Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill

E te Kaikōrero Matua, tēnā koe. E ngā rangatira o te Whare, ngā mema o tēnā rōpū, o tēnā rōpū, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. To the leaders of the House and to the members of each party, acknowledgments to you and each of us all collectively.]

I move, That the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to consider the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill. This bill intends to give greater protection to children in their working lives. It does this by ensuring that children aged 16 or under who have paid work outside the home will be regarded as employees. This does not cover personal, domestic, or household work. It is intended to cover the commercial employment and contractual engagement of children in work. It is the simplest step we can take to improve the safety and working conditions of children.

Our country has a tradition of part-time work for children. Many of us entered the workforce while we were still at school through holiday or after-school jobs. Many New Zealanders regard children’s work as a rite of passage—a harmless way to spend a few hours gaining a work ethic and some skills while earning a little pocket money. This may be how it has been in the past. It may be how we experienced work as a child ourselves, but we cannot take for granted that this is how working children today are experiencing employment.

On a regular basis, children’s work problems and issues hit our headlines. Fair Go earlier this year revealed stories of child leaflet delivery workers who had their pay rates cut without notice or negotiation. The Catholic agency Caritas has reported children experiencing potentially serious injuries, harassment, and poor treatment at work in two surveys of children’s work experiences.

ACC figures show that there are children aged 9 years or under who have received compensation for work-related injuries. In 2004 an Otago University report showed that on average there was one work-related child fatality each year between 1985 and 1998. In another study conducted by the Department of Labour in 2007 over 3,000 Taranaki secondary school students were interviewed by health and safety inspector Jo-Ann Pugh, representing 46 percent of students in Taranaki at the time. Twenty percent of the students said that they had experienced a work injury or illness. In addition, 88 percent of these young workers reported having been asked to do something at work that they considered unsafe and yet they went on to do it anyway. Over half of the young workers in this study did not recall receiving any health and safety information from their employers.

New Zealand has comprehensive health and safety legislation that requires both employers and employees to identify hazards and take action to prevent or minimise them. It requires employers to give health and safety information and training to their employees. Many people assume that health and safety regulations cover all workers, including children. Like me, the members of this House will be shocked to learn that some industries that depend on the labour of children in fact carry no responsibility for their health and safety. That is because they employ children as self-employed contractors, not employees.

Take this example from the contract between a large advertising leaflet distribution company and a 12-year-old: “The parties acknowledge that this agreement is entered into by both parties on the basis that the Deliverer is an independent Contractor, and that the Deliverer is not an agent or employee of the Company.” Another example from a different delivery company’s contract with a 14-year-old says: “You are employed … under a contract for services, which means that you are an independent contractor. This contract does not therefore create an employment relationship between you and [Company].”

Employing children as contractors absolves employers of obligations they would otherwise have, including responsibility for health and safety. It is the reason that we get those Fair Go stories of children whose pay and working conditions are changed without their consent. It is probably one of the reasons that so many of the school kids in the Taranaki study were not given information about health and safety by their employers. If the children were regarded as contractors, their employers simply did not have any obligation to tell them anything. I do not believe that contracting for services was ever intended to cover the employment relationships of our youngest and most vulnerable workers. They deserve the greatest protection, not the least.

When we look at a child’s employment agreement we ought to see the best care and attention paid to their well-being, not the most distant and casual form of commercial relationship. It is actually the youngest of New Zealand’s child workers who are most likely to be working as contractors and in unsupervised situations. The stories given to Caritas have shown that 10 to 13-year-olds employed outside the home are more likely to be working as delivery workers, while older children are more likely to be working in larger workplaces, such as in retail and fast-food outlets.

We have heard many words spoken this year about the protection of vulnerable children. Although many New Zealand children grow up in loving and protective families, we all know that some children do not. They deserve and require the protection of the State and the wider community. But children are not only vulnerable in their homes. New Zealand children may be vulnerable in their workplaces. Many New Zealand children are well looked after at work and have good experiences to report about their employment, and that is great. But there are other children who are not well looked after and have had bad experiences at work. They deserve greater protection.

Some of the responsibility for that protection lies with their parents, who are the first defenders of their children’s rights. There are many parents who wish their children to work but, at the same time, feel very unhappy about their children’s working conditions and feel powerless to change them. They feel there is nothing that they can do when faced with a take it or leave it contract. We need to give parents greater power to influence their children’s conditions of work. This means there needs to be an employment relationship that allows for the negotiation of conditions that are safe and suitable.

But the responsibility for protection of children at work also lies with their employers. Businesses whose profits depend on the work of children should have a very high moral responsibility for the children they employ. Responsibility for protecting children at work also lies with those charged with the legal framework and rules and regulations around the employment of children. That means that this House must ensure that labour legislation adequately protects our most vulnerable workers.

The children who are doing these jobs are not all doing it because they are saving for a university education or kids’ luxury items like iPads or smart phones. No, many of these kids are helping out with bread and milk money or contributing to their school camps. Things are tough on ordinary Kiwi families, and some of our children are growing up before their time. These children also miss out on other things. Being on the street delivering means they are not playing on the sports fields, and they are missing out on kapahaka, poly club, or the choir. They are missing out on the social benefits that schools and communities give to our children.

Children are our taonga. Who of us in Parliament takes for granted that all children are entirely safe in their homes? In the aftermath of Pike River, who of us in Parliament takes for granted that all workers are safe in their workplaces? Why, then, should we take for granted the safety of children who work? In doing research for this bill I went back to look at some of those old Victorian era labour protection laws—and there were none. Talk about an era of sweat houses and child exploitation! Someone came up with a law that stopped adults sending 7-year-old boys up chimneys to clean, and made the legal age 9 years. Incredible! There were 9-year-old boys and girls squeezing up chimneys to put fires out. Surprisingly, very little has changed since those times. This House has more aroha than that. Surely, let our kids be kids—let our kids be kids. If they want to work after school, then good on them. But let us not turn our kids into small business units responsible for sub-contracting, supplying their own equipment, ACC levies, and tax. I know adults who are in business who struggle with this sort of paperwork.

Children are the most vulnerable of workers and deserve safe and secure working conditions. Ensuring that children are regarded as employees is a simple but real step we could take to improve the working lives of New Zealand children. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora tātou.

The only good thing out of that speech was that that member Rino Tirikatene is going to send the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. But I did like that he said he had researched it. I am pretty sure he got it pulled out of the ballot, and the day it was pulled out he had to work out what he actually had put in.

The thing is that this bill is an attack on the fundamental ability of people to make decisions in their own life. It is democracy being attacked by the Labour Party again. It is the Labour Party trying to tell people how to live their lives. This bill is the thin end of the wedge, because the reality is that the Labour Party members want to make all New Zealanders employees. They do not want any contractors in the New Zealand economy. They want only employees, and this bill is the first step to achieving that. The Labour Party members are using young people as the first step in that, saying “Oh, we are looking after the interests of young people. We have to do this.” Rubbish! The Labour Party has got an agenda to make everybody employees, and this bill is just the first step in that agenda. How dare you use young people in that way!

I remember this afternoon we sat in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and we had the Labour Party members saying “We cannot have any difference in the wage rates paid to young people. Can’t do that. Can’t do that.” But now in this House they want to have different contracts for young people so that they cannot be in contractual service but have to be in employment. One of the fundamentals of the society that we live in is freedom—freedom of choice, democracy, and the freedom for individuals to make choices about the arrangements they enter into. How dare the Labour Party take away the freedom of our young people! What gives those members the right to take away that freedom from young people in this country as people going forward?

The Labour Party speech made an assumption. It assumed that if you are in a contractual relationship, you are in a worse position for health and safety than if you were in an employment arrangement. That is not the case. It is not the case. There are accidents that happen in all workplaces. We need to make sure that all workplaces are as safe as possible. You cannot make assumptions like that in this House and then try to take away the freedom of our young people as a result of that.

We also need to look at the practicality of this. Young people often need to be in jobs that are outside their school hours, at times they can accommodate with their own timing. Being under a contractual basis is normally the easiest way to achieve that. It is the flexibility that is important for the young person, and Labour members are taking that away. They are denying young people jobs and opportunities. They are denying the future paper boys and paper girls of New Zealand the chance to deliver that paper, and that is a shame on the Labour Party. And it is not only for the really young. It is for 16-year-olds as well—16 and under. So a 16-year-old who may want to go farming, who may want to go and become a contract milker, cannot become a contract milker in New Zealand. Under the Labour Party, they have to be an employee. You are dumbing down the workforce of New Zealand just for the purposes of Labour Party control, and that is not in the best interests of this country.

I am disappointed that this is the first bill that this member Rino Tirikatene has brought forward. I had more hope that he would have come through with a bigger bill that was in the interests of his communities, rather than a fanciful approach of the Labour Party trying to test the waters with what it wants to do around employee contracts. It is a shame that he is being used by the Labour Party, and it is a shame that that party is using young people in this way. The National Government will not do that. We believe in the freedom of our people, we believe in the freedom of our young people, and we believe that they should have a choice of how they arrange their employment relations, whether as an employee or as a contractor. Thank you.

We move to 5-minute calls.

First of all, I want to acknowledge the Catholic Social Services agency, which has done a lot of the background work on this. To be honest with you, I found that member David Bennett’s contribution embarrassing—extremely embarrassing—if not to say ignorant, because this is—

💬 Phil Twyford: He’s a fellow member of the committee.

Yeah, he is a fellow member of our Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—when you think of the opportunity that we would have had to examine what is a really, really important issue. New Zealand is a country that prides itself on how we treat our most vulnerable, and our most vulnerable are our children. Our children under current labour laws have very little protection. They have no minimum wage, and so some of the work that was done by Fair Go, for example, found that some of these children are being paid as little as 25c an hour. I want to hear from the National members whether they think 25c an hour is fair.

The most ridiculous thing about the current law is that young children can be employed as contractors, which means essentially that they are being told that they have their own businesses. So they set up their own businesses where they have to pay ACC levies and where they have to pay tax. [Interruption] Yes, and they can employ subcontractors. We are talking about children who are as young as 10. I want the National members to get on their feet and tell me that children as young as 10, 11, or 12 are capable of working—

💬 Hon Member: Do you think they’re not capable?

Mr Speaker, I would like to be heard, if I could, please. I am sorry if the National members are going to demonstrate their ignorance in that way. Of course young children are capable, but they are not capable of negotiating with adults on the basis of an equal footing in an arrangement that is a commercial arrangement, and that is what this bill is about. It is about protecting our children.

New Zealand has signed up to international child labour conventions, but we have a child labour problem in New Zealand. In fact, we have been criticised for that not only under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child but also by the International Labour Organization. Also at the International Labour Organization we have been repeatedly criticised for doing nothing about children’s employment.

As I said, great research has been done on this by Caritas. There has been great research done on this by the Department of Labour. As I said at the beginning, it is simply ridiculous to have a law, to have a situation, whereby our children are expected to be engaged as independent contractors in their own business, to be paid 25c an hour, and to be responsible for their own health and safety, responsible for contracting, and responsible for their own ACC. It is a ridiculous situation and I am ashamed to be in a country where we have a Government that is so arrogant and smug about the situation that it thinks it can sit there and mock, when we have people in the gallery who have done serious work on this issue, who have studied it for years. They have studied it for years, and yet the National members want to mock and not take it seriously. I feel very, very ashamed, actually, to be in this debate after my colleague Rino Tirikatene presented such a very, very good case.

I want to give just one other example, if I may, about what sort of contracts kids of 10, 11, and 12 are signing up to. Here is one: “The Contractor is an independent contractor and as such is free (in addition to the Contractor’s freedom to engage sub-contractors and others to use carrying equipment …) to select the Contractor’s own means and methods of performing the services … The Contractor shall bear all costs and expenses incurred by the Contractor in connection with the performance of the services.” That is a contract for a 10-year-old. How shameful is that?

As I said, I am ashamed to be in a Parliament where we have a Government that does not care about child labour and that is not prepared to support a simple measure like this, which would examine the exploitation of children being employed as independent contractors and employed on 25c an hour—shame on the Government.

Mr Speaker—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Talking about child labour!

That guy should go back to watching movies—he is better employed in that area. It never fails to amaze me how many anti-worker provisions Labour can come up with and bring to this House. I say they are anti-worker provisions because they will make it far more difficult for people aged 16 years and under to go out there and get work. The Labour Party wants to change the definition so that it becomes almost impossible for someone under the age of 16 to be employed as an independent contractor.

I would like to refer to this bill, the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill, as an attack on the paper boys out there. It is an attack on the paper boys out there, because it will mean that it will be far more difficult to employ paper boys. It will mean that paper boys or paper girls around the country who are out there delivering the papers, delivering the junk mail, and who are actually happy to earn a bit of money will be deemed to be employees. They will have to be subject to all the provisions of the Employment Relations Act, and that will make it far more difficult for them to be employed.

We know that Labour likes to do things that cost jobs, and this is one of those things that will cost jobs for those people out there aged 16 or under who are currently working as independent contractors. They will be joining the 13,000 people whom we helped to get a job and who will no longer have a job when Labour changes the 90-day law. They will be joining the 6,000 people who will be out of a job when the $15 minimum wage they want to bring in comes in.

💬 Darien Fenton: Yay!

Darien Fenton is going “Yay!” because people will be losing jobs. That is what she actually did. People will be losing jobs under the employment relations framework that Labour wants to bring in, and Darien Fenton is saying “Yay!” about it. Darien Fenton says “Yay!” because paper boys out there, any person aged 16 or under who is an independent contractor, will end up losing their job under this legislation. That is the face of employment relations in the Labour Party.

I would like to refer the House to the current section 6 in the Employment Relations Act, because I think there are some interesting provisions in there. Section 6(2) talks about what the Employment Court or the Employment Relations Authority can determine at present. I will read it out: “In deciding for the purposes of subsection (1)(a)”—(1)(a) is about the meaning of “employee”—“whether a person is employed by another person under a contract of service, the court or the Authority (as the case may be) must determine the real nature of the relationship between them.”

Section 6(3) states: “For the purposes of subsection (2), the court or the Authority—(a) must consider all relevant matters,”. Essentially what that means is that the court or the authority at present can consider all the matters in relation to an employment relationship between a company, an employer, and a 16-year-old, or an individual under the age of 16, and the court can actually, at the moment, determine that that person who is thought to be an independent contractor is an employee.

The Employment Court or authority can pretty much investigate the exact nature of the situation. So if the Labour Party, or anyone, is concerned that an individual is in a relationship that looks and sounds like an employment relationship and is effectively the same as an employment relationship that someone over the age of 16 is in, I point out that there is already redress in section 6 of the Act. I do not believe that this bill is necessary.

This bill will be an attack on those 16 and under who are currently delivering papers and currently are independent contractors. It will mean a loss of jobs, and it will be in line with the other proposals that Labour has put forward that will mean a loss of jobs—taking away the 90-day trial, and introducing the $15 minimum wage. When Labour abolished youth wages we saw a whole lot of young people losing jobs, and now, as we are trying to help people with a starting-out wage, Labour is opposing that. The proposals that we want will mean more people get more jobs. Everything we come up with to create jobs, they oppose. They keeping bringing us proposal after proposal that will cost jobs, and that is exactly what this bill will do too.

Ngā mihi nui ki a koe. It is my pleasure to speak on this bill, the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill. We will be supporting it and I congratulate the member on bringing this bill to the House. Finally, something positive for our young people and young workers in New Zealand is being promoted in this House, and I sincerely hope it passes into law.

This bill is an important step in recognising and protecting young people in New Zealand. We seem to have this mistaken idea that New Zealand is a benign country, and that our children are not exploited at work, but this is simply not true, especially when you consider that the Government has introduced a bill for youth rates for young workers starting out on their working lives, which deliberately invites exploitation. Add to that the fact that this Government is now taxing paper boys and girls. We are entering a time of cynical fleecing of young workers in the guise that it is good for them.

This bill will do what the Government has not: offer protection to our young people. They are amongst the most vulnerable workers in New Zealand. Unlike most countries in the world, New Zealand has not got a minimum working age. This bill will ensure that young people, even if they are under 16, are to be treated as employees—employees rather than contractors—and that is a start in job protection.

On the one hand we encourage our kids to get a job—and as a parent I was desperate for my kids to earn some money so they could stop fleecing me—not just to save up for treats but also to contribute to the household. The other thing about it is that we encourage them to get jobs because that is where they develop their work ethic and their work-readiness.

There are many thousands of New Zealanders—young people, children—who are treated as independent contractors rather than employees. For these kids their first foray into the workforce can frequently be unpleasant. They probably do not even know that they are independent contractors; mainly they just feel like they are being ripped off, like Waiuku boy Max Hansen and his 13-year-old sister. They were delivering pamphlets for 3 years and were told suddenly one day that their $6 an hour was halved. Their mum tried to negotiate and went public, but these kids were out of luck because they were independent contractors. That company has 6,000 independent contractors, most of them likely to be kids. It is unlikely those kids know they are independent contractors. It is more unlikely that they are in a position to be able to negotiate, because the balance of power between a child and an adult is not even. They are not even going to get anywhere near a negotiating table.

The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions suggests that there are thousands of children in this country earning $2 or $3 an hour. That is paying on the same level as sweatshop owners in Third World countries. We had a “sweating commission” in New Zealand in the 1870s and we abolished cruelty to children, but this Government says that we can carry on with that.

We know that independent contractors do not have the same protection as employees, and you can just look at the Hobbit film and what happened with independent contractors there. These kids have to pay their own ACC and their own tax, they have no holiday pay or sick leave, they have to provide their own weather protection, and they also have to maintain their own health and safety—and these kids are at risk on their jobs every day. Risky situations that pamphlet deliverers face, for example, include dogs, include traffic, and include other sorts of injuries.

Today the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has been hearing submissions on the youth rates that this Government wants to introduce. Part of the conversation we are hearing is that we need to be doing more for children who are in the workforce, who are under 16 as well. There are international conventions that we have not signed up for. This bill is a great start in the right direction. I commend it to the House.

I anticipated hearing Mr Tirikatene speak on his first—I think it is his first—bill in the House, the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill. He is a man with a noble name, a good lineage, and an orator to behold, but, sadly, he came up with this one, which is really, as someone has already suggested, perhaps something that was simply drawn out that he then had to build a case around as best he could. But I was astonished to hear that the research he has done was on the Victorian era, and that he finds that we have not moved forward since then. That defies imagination, and it shows, really, the level that Labour is at—it wishes to stop everything.

This Government is committed to increasing opportunities. I have heard this evening that 10-year-olds cannot negotiate. When I was 10 I negotiated my first contract, on a Thursday afternoon—

💬 Phil Twyford: What’s happening to that accent?

What is that?

💬 Phil Twyford: I never know which accent I’m going to get from you.

Well, which one would you like to hear? I negotiated without any trouble at all, in Suffolk, in the market place, and ever since then, whenever I have negotiated a position for myself, it has always been as a contractor. So I do not know why that side of the House wishes to deny opportunities to entrepreneurial young people. They do exist. I was told by a colleague this evening. He showed me the top 25 young entrepreneurs. They are young, they are successful, and they negotiate. Why does Labour want to stifle any individual ability?

The bill might have positive intent, but it does not have positive effect, and this is symptomatic of the party that is responsible for it. That is something that worries us. It worries us, Labour’s current state. [Interruption] We do. The current leadership is failing Labour. Why else would it promote a jobs bill that increase overheads, reduces opportunities, and reduces the likelihood of employment opportunities? When I think of the jobs I negotiated for myself as a boy, brought up by a single parent, they would never have been offered as employment opportunities as an employee. It did not work that way.

I worry for Labour because this bill does not bode well for its future. It is symptomatic of its frame of mind at the moment. Far from being bright, its future is looking more and more like that which befell the crew of the Bounty. The Labour members are not sure what is going to happen to them. So while this National Government is focused on ensuring that our employment relations framework is fair, flexible, and entrepreneurial, the Opposition seems focused on internal dramas and wanting everything suppressed. I heard Opposition members speak in the meeting we had—the select committee meeting—this afternoon. Again, it was: “Let’s suppress opportunity; let’s suppress entrepreneurial activity.” It is these theatrics, taking the eye off the ball, that lead to bills like this one. So I worry about Labour and the Opposition.

The House should not be debating this bill. It should be as focused as the Government is on helping young people into work, not trying to get them out of it. While the Opposition has shown nothing but opposition, we on this side have been working. We introduced the starting out wage, which will help more young New Zealanders to get a foothold on the employment ladder. That is a good one, no matter what was said about it this afternoon by the other side. We introduced a 90-day trial period for new employees. Where are the complaints? Where was the raft of awful examples? It did not happen. Oops! You had two—two. And they are the first ones to surface. We introduced flexibility in the Holidays Act—not too many complaints about that, other than from that party.

Although I might not be as youthful as my colleague from Tāmaki, both Simon O’Connor and I understand that the last thing young workers need is a bill in Parliament that threatens to remove incentives for employers to take on young workers for short-term, unskilled work by making the process unnecessarily complicated. We are approaching Christmas. I had not expected Labour to be such a Christmas Grinch as it is turning out to be with this bill. Thank you.

On behalf of New Zealand First, I am pleased to take a call on the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First supports this bill. We have to congratulate the member, Rino Tirikatene, on getting his bill drawn from the ballot. It does not happen very often. In New Zealand First, we believe that the industrial relations environment must be based on fairness. We work towards that, because it is important that every worker gets treated equally. This is very, very important when we consider younger workers. Children aged 16 and under are the most vulnerable group of workers. They deserve safe and secure working conditions. Many of us can identify with that particular group. Some of us were employed when we were under 16. For some of us that is a bit longer ago than for others. Some of us have children who are or who have been in that particular group.

The Caritas report from 2007 investigated children’s delivery work, and, of course, it centres mainly around newspaper and pamphlet delivery, which is most of the work that our young people carry out throughout their schooling. A whole host of issues actually arose from this work. The first one that arose was the very inconsistent and very low pay that many of the children received. Second, there are the health and safety concerns. In New Zealand we have got the Health and Safety in Employment Act, and employers have an obligation to carry out their duties under this Act. But when people are employed as contractors, particularly young children who are not aware of some of the health and safety aspects of their role, it becomes a real concern. These children have got no idea, and, of course, the companies do not have to really worry about them.

Third, there is the absence of any sick leave or annual leave when you are actually employed as a contractor. Some of these children rely on that money as pocket money. That can easily be done. Finally, the biggest concern is the total lack of supervision. If young workers—children—had the employment status of employees, their employers would have to declare their earnings as a part of their ongoing obligations. This would give a much clearer picture of the size of children’s participation in the workforce. At present we do not have that. It would also clarify ACC obligations and entitlements.

I went on to the internet to have a look and see what other countries do. Other countries do not have a law allowing children in work the same rights as those above 16, so the National Party can be quite happy with what it is saying. They do not even say anything about the level of hazardous work. That is something that New Zealand does have, but not to the extent that some of the other countries do. We currently restrict in New Zealand those children under 15 from working in hazardous work, and a young person younger than 16 cannot work during school hours or actually perform work that will interfere with their schooling. That is a priority.

The United States has the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets wages, hours worked, and safety requirements for minors working in jobs covered under that particular statute. The rules vary according to the age of the minor and the particular job involved. As a general rule, 14 years of age is the minimum age for employment, and they limit the hours worked by minors under the age of 16. Many other countries also stipulate work hours for minors, such as Ireland. Children aged 15 may do 8 hours a week of light work in school term time; the maximum working time for children outside of school term time is 35 hours a week.

Children are a very vulnerable group. This bill would be a step forward. We do need to know how many young children are actually working in the workforce, and we would look further to working on this bill.

This Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill is an interesting bill. It is interesting not so much because of its content but because of what it implies and what it says unspoken about where the minds and hearts of the Labour Party members are at the moment. I am a new member in this House, and I came in at the same time as the member who has introduced this bill, Mr Tirikatene. As a previous speaker in this debate has said, he comes from a long line of superb heritage in this House. For him to introduce this bill—

💬 Chris Auchinvole: It’s sad.

It actually is sad. It is a sad, sad thing that he should be, after his long lineage of history, introducing a bill that is as shallow as this. I do not think he came to this House to unionise paper boys, or maybe he did—maybe he did. That is perhaps what the game plan is. I think that this could be part of a cunning conspiracy on behalf of Labour to simply improve union membership. Union membership is really what all of this is about. We are going to unionise the youth of the nation, and try to brainwash them into all that that sort of thing incurs.

I know the member who introduced this bill. I know that he is an earnest, sincere, and thoughtful member, and I know that his sponsorship of this bill is probably more by accident than by design. I fear that probably his name was simply allocated to it by the party whips. Indeed, what happened was that once it was drawn from the ballot, he did have to go and do some research, he did have to go and find out what it was all about. So here we are, confronted with a member’s bill in his name that stifles initiative, that stifles responsibility, that stifles entrepreneurism in our very young kids, who actually should be at the very point that they are learning about the benefits of work, the benefits of a work ethic, and the dignity of work and entrepreneurism, and profit and business. Those are things that we should be encouraging. Here comes a bill from the Labour Party that wants to do away with that.

Well, I say shame on the Labour Party for this. It is an undesirable relationship between reward and effort that Labour wants to somehow do away with. I cannot understand that as a National Party member, because we are all about creating opportunities—creating opportunities for young people to make their way in the world, to see what can be achieved by their hard work and their effort.

I have a confession to make. I am an employer, I guess, of a person under 16. He is a guy who comes in and he mows my lawn. I live in the very fine township of Thames in the Coromandel electorate—in the very fine township of Thames—and it is the lawn that grows. Other grass grows, but grass on the lawn needs mowing. So the grandson of my neighbour negotiated with me a very fair price—a hard price, I might say. In fact, it was a price that was higher than the commercial going rate, and he mows my lawn. I want to know from this member whether this person is an employee or a contractor, because I pay him a fair and reasonable rate to mow the lawn, and I do not know whether he in fact has other clients. He has maybe done a hard, sharp deal with some other neighbours of mine around the neighbourhood in Thames, and he is probably doing a very, very good job in mowing lots of lawns. I would say that that is a good thing. That is a good thing that we should be encouraging in our young children. That is something that we should be encouraging the children of the nation to do—get off their chuffs and understand that with effort comes reward. I think that is a very, very good thing.

So what have we got here? We have got a Labour Party that is against freedom, that is against enterprise, and that is against initiative. This bill is nothing more than a leap back into 1970s and 1960s unionism, and it is a desperate move on behalf of Labour to try to just improve union membership. The nature of a job is determined by what the job is, not the age of the person doing the job. This is a better bill for being not supported, and I do not think we should. So I oppose it—and I do so very keenly oppose it.

It is a pleasure to speak in support of this very well drafted, very well crafted Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill. You know, this really is a night for the season. It is the season of Dickens. We have had the “Silas Marner” of the National Party caucus, David Bennett, stand up here and talk about the freedom of workers and the freedom of employers to exploit, because that is the only freedom that is at stake here. The right that the National Party is defending is the right for employers to exploit, and to exploit the young. Then we have the “Ebenezer Scrooge” of the National Party caucus, Chris Auchinvole. He gave us a great list of National Party achievements in employment—in the whole area of employment law. He talked about the 90-day “no rights” period and all the rest of it. There were a couple of achievements that he did not talk about, such as the increase in unemployment, which has turned out to be the highest level in 13 years. He did not talk about the highest level of youth unemployment in more than 20 years. I did not hear that achievement on his list, because he knows that its retrograde measures, introduced by this Government consistently over the last 4 years, are having a deleterious affect on the employment rights of young, middle aged, and old alike.

Then we had “Fagin” in the form of Scott Simpson, who stood up there and said that he was exploiting his young labour, too. The question I have for the “Fagin” of the National Party caucus is why bother paying them at all? Why, when you can get away with it, would you bother paying them at all?

Then there is Jami-Lee Ross. I am not quite sure how to characterise Jami-Lee Ross, so we will call him the “Little Dorrit” of the National Party caucus. He is the “Little Dorrit”.

But the reason why I support this bill and why Labour supports this bill is because it confirms the basis of very civilised standards of conduct in employment in this country, and we need more of it. This re-establishes employment rights and protections that young workers should have as of right when they walk into employment at the tender age that they go into it, in the period covered by this bill. Those very basic rights are that they should have their employment rights clearly articulated and specified in a written agreement, because this bill will ensure that young workers get to have that. It will ensure that they are protected against arbitrary and unfair dismissal, because that is very important too, and that is under threat. And it will give them protection in regards to their health and safety rights—that they will actually have some health and safety rights, as well. We know that this Government does not care about that. We know it does not care about people in work having health and safety rights, having their rights spelt out for them. These are small obligations to put on any employer. They are easy to meet, easy to do, and things that every responsible employer not only does but does willingly, because they want to do it. But this Government does not understand that and does not get it.

You see, everything that this Government has done in the field of employment relations has taken this country backwards and has hurt people, particularly young people. It introduced the 90-day “no rights” period—the right of an employer to treat somebody shabbily and never be held to account for it. It has introduced the obstructions to workers to either join a union or to have access to the union during work—all those sorts of things. It does not get the fact that the employment relationship is a power relationship. Even if you were looking at employment from the point of view of the free-marketeers, who Government members all claim to be, let them understand this: the only thing about the employment relationship is that it is one of imperfect information. It is one of imperfect information. One party has all the information; the other has very little at all. If there is one thing that every Parliament has a moral obligation to do, it is to recognise that there are those in power relationships who are vulnerable and who are in a weaker position. It is the moral obligation of Parliament to step in, to intervene, and to say: “We will shore up one side of this relationship, and make sure they have rights and protections.”

This Government is a Government of the master and servant. Our party and the Opposition—the Green Party, New Zealand First, and others—are the parties of responsible, modern employment relationships and responsibilities. That is why we support this bill. That is why it is important to bring integrity to employment, to bring integrity to employers, and to protect our young and vulnerable.

It is delightful to stand up. I am actually in a jolly good mood now after my colleague Chris Auchinvole described me as “youthful”. Auchie, people have not described me as that for quite a while.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Are you covered by the bill?

That is right. My colleague Nick Smith raises a very good question—am I actually going to be covered by this bill, the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill? As a youthful 36-year-old, will this bill actually cover me and my rights, or is this going to be age discrimination, as we heard in our select committee today?

Can I begin by acknowledging the sponsor of the bill, Rino Tirikatene. As someone who has also put their first member’s bill before Parliament, it is always quite the experience. Unfortunately, in this case, the bill is deeply, deeply flawed. It begins with the very basic principle that you never argue from exceptions. And we have heard from everyone in the Opposition a whole series of very bizarre exceptions that might have turned up on Fair Go, that they might have seen in Mary Poppins, that they might have heard on the street, and that they think came from the Victorian era to somehow justify this bill. You never argue from exceptions.

We then heard this sort of rambling rhetoric—this rambling rhetoric—that somehow this is discrimination, this is exploitation, and, again, it is Victorian. The thing about rhetoric is that when the learned mind steps back for a second and thinks about it, it does not really stack up. But they were so desperate too that the next step was to start saying “Well, you know what? Actually, this is like the White Paper for Vulnerable Children.” “This is about Pike River.”, someone mentioned. What has the employment law for 16-year-olds and younger got to do with any of those things? It smacks of desperation. You see, it does not take much to work out the absurdity of where this is going—the absurdity. What we are talking about here are young people under 16 going to school and doing those odd jobs that most of us in this House would have done, and which have given us all the characters that we have today—not the characters of Charles Dickens. I realise, Mr Little, that you left out William Micawber—a fine character. The Labour Party could learn from the wisdom of Micawber.

The absurdity of this bill is that we are talking about young people. These are the young people who deliver papers, they deliver pamphlets, they mow the lawns—like those of my Thames colleague, Scott Simpson—they do babysitting, they do cleaning, and even, I might suggest, they might play music. In fact, some of us were very pleased to be in the Banquet Hall earlier, as we had a concert by performers from the Play it Strange Trust, sponsored by my colleague Chris Tremain. They are young people with amazing talent—amazing talent—but under this piece of legislation, before they could even turn up to a bar or café or anywhere to play some music, they are going to have to go into full employment negotiations. They are now going to have to worry about sick leave, they are going to have to worry about holiday leave, and their employers are going to have to do ACC levies—all of this to deliver some music, or to deliver a paper or pamphlet. These are young people who are already in school and already on holiday, so let us just step back for a second. How does it look for a 14-year-old mowing the lawns, playing some music in a café, or delivering pamphlets to have holiday pay? How does that look? Are we now going to send them on school holidays and expect them to be paid as well? It is absolutely ridiculous, and the word I would use for this is “absurd”.

Really, the flaw in this bill is actually right in the heart of it. The very fact that we have to even discuss a bill like this points to the very nature of the work itself. We are trying to protect young people around an array of work that is so simple. It is so simple. The fact that we do not need to protect it is for the very reason that at the heart of this bill are young people who do those simple, basic jobs. Are we actually expecting that we are going to start paying a paper delivery boy or girl $13.50 an hour, and levies, and holiday pay, and sick pay? Are we really expecting that? Are we really wanting to stop the creativity of our young people to play their music, to mow those lawns, and to develop that experience?

I acknowledge the intent of the honourable gentleman who has put this bill forward, but it is seriously flawed. The National Party stands in support of its young people. It stands in support of that entrepreneurial spirit. It stands in support of what I suspect is the experience that each and every one of us has had, which is young people growing up, earning a few dollars, and having that chance to become the adults that we wish to be today.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. First of all, I would like to acknowledge all of the contributions in this debate that have been in support of this bill, the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill. I mihi to the Green Party, to the New Zealand First Party, and, of course, to my own colleagues here. Can I just say that there is a Māori whakataukī—it is the most famous whakataukī of the Māori people—and it says: “Ka pū te ruha, ka hao te rangatahi.” When the fishing net gets old, it is replaced by a new and younger net. I must say that I am very proud to sponsor this bill. It is my first bill in this House. This bill protects the most vulnerable, our children. Just as the whakataukī says that the old net shall be cast aside, that is what will be happening to this Government. It will be cast aside, because the new net is coming through and that new net is here on this side of the House.

What did we hear from the line-up of speakers? We heard a line-up of the most mean-spirited, Victorian era, Dickensian—out of Dickens’ books—speakers. Mr Auchinvole even put on the accent, with a bit of flair. It is very sad because, firstly, they did not even read the bill. This bill has nothing to do with domestic chores. That is specifically excluded. So Mr Simpson, you and your 16-year-old who is mowing your lawns—I am sure he has hustled you because if you cannot read the bill, that 16-year-old is definitely hustling you, Mr Simpson. There is no absurdity about this bill. This bill is standing up for our young children. They are up and down the country. We know it. Every day we go back to our homes, we look in the letterbox, and there is that flotsam and jetsam, that detritus, all that junk mail that gets into our letterboxes. That material is delivered by your nieces, your nephews, mokopuna, children, tamariki, up and down the country, and there are hundreds of them.

This is a significant bill because it does really make a difference, and it will make a difference to the lives of working young people. I am talking about 9, 10, 11, and 12-year-olds, all the way up to 16-year-olds, right up and down the length and breadth of this country. They do need protection, because as vulnerable independent contractors they have no rights. They do not have rights to sick leave. What does the single mother do when her child, the deliverer, has to go out and deliver hundreds of pamphlets, and that child is off-colour and cannot go out? What does the single mother do? Does she go out with her other children to go and do the delivery work? Does she say to her child “Harden up, son or daughter. You will have to go out there and do that work.”? There needs to be protection for our young people. Parents know; that is why parents are very unhappy and they are complaining up and down the country.

We do need to protect our young people, so I am very proud to have brought this bill to the House. It is a most worthy bill. It is there to protect our young people, our young workers, up and down the country. I would like to thank those who have supported me on this bill. I commend it to the House, and I encourage you all to vote for it. Kia ora anō tātou.