if they’re working for a childcare company and now they move across to one of the big corporate childcare companies, they’re likely to go on a trial.

Now, we know that women’s pay has been below men’s and we know it’s been that way for a while. Surely a Government would try and make it better. But that woman’s going to be hesitant to move, isn’t she? Because she’s now got further cost of living increases because her kids can’t go into childcare. If she’s got an under-2-year-old, she’s not going to get it. She’s not going to get that free childcare subsidy and she’s not going to get all the half-price transport, which would have been possible for her children at Kōwhai and at Mount Albert Grammar. That’s gone and instead she’s got a decision to make: does she move to that job that pays a little bit more at the big corporate childcare centre? Does she do it? Because if she does it, she’ll be put on a trial period.

Now, I asked the Minister yesterday whether—as a thought she had had—perhaps we should make sure that such people are not constrained at the other end of the trial period by something called a restraint of trade—something I’ve seen a lot. I’ve seen it a lot with low-paid workers and I know it happens, because the evidence tells us it happens, and it happens to childcare workers. It happens to people like that. They can’t just go and work down the road if they start with one of the big childcare companies because they’re restrained.

I asked the Minister to consider an amendment on that, but no. No, no; apparently that’s an entirely different thing and doesn’t count. If we had been in a select committee process, I would have raised that, as would other people, and we would have ended up in a situation where perhaps we would have ended up with a little bit more balance. But there is no balance here, because now this woman will be in a position where she has to decide: does she go to the new job at $5 extra, which will feed her kids and pay for the bus fare and maybe pay for the childcare of her 2-year-old? Will she do that or will she not take that opportunity for career advancement? Will she stay where she is on less money, because that’s what she’s got to do, isn’t it? She is not—let’s bust this myth once for all—somebody who will be frightening to an employer and they’ll have to take a chance. But is it possible they’ll put her on the trial? Absolutely, it’s possible. She will be put in the most precarious situation possible.

Now, if something goes wrong in that time—and I raise the issue of maybe her kids getting sick. We know how important it is to the community that people feel secure enough that they’re not going to get sacked if their kids are sick. But say she has a run of bad luck and those children get sick and she ends up in a situation with her employer who is concerned. They’re not going to tell her. What they’re going to do is what human nature does. People in power, they don’t engage in that situation. They tend to withdraw. They tend not to tell the childcare worker who is in that situation. They tend to just disengage. So she spends three months sweating it, three months worrying about it, and at the end of it, just before the three months are up—because you take your time if you’ve got the power on your side, don’t you, and you do it when it suits you—she’s going to get terminated from her employment. Who is going to end up paying the bill? Because she’ll be without work, and that’ll be next Christmas, won’t it? Thank you for that; happy Christmas!

At that stage, she will end up going to—guess who? To the very people that you’re punishing people for going there. She will end up on a benefit. Guess who pays those benefits? We do. And guess who will be getting the profit from the switch in staff? The big Kindercare or the big organisation that sacked her. They will be pocketing the money. That money won’t be with New Zealanders. That money will be—sure as eggs—overseas. And guess who will have paid for it? The mugs in the Government will have made the taxpayer pay for it.

We can talk about competition, we can talk about competence, but if we do not scrutinise, if we do not scrutinise new law, if we do not put our thinking caps on, if we do not read the latest, people, if we do not take advice—we are just arrogant and soulless if we do that. And if we do that, we will end up in deep trouble in this country. We will end up with people who hurt. We will end up with people who are powerless and disengaged. Do you know where this starts? With a lack of capacity to empathise. There were some disturbing signs on the other side that some people think that this would never happen to them. Well, it will happen to your children. I do not commend this bill to the House.

Well, it’s a great privilege here to take the last call on this great bill, the Employment Relations (Trial Periods) Amendment Bill, which has given a great Christmas present to all the business owners of New Zealand, where finally now they are going to have the opportunity to have great relationships with all their employees. One of the things that’s really frustrated me as I’ve been sitting here listening to the other side of the House is they demonise employers like we’re the devil incarnate. Well, actually good employers build good businesses and they build them because they employ good people and they look after them.

I’m very fortunate to be in a position here to be representing the people of Northland. One of the reasons I can do that is because I’ve got some very good staff that look after me and do a great job looking after my business and building the economy of this country, and that’s what enabled me to do this job, and I look forward to doing it. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.