Employment Standards Legislation Bill

I move, That the Employment Standards Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to consider the bill, and at the appropriate time I intend to move that the committee report to the House by 12 February 2016.

This bill addresses a number of issues in the employment relations system. It includes measures to modernise the parental leave scheme, improve levels of compliance with minimum employment standards, and prohibit practices that undermine the mutuality of obligations in the employment relationship, such as the zero-hour contract. Taken together these measures will promote fairer and more productive workplaces by providing enhanced protections and benefits to both employees and employers.

The bill before us today is an omnibus bill in five parts. Part 1 makes substantial amendments to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act. These measures broaden the eligibility requirements of the parental leave scheme to better reflect current work and family arrangements and to provide more flexibility to increase choice and support labour market attachment. They complement Budget 2014 legislation that extended the period of paid parental leave to 16 weeks from 1 April this year and then to 18 weeks from 1 April next year.

Currently, eligibility for the entitlements in the scheme depends on being in continuous employment with the same employer for a certain period of time immediately prior to the child’s birth or adoption—6 months to be eligible for the paid leave entitlement and 12 months to be eligible for the extended unpaid leave entitlement. This leaves a number of hard-working employees unable to access the scheme—for example, employees who have recently changed jobs, casual or seasonal workers, or employees with more than one employer. In addition, only biological and formal adoptive parents are eligible, ruling out some people who still have permanent responsibility for the care of the child.

There is also no flexibility in how the leave is taken. If an individual goes back to work at any time during their paid or unpaid leave, even if just for a few hours, then the remainder of their leave entitlement is forfeited. The amendments to the legislation address these issues by extending eligibility for the scheme to employees in a wider range of working arrangements, such as those that I have mentioned already, and employees in a wider range of primary-care arrangements, such as permanent guardianship, Home for Life carers, and whāngai arrangements. They also permit employees who have been with their employer for more than 6 months but less than 12 to take 6 months’ unpaid leave.

The amendments in the bill also increase flexibility in the scheme in relation to how leave can be taken. The introduction of keeping-in-touch days will allow employees to work up to 40 hours during the period of paid leave. They will also be able to take their unpaid leave flexibly by mutual agreement with the employer. So, for example, if there was a period in which they were going to have extra support—perhaps they have parents staying who can help out—they could return to work by arrangement but then continue the unpaid leave afterwards.

Today I also announced that the Government would extend paid parental leave to parents of preterm babies. Earlier this year I agreed to work with ACT leader, David Seymour, to review the support provided in situations of multiple births, disability, and preterm births. Assistance is already available to parents of multiple-birth children and to parents of children with disabilities. However, I have had fruitful discussions with Mr Seymour and have accepted that for parents of preterm babies there is an opportunity to provide more assistance. As a result, the Government will make changes to the Employment Standards Legislation Bill to extend paid parental leave to eligible employees and self-employed parents of preterm babies.

Under the changes, eligible parents of preterm babies will be entitled to a longer period of parental leave payments than the standard 18 weeks if the baby is born prior to 37 weeks of gestation. They will receive additional weekly payments for each week the baby was born prior to the 37-week gestation period. For example, a mother who gives birth at 28 weeks would receive nine additional weekly payments, making it a total of 27 weeks of payment. Contrary to media reports today that the example meant that the maximum number of weeks would be 27, this is not the case. Minimum viable gestation could be just 24 weeks, meaning 31 weeks of paid parental leave would be available in that situation. I want to thank Mr Seymour for his contribution in helping make our paid parental leave framework more modern, flexible, and practical.

The next main purpose of the bill is to address compliance with minimum employment standards. Non-compliance not only disadvantages the workers it directly affects but also the wider New Zealand economy through, for example, anti-competitive behaviour. The bill includes a number of measures to strengthen enforcement of employment standards. These primarily amend the Employment Relations Act, through Part 2 of the bill, though associated amendments are made to the minimum entitlement legislation in Parts 3 to 5. Broad new accountability provisions mean that persons other than the employer will no longer be able to avoid sanctions if they are knowingly and intentionally involved in committing breaches of employment standards.

Other measures in the bill include requiring that in all circumstances employers have a record of the hours their employees work each day in a pay period and the pay received for those hours; overturning the statutory obligation on the Employment Relations Authority and Employment Court to send employment standards cases to mediation; and introducing an infringement regime in relation to the obligation on employers to keep records and, where relevant, individual employment agreements in relation to each of their employees.

These measures are complemented by the Budget 2015 announcement of increased funding for the employment system. Among other things, this funding will improve the provision of information to employers and employees on their rights and obligations and will provide for an additional nine labour inspectors—eight of these in Auckland—bringing the total number, once appointments have been made, to 53. Taking into account the six additional inspectors that were appointed in Christchurch in 2014, this is an increase in the inspector numbers of 40 percent over the last 2 years.

Finally, the bill includes measures to address what have become known as zero-hour contracts and other practices that undermine the mutuality of obligation in the employment relationship. These are found in Parts 2 and 5 of the bill. Although businesses need flexibility to be able to adapt to fluctuating demands, it is also important that employees have enough certainty to plan financially and in their personal lives. However, some practices have developed where there are not mutual and reciprocal obligations. Zero-hour contracts, as distinct from casual working arrangements, require employees to be available for work without a guarantee of work or any compensation for that time.

To address this, the bill requires that where parties to an agreement commit to a set amount of hours, those hours are stated in the employment agreement. Employers and employees do not need to agree to an amount of hours. However, the bill ensures that employees cannot be required to be available for work beyond what is agreed without either being paid compensation or being able to decline work on a case by case basis without fear of negative consequences. Similarly, an employer will not be able to cancel a shift at short notice without the payment of compensation, as agreed in the employment agreement, or prevent an employee from taking up secondary employment unless there is a genuine reason based on reasonable grounds.

Finally, in response to the situation in which employers were making deductions from employees’ wages to compensate for loss or damage caused by third parties, the bill also amends the Wages Protection Act to prohibit unreasonable wage deductions. This bill makes the employment framework fairer for employees and better for businesses, and I commend it to the House.

I want to say at the outset that Labour will support the Employment Standards Legislation Bill going to the select committee. There is a range of aspects of the bill that we think need thorough discussion at the select committee, and our continued support after that point will be reliant on there being some significant changes to the legislation. It seems unusual that the three issues that have been brought together in this legislation have been brought together under one bill. I suspect that what happened was that the Minister was intending to bring the changes regarding minimum standards. Then there was a campaign led by the Labour Party and others—fronted extremely well by Sue Moroney—on paid parental leave. The Government realised it had to do something about paid parental leave so that got tacked on to this legislation. Then there was the spectacular campaign led by the Unite union around zero-hour contracts. The Government realised that it needed to be seen to be acting on those as well, so it tacked these other things on to this legislation. It is a bit of a dog’s breakfast, but if this is the way we are going to get to address these issues, then so be it.

There are some valid issues that have been raised in this legislation. We do want to see it go to the select committee, albeit there is some work that has to be done. I would like to focus my contribution on the issue of zero-hour contracts. Our first concern is that although the Minister promised he would get rid of zero-hour contracts, what in fact happens with this legislation is that zero-hour contracts are legalised. What we get from this are rules for how to use zero-hour contracts, not their abolishment, which is what New Zealanders thought they were going to get.

At the moment, zero-hour contracts are of dubious legal status. Whether or not our current employment law actually allows permanent part-time agreements with no fixed hours is a matter that a lot of people have wondered whether it ought to be tested by the courts. In a way it has potentially restricted the use of these contracts, because of that dubious legal status. This legislation gets rid of that dubious legal status and enshrines zero-hour contracts in law. We are deeply concerned about that. We think it has absolutely the opposite effect to what the Minister stated the purpose of this legislation is.

Getting rid of zero-hour contracts is incredibly important. Zero-hour contracts is one of the most exploitative tools in the bad employer’s tool box. They leave people at the absolute mercy of the employer as to how many hours of work they get from one week to the next. The way they operate means that people have to be available for work whenever it is offered. They have no opportunity to turn down work. They might get 10 hours one week, 6 hours the next week, 15 hours the week after that, and zero hours the week after that, but they have to be available at all times. What we get are people who maybe have come off a benefit. They have done the right thing. They have done what the Government has asked them to do. The employer makes vague promises about how many hours of work they are going to get, and what ends up happening is that they get far fewer hours than they were expecting. They do not get the certainty of income that they were expecting and they end up worse off, often, in an employment agreement in work than they were when they were on the benefit. They might have left other jobs for this.

It does not affect just young people. The people whom I have found the most moving to talk to are parents, often sole parents, who are trying to make ends meet, who are trying to provide for their children, who are trying to put food on the table, pay the rent, and save some money, and they just cannot do it without the certainty of guaranteed hours. When there is competition for rentals, the tenancy agent will say: “Can you show us how much you earn from one week to the next?”. People on zero-hour contracts cannot do that, let alone try to go to the bank and get a mortgage where, likewise, they do not have a chance of doing that when on a zero-hours contract.

The Government is right to say that we have got to do something about this. But what we actually need is real change that gets rid of zero-hour contracts, not enshrines them in the law. The Minister says that those people who are expected to be available for work will be paid compensation by their employer. How much compensation? That is not in the legislation. Will it be money? That is not in the legislation. Exactly how is this going to work, Minister? Does the Minister expect that people will be able to bargain for good levels of compensation in their employment agreement? Well, we are talking about people on zero-hour contracts. These are the most vulnerable workers in our society—the people who are offered zero-hour contracts and who have to take them or leave them. It is ridiculous to expect people in that situation to be able to bargain for reasonable compensation for being expected to be on call.

Then we have got the issue of shift cancellations. Again, what we are being offered here in the legislation is worse than the status quo. At the moment, basic contract law says that if you are offered work and you show up for that work, you have completed your part of the bargain. If the employer then says that that work is not available, they have not met their obligations under basic contract law. They would be obliged to pay you for the work that you agreed to do and which they offered you. Under this legislation, there could be a clause included in people’s agreements whereby those shifts could be cancelled and they would get, again, compensation. But how much compensation? And will it be money? Will the employer be able to say: “I’ve cancelled your shift. Would you like fries with that?”. Because that is the situation we could be facing. So in a lot of ways this legislation is going to leave vulnerable workers in a worse situation than they are already in.

We might hear employers saying “Actually, you don’t have an 8-hour shift; you have a series of 2-hour shifts.”, so that they can limit their liability for cancelling shifts at short notice. There are too many gaps in this legislation as it is written right now. I think, actually, that this is legislation that increases flexibility. It increases the opportunities for exploitation, dressed up as something that is supposed to make workers safer and more secure at work. It does the exact opposite to what the Government has been telling us it is supposed to do.

It is good to see, again, that the Government is considering the issue of restrictions on secondary employment—so-called restraint of trade clauses. But, again, under our current law we already have quite tight restrictions on when restraint of trade clauses can be used. We are concerned that the way the legislation is currently worded actually makes it possible for an employer to include more pervasive restraint of trade clauses that capture more alternative forms of work than what is possible under the current legislation. We need to have a good look at all of those things. Most important, we need to have a clear separation of casual agreements and permanent agreements—whether they are part time or full time. This legislation blurs those lines even more than what we already have. There may be some things that we can do about this and I would like to offer two possible ways forward, before my time is up.

First of all, we could look at what Unite has achieved through their collective bargaining with the fast-food industry and look at setting guaranteed hours based on what hours people ordinarily work. You might have an initial period where there are no guaranteed hours, and then, after that, people have to get guaranteed hours based on what they normally work. That is essentially how those collective agreements, bargained by Unite, work. We could look at enshrining that in the law. The other thing is that we could look at casual loading. If you want to put someone on a casual agreement, you have to pay a little bit more for that, and if you do not want to pay more, then you have to give people guaranteed hours, so that there is a clear distinction between casual agreements and permanent agreements that give people guaranteed hours.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done to this legislation if it is to get the support of the whole House throughout the whole process, and if we are to be sure that it is legislation that will actually make vulnerable workers more secure at work. At the moment we fear that this legislation will make vulnerable workers more insecure and do the exact opposite to what the Government has promised. But we are prepared to work with the Government to make it work properly.

I am very pleased to stand and speak on the Employment Standards Legislation Bill at its first reading. I am sure that when this bill comes to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we will work through all the issues, and that will bring the clarifications that the previous speaker, Iain Lees-Galloway, does not see.

It is quite difficult to have just one-size-fits-all—we know that—when it comes to people who are on call. There are people on call right throughout our workforce, such as glaziers. If a building is broken into or a storm shatters a window of a department store, then the glazier comes in, at all hours of the night, to repair it. There are other people who are on call, such as plumbers. I received a phone call from a friend of mine at 10 o’clock at night. I was driving to Auckland and got a message on my cellphone asking whether I knew a plumber because of a leak that had sprung in their house. I was able to get the person there to repair the leak. That person was on call. Of course, they do get reimbursed, and when the bill came in the following week we understood just how much people who are on call can charge.

There is a lot of complexity about being on call. I understand the concerns and sentiments of the previous speaker. All of that will be become clearer and clearer as we go through the select committee process.

What I want to speak on principally tonight is the paid parental leave component of this bill that has been presented. Thank you to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety for, I think, the broad range of amendments that this bill contains. They are determined to make this provision far more flexible for the modern workplace. It is so important that our legislation is not only the rule of law but also encompasses the will, the understanding, and the cooperation of people, as people in the workplace have all sorts of different employment scenarios these days.

The number of live births registered in New Zealand in the year ended March 2012 was 60,860, and data shows that the proportion of paid parental leave recipients as a percentage of births was around 42 percent. So this does affect a very large, significant number of people. The purpose of this bill, which makes amendments to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act, is to create a greater flexibility so people can take hold of these entitlements, which can work for their family situations, while at the same time they maintain, build, or support the connection with employment that they have had previously and desire to return to. That is very, very important.

There is no doubt that parental leave has economic and social benefits, including a positive impact on a child’s cognitive development, on child health, on economic growth, and on labour force participation. It also reduces child poverty. We are going to hear about all of these provisions in the select committee process. We look forward to submitters submitting and then coming to the select committee, and I am sure we are going to have a very interesting and a very good debate over the issues.

I believe we will end up with legislation that is going to greatly enhance the employment provisions of people in New Zealand. I am very happy to commend this bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to rise and speak to the Employment Standards Legislation Bill—a title that actually says nothing. It would be very, very difficult for anyone listening to this debate to even work out what on earth would be in a bill with such an odd name that describes virtually nothing. The fact that we have just heard a speech from a Government member on a bill that Government members should be very excited about and very committed to, that could not even last 8 minutes—I think it was probably about a 6-minute contribution—I think probably says it all in terms of the position the Government has found itself in. It has had to make these sorts of changes against its will. But, none the less, I am going to be generous and say congratulations to the Government on doing some good work on this bill.

As my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway outlined before, we do not think the Government has it completely right, but we are prepared to work with the Government to get it right. We think there are some substantial changes that need to happen to continue to gain the Labour Party’s support for the passage of this bill through all its various stages. But I do want to particularly note at this point that the Labour Party has no difficulty voting for a bill that improves paid parental leave even though it has the National Party’s name on it.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Unlike National.

Unlike the National Party, which actually plays politics at the expense of parenthood, at every step along the way. The amendment it has announced today I think perfectly describes exactly how mean-spirited and how political the National Party is on this issue. Just a few months ago, in February this year, that same Minister, that National Party, voted against my proposal to do pretty much what they have suggested should happen today, and that is extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks for babies born prematurely. They voted against that.

I was shocked to see reported in the media today that the Minister actually said out loud that if David Seymour had voted for my bill, which he intended to do at that point, that miserable Government would have vetoed it. National would have vetoed a bill that was going to support the most deserving of our families: families whose children are born with disabilities, families where there is a multiple birth, and families whose babies are born prematurely.

That bill, which I proposed in February of this year, at its highest level of implementation would have cost $8 million—$8 million. The Government said today that if David Seymour had dared to vote for my bill, it would have vetoed it—while it goes out and spends $26 million on a flag referendum that not many people want. I think that shows the mean-spiritedness of this Government. It shows the Government’s complete lack of commitment to families and it shows the lack of decent priorities it has for this country. The Government would rather invest in John Key’s vanity project than do the right thing, even though it be in the name of a Labour member of Parliament. Politics is the thing that is at the front of Government members’ minds whenever they are addressing this issue.

The Labour Party, however, does support the proposals in this bill, but we do not think they go far enough and we will be dealing with that next week in this Parliament. We will be debating a bill extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks for all eligible families. We are going to be proposing that because we firmly believe that all children deserve the best start in life.

I remember reading a book some years ago called Politics in the Playground: The world of early childhood in New Zealand, written by Helen May. It is a fantastic book. It describes the politics going on around the funding of the early childhood education sector. I would recommend it to anyone. But I could just about write a book now called “Politics Interfering with Parenthood”, because that has been my experience in this Parliament over the course of the last few years.

For those who have not been keeping up, here is what happened. In February, after the election, as a result of not having the voting numbers to get through 26 weeks’ paid parental leave for all families, which the Labour Party was promoting, I amended my bill so that it extended 26 weeks’ paid parental leave to families with premature babies, families with special-needs babies, and families with multiple births. That brought the cost right down to a figure that I really felt the Government could accept. If it genuinely was about cost—which I do not believe it ever was, by the way—the Government should have been voting for that.

What I was able to do was get one of the Government’s coalition partners, the ACT Party, to agree that it would vote for it. But here is where it all starting turning belly up: when David Seymour informed the Government of his intention to vote for my bill, the Government begged him not to. Then it made him a promise that it would do what my bill did, under its own name. Poor old David Seymour fell for it. He fell for it, and today the Government has played him for a mug. The Government has played him for a mug because it accepted only one portion of that. So the children, the babies born with special needs, are going to miss out on having this extra bonding time with their parents. Although the Government will argue that there are other supports there for children born with disabilities, they are not the supports that allow parents to stay in the home and not be forced into paid employment within that period of time. They are not the measures that will do that.

The Government has got it wrong about bonding and attachment and how important that is. It fundamentally does not understand this. Government members are prepared to play politics with it. That is all they understand about it—the politics of it. They do not understand what it is really about.

I want to read from one of the regulatory impact statements on this bill. I just want to read out the problem definition that the officials have told them about. They say the problem definition is this: “Currently some families experience poor outcomes due to financial pressure on working mothers to return to the workforce earlier than is desirable for social and health reasons. This can lead to sub-optimal bonding between parents and their children, leading to poorer outcomes for children, and therefore society. Secure attachment is an important predictor of resilience in later life and a large body of evidence suggest that many adolescent difficulties including crime, substance abuse, and mental health have their antecedents in early childhood. … Reduced time for mother to bond with children is also reported to have reduced health and development benefits, and does not achieve the World Health Organisation’s recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months …”—for the first 6 months, Minister Woodhouse. That is what your own officials have advised you.

This comes straight out of the Labour Party playbook about why we are promoting paid parental leave to 26 weeks, or 6 months. That is exactly what your officials are advising you to do, and yet you come forward with this watered-down version. Despite the official advice that you are getting from your own officials, you come with this watered-down version because it is the least you think you can get away with.

Because of the politics played by the National Party and because of the ability for it to dupe David Seymour, there are around about 2,000 families that would have been getting access to 26 weeks’ paid parental leave right now, from 1 July, if that Government had not played politics with their lives. If it had allowed David Seymour to vote for my bill, as he intended to, that would be happening right now for 2,000 families. As a result of the Government watering down what it promised him it would do and for breaking its promise to him, there are roughly—and this is a conservative figure—about 1,000 families every year, for eternity, who will miss out on getting extended paid parental leave because of what the Government did.

I just want to remind this House who those families are. The families that the Government has ruled out and has said are not deserving are those whose children—their babies—are born with disabilities. Their babies are born with special needs, and that Government says they are not deserving of having extended paid parental leave. The other group the Government has singled out is the families who have the joy of having a multiple birth. They have twins or triplets—if they are really fortunate they may have the joy of even more children being born at one time. The pressures that go on those families are extreme, and I am sad that the Government has ruled them out as being not deserving.

Well, it is pleasing to hear the Opposition is in support of the bill at this stage, but I do dispute the fact—or the assertion—that the National Government does nothing for families, given that we have just increased benefits by $25 a week for families on benefits. We have got the under-13s with free medical health care, and we have doubled the early childhood learning budget in the last Budget. As well, of course, we have had a very high worker participation rate forever—or since records have begun.

This bill is in three parts and we will, I am sure, be debating and changing some of the details as we go through the process, but this does allow for workers to reflect the modern workplace and the flexibility that is required by employees to participate in the workforce.

The second part deals with the Employment Relations Act, and it discourages and brings in higher penalties for those employers who are breaking the rules. Of course we have heard about the Wages Protection Act, which deals with the zero-hour contracts—or contracts that allow people to be on standby, if you like—and be compensated for that, and that is the requirement in this bill. The requirement for that standby participation is that that employee is compensated. Of course, reasonable notice must be given to employees if their shift has been changed or is cancelled. There are three parts and there will be three good debates going on, and I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to take the first call for the Greens on the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. After quite a lot of debate within our caucus, we will be opposing this bill going to select committee. We do recognise that there are some really good aspects to it, and what we would have liked to see was a bit more positive stuff before we could give it our support to the select committee. That is not to say, though, that we will not be actively participating in the select committee process to try to amend the things that we disagree with in order to have a bill that we could agree with, maybe, on the second reading. The things that we like that fit with the Green’s kaupapa are around extending paid parental leave, the stronger enforcement of existing employment standards, the introduction of higher penalties at the Employment Court, and greater power being given to labour inspectors. But the fact is that this bill as it is written has the potential to legitimise zero-hour contracts and actually make the situation around zero-hour contracts and insecure work even worse. On balance, we cannot support that.

Let me start by describing one of the key purposes of the bill, which is to extend the paid parental leave scheme. We are great supporters of paid parental leave. Our policy is to extend it to 13 months’ leave, and it was excellent to hear the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee talk about the benefits of paid parental leave. We also support Sue Moroney’s member’s bill for 26 weeks of paid parental leave, and I want to acknowledge the fact that the amendments that David Seymour has been able to make are as a result of the last bill around paid parental leave being 26 weeks, which Sue Moroney brought to this House, and the amendments and compromises she made in an effort to get it through and failed. We acknowledge that, and these aspects of this bill are good and we would be supporting them.

I would like to move now to the stronger enforcement of employment standards. We absolutely support this too. According to the Statistics New Zealand’s 2012 Survey of Working Life, about one in five working New Zealanders was not receiving at least some of the minimum standards that we currently have. From our perspective, this bill does three main things that support stronger enforcement of minimum standards: one, it gives labour inspectors more powers to apply for orders from the Employment Court in cases of breaches; two, it creates robust definitions of what constitutes breaches of employment standards; and, three, it provides higher penalties that the Employment Court can bring. We support all of these changes because, basically, we support working people having a fair go. However, although the legislation does provide labour inspectors with more tools to deal with problems, the legislation is only one of the steps we can take.

Although I acknowledge that the labour inspectorate does a really good job and has received more funding recently, it is still insufficient to police the, sadly, too common problem of labour abuse. In previous years and previous times we have had unions that did compliance work so it did not fall simply to labour inspectors. A classic example is in today’s paper, with the New Zealand Herald reporting on the Masala restaurant, which had abused and underpaid workers for 5 years between 2009 and 2014, with the most egregious example being a worker who was paid $2.64 an hour to work a 66-hour week. The question is: how has it taken 5 years for this tragic work environment and these breaches of minimum standards to come to light? Our inspectors do work very hard, but there are not nearly enough of them. We have currently got in New Zealand one labour inspector for 53,658 New Zealanders, compared with Australia, where they have better employment standards, and one of the reasons is because of the compliance. They have one labour inspector to 19,130 Australians. The employment relations climate that this Government has created through its imbalanced and disproportionate favouring of employers, from the “Hobbit Bill” to the provisions in this bill that legitimise zero-hour contracts, means that workers are afraid to speak out, so there is far more work for labour inspectors to do. So although I do applaud the positive provisions in this bill that allow for stronger enforcement, it seems to be a hollow gesture in light of how under-resourced the labour inspectorate is.

The climate of fear that has been pervasive throughout the industrial relations environment in New Zealand is as a result of the changes that I have just referred to that this Government has made. The best example of how that plays out is zero-hour contracts. As with the Health and Safety Reform Bill, it appears that National has capitulated to vested interests—although it has done it at the start of the process this time instead of at the end—in providing very weak provisions around it. There are some quite obvious flaws—and I hope they are not deliberate flaws—in this part of the bill, Part 2.

The first flaw is that the current legislation requires employment arrangements to contain only an indication of the arrangement relating to the times that the employee is to work. It is a very weak provision. The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions has rightly pointed out that this bill does not contain any provisions for a minimum notice period for an arrangement, and, actually, workers need at least a week’s notice so that they can plan their lives.

The second flaw around zero-hour contracts is the availability provisions set out in new sections 67E and 67F in clause 87. The key problem with this is that the bill does say that there must be payment of compensation, but it does not actually define what that is. This could just be something as simple as 50 cents an hour. We think that is unreasonable and that there should be a minimum defined compensation payment. Furthermore, although we applaud the intention of section 67F—that employers must not treat employees adversely for refusing to undertake additional work—we know from experience that this law will regularly be flouted and that the overworked and under-resourced labour inspectors will not be able to do much about it. The power imbalance exists in many industries that use zero-hour contracts, and the lack of definition around compensation means, I am afraid, that workers will be bullied into signing broad availability clauses that basically undermine the whole deal.

The third area is around shift cancellation. This is actually worse than the status quo, where workers can actually be entitled to be paid for the cancellation of shifts, but, like the availability provisions, there is no minimum compensation and there is no test for reasonableness.

My final comment is around the departmental disclosure statement, which actually said that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment tested some of these proposals and that Business New Zealand indicated that it was comfortable with the approach. I think it summarises the lack of balance in this legislation—that the Government is happy to consult with Business New Zealand but it has not actually taken on board the other side of the story, which would have been represented by the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. We are deeply saddened that we cannot support this bill. We will be following it through the select committee process. If there are major improvements in the areas that I have outlined here, then we would probably reconsider, and so I hope that we will have a good relationship and a good discussion when we come to the select committee. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to stand and speak on the first reading of the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. I have to say that we are going to support this bill going to the select committee—

💬 Alastair Scott: Good.

—and I think it is quite important that we do actually start heading in the right direction with this.

I do feel, though, Mr Scott, that it is one step forward and two steps back, because you offer some good things on one hand but you really muff it up a little bit when we are talking about the zero-hour contracts. I think that is probably the biggest thing in today’s society around workers and contracts that people have got some serious concerns about. We certainly have those concerns. We have heard from Labour members today that they have the same concerns, and I am sure that even the National Party and its members will be having some serious concerns around those zero-hour contracts.

I will just point out some commentary through the media, which has come out with comments relating to that. It says here on 3 News, on 21 August 2015, “Bill allows zero-hour contracts in disguise”. Then it has got here, on Radio New Zealand News, on 12 July 2015, “Where’s the zero hours contract ban?”—because, in actual fact, they have not banned zero-hour contracts. That is what has been largely put out to the people of New Zealand—they are saying: “You’re right, we don’t see the sense in zero-hour contracts. We’re getting rid of them.” When I have spoken to people, building up to this legislation, they have said: “Well, I thought they’d gone. I thought they had actually been abolished and sent out.” In actual fact, they have just been dressed up. They have put a bit of lipstick on it and they are calling it a pig, but in actual fact we know that there is something a little bit more sinister hidden in that.

We hope that when we get this piece of legislation coming through the select committee, this Government will actually see the sense in what New Zealand First is saying and, clearly, in what Labour is also saying. While I am talking about that, I would just like to point out a media release that was sent out on 12 July by the Minister himself, Michael Woodhouse. It says here: “Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Woodhouse today announced a package of measures to prevent unfair employment practices such as ‘zero hour contracts’. ‘New Zealand has a well-functioning labour market in general and our employment relations framework aims to strike the right balance between flexibility and certainty’.” But the flexibility for the employees, I would suggest, and the certainty for the employers—it just seems to be a little bit round the wrong way.

The Minister says here in the media release: “ ‘For example, zero-hour contracts refers to employment arrangements, including permanent, where the employer does not guarantee any hours of work, yet requires employees to be available. This is unfair and makes it difficult for employees to plan their financial and personal lives.’ ” Yet what we are reading in this bill that is in front of us here is, in actual fact, that they are just dressing it up a little bit but keeping that ambiguity for those workers. There is no certainty around the hours that they will be able to work. They say that they can be compensated—and Mr Young mentioned people who are on call-outs—well, if you are getting a glazier in to do a call-out at midnight, then you are clearly going to be remunerating the glazier well and truly. But we are talking about extra work and call-outs and things for those workers who are more vulnerable, who are not likely to get as well remunerated. We have some serious concerns about that.

There are two parts in this media release, certainly, that we do support. It goes on to say “employers putting unreasonable restrictions on secondary employment of employees”—well, that is fair and reasonable. There is no way that an employer should be able to hold a staff member over the barrel and say: “You can’t go and work anywhere else.” However, this bill will allow people to get around that legislation in various devious ways, if we allow them to do that. I think that is an area that needs to be tightened up. Another area of the media release that is good is “employers making unreasonable deductions from employees’ wages”. Well, we have heard the stories of petrol pump attendants who have had people drive up, fuel up their cars, and then scarper off without paying, and the poor employee is being left to foot the bill because the boss has said that is not right. I am sure that is the very reason for this piece of legislation: to try and fix up some of those problems that are happening in workplaces.

Certainly, there are vast numbers of workplaces where deductions are made on wages—in kitchens, with kitchenhands dropping plates, etc. They can be charged. Waitresses and maîtres d’hôtel who are on queue who have people leaving without paying their bills could well and truly be forced to pay for those bills. We do support this through to select committee.

We do have, like everybody else, some very serious concerns around those zero-hour contracts. I think this legislation is going to work very negatively and make it acceptable, and almost bring it into law—the practice of actually allowing zero-hour contracts to exist.

Also, with the cancellation at the last minute of shifts, there are ways in this current bill that employers could get around that by giving employees only 2-hour lots to work within. If they were doing that, then at the end of their 2-hour shift, employees can get another 2 hours and then another 2 hours, which means that under this legislation and the way it sits and reads at the moment, an employer could get around paying a staff member by simply saying “Well, you are doing only a 2-hour shift anyway. Would you like to do an extension on that? We’ve got some extra hours.”, and that would negate them paying anything.

A big positive, however, is, of course, the extension on the paid parental leave. I think this is a step in the right direction. My wife and I are raising three small children ourselves. Knowing the absolute importance of having those first 6 months at home with your child, a lot of mothers choose to breastfeed, and it certainly is a very, very important part of the child’s learning. It is good for their cognitive learning and good for their immune systems, and it seems absurd that we force parents back into the workplace without giving them an extended period of time to actually bond with their child and get their child into some patterns.

It is no surprise, also, that we see Mr David Seymour—who does remind me a little bit of Virgil from Thunderbirds Are Go with his “puppet on a string” type sideshow that we see from time to time. The reality is there should have been support for Sue Moroney’s and Labour’s bill earlier on in the year, and we were disappointed that that was not supported. Labour enforcement officers are going to be a big part of this new legislation, and there are going to be some big fees and fines dished out to those employers who are going to be breaching laws and regulations, and I think that comes in positive grace as well.

Again, New Zealand First supports the direction of this bill. We have some serious concerns about some of the implementation, and we hope that this Government—when we get down to the nuts and bolts of it in the select committee—will see the sense in a lot of what has been said here today, because I have to say there is a lot of support on this side of the House for this piece of legislation, this bill coming through. We are very concerned about a number of aspects and we would like to think that those changes could actually be modified for the proper benefit.

I said before that it is one step forward and two steps back. Let us try to hope that the genuine intention of this Government is to minimise the steps back and make it three steps forward, which would be a much better conclusion. Finally, this bill, being an omnibus bill, is obviously very, very clunky and mishmashed and put together quite oddly. Mr Lees-Galloway mentioned the same thing. We also believe—

💬 Clare Curran: A mash up.

—it is definitely a mash up—that things could have been done better in separation, rather than trying to push it all together and to force it down our throat.

So we look forward to seeing this bill in the select committee. I think there are a lot of good discussions to be had. David Parker’s bill will fit quite nicely into this, which of course works in with the minimum wage for contractors bill. This is what it is all about—making the 21st century a place that is good for employers and employees so that this country can be the powerhouse back in the Pacific that we once were. Let us see some positive changes. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to be talking on this Employment Standards Legislation Bill, and it is great to hear everyone from the other side broadly supporting what we are doing tonight. I think it is an excellent thing.

Do you know what? This bill really addresses four key issues. The first one is in respect of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act, and it really complements what we did in the 2014 Budget when we increased paid parental leave to up to 16 weeks and, obviously, next year we will increase it to 18 weeks. But this bill makes two key changes. The first is it reduces the time limit from 12 months to 6 months if people are to access up to 12 months’ paid parental leave, and that is a good thing. The other thing that it has done is it has extended the paid parental leave for those parents who have babies who are born early in their term, and, again, I think this shows a very generous and a good and appropriate response to an important issue. We do want to help families with premature babies and enable them to grow up in a caring environment.

The second thing that this bill does is in relation to the Employment Relations Act. What we have set out in this change is we are making it much more explicit around some of the requirements in terms of the holiday leave entitlement, the minimum reporting standards, and also minimum wages. I think that probably the most significant thing is we have increased the fines from $10,000 to $50,000 for an individual and from $20,000 to $100,000 in respect of companies. These are quite significant penalties and, again, they reflect what we believe is a very appropriate change that needs to be brought into play quickly.

The third element is around the Wages Protection Act. It was good to hear my colleague Clayton Mitchell talking just before about this dreadful practice where employers have been charging employees for actions caused by third parties. Of course, we are all aware of the petrol stations, but I think the examples my colleague mentioned before around restaurants and things like that are also very, very relevant. It is good that we are addressing this. Again, it shows a Government that is responding to what is happening, has been aware of what is happening, and is bringing in legislation to deal with it.

The fourth element is in relation to the zero-hour contracts. What we have actually done, contrary to all the hyperbole—and I have heard that word a lot this afternoon—around it, is require that employers actually specify in their contracts and actually state the minimum number of hours that they want employees to work. We have also prohibited the practice of employers doing two things: first of all, requiring an employee to work more than those specified minimum hours—and they might be quite a small number of hours—unless there is an agreement and also unless there is compensation paid. The second thing is that in the event that a shift is cancelled without reasonable notice, then compensation is also required.

When you look at those four key changes, I think these are very important and worthwhile amendments to be making to these various Acts, and I support these changes.

The next call is a split call. Jan Logie—5 minutes.

I rise to take a short call on this, the first reading of the Employment Standards Legislation Bill, on which my colleague Denise Roche has already outlined the Green Party’s position in some detail. So I would like to confine my contribution to looking at two particular aspects of the bill: first, paid parental leave and, secondly, the zero-hour contracts aspects of the bill.

Sadly, the Greens, as has already been stated, cannot support the bill in the state it is in at the moment. I noticed that the member who has just sat down, Andrew Bayly, said that this bill is proof that the Government is aware of what is happening in our communities and in our workplaces, and that National is the party to respond—to paraphrase his contribution. Well, I would suggest that the zero-hour contract aspects of this bill are proof that this Government takes only superficial notice of what is happening in our communities, that it is playing the numbers, and that it is operating by focus group without any real consideration of the lives and the needs and the precarious state of many people’s lives in this country at the moment. That is at the heart of why we cannot support this bill as it is at the moment.

The Council of Trade Unions has concerns that this bill will actually legalise zero-hour contracts, whereas at the moment employers are actually taking legal risks using zero-hour contracts because they are not in our law and they are open to challenge. What this bill does is it puts them on a firm footing to enable employers to engage in those contracts. Sure, the Government will say that it is about negotiation, and we heard that again through the health and safety legislation—this absolute unwillingness to listen to people in the communities about that power differential and about how so many people in these jobs just feel completely unable to negotiate because they feel as if all of their hours and their wages are on the line if they complain and if they stand up for something. So people are being told that they should be grateful for work, and they are acting as if they are because they are so worried about losing their jobs.

I was speaking today with some workers who were saying that they are in full-time employment and that that now equates to 32 hours a week. They are earning what is now considered by many, sadly, to be a decent wage of $16.50 an hour. That is $27,000 a year. They are having to feed their families and support their families on $27,000 a year—on a full-time, above - minimum wage salary or wage. This bill refers to people who are not even in that situation, who cannot even be sure that they are going to have 10 hours of work a week, who are still having to pay the rent, and who are still having to try to put food on the table and feed themselves and send their kids to school. They deserve more certainty than that. The Government is suggesting that it is aware of what is happening and that it is listening and responding, yet it comes back with a bill that actually entrenches in law the ability of employers to do that—for these people to have to work multiple jobs and not even be sure from one week to the next how they are going to pay their rent. I think that proves that you are not listening, National members, because that is not what our country needs.

Those workers were telling us today, when I asked them what their dreams were, that they have had to put their dreams in a cupboard because they are so focused on surviving and on being able to put food on the table. This is an opportunity to have some aspiration for people in this country, to enable them to have the very basic aspirations for themselves and to get their dreams back, and this bill is a failure. It fails to give people any certainty. It only gives employers a bit more certainty, and that is not balanced, that is not being aware, and that is not what this country needs. Therefore, at this stage, we cannot support this bill.

I call Phil Twyford—5 minutes.

Members of the public are often a bit disbelieving when you tell them that in Parliament the Opposition will often vote for Government bills. They think, because they see the contest of ideas in question time, that it is always about conflict and that we always disagree. On this side of the House we take seriously our role as legislators, and when a bill makes even a small, marginal increase in the well-being of the general population, we feel compelled to vote for it. It might not be perfect; it might not have the kind of ambition that we do, but if it offers even some very incremental gain, we will vote for it.

But it is so depressing and dreary to be in this House, debate after debate, bill after bill, voting for completely inadequate legislation. This is yet another example of a bill that is, at first blush, a mixed bag to say the least. It has got some good parts in it, which I will touch on, but other parts we have serious misgivings about.

This bill illustrates, I think, the fact that in National’s parallel universe not only is there no housing crisis and the economy is going fine but also this bill will end zero-hour contracts. That is what Michael Woodhouse promised. He went on TV and said that he was going to end zero-hour contracts because they are unconscionable. But, actually, what we find, looking at this bill, is that the effect of it is that it simply creates a new set of rules for zero-hour contracts. The Government is not abolishing them and it is not getting rid of them; it is simply regularising, or legalising, them.

There was one very telling part of the regulatory impact statement that I want to refer to. There is a discussion in the regulatory impact statement about how the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment prepared the first version of it and then when Treasury got hold of it—and I am sure the clammy hand of the Minister can be seen in this as well. The ministry had initially considered the option of a general ban on unconscionable practices—that is, zero-hour contracts. It was deemed that it might have unintended consequences, and the National Government’s actually putting a stop to zero-hour contracts would have been considered to be a very undesirable and unintended consequence.

This bill is the National Government’s idea of a win-win. What it wants to do is polish the idea that it is listening to public opinion, which was clearly outraged by zero-hour contracts and the incredibly exploitative situations that many workers find themselves in. The Government wants to polish up the notion that it is a moderate, centrist Government that listens to public opinion, but at the same time what it wants to do is pursue that most precious of National Government goals: pushing down labour costs, undermining the rights of workers, and weakening collective bargaining. That is what the provisions in this bill do, not only on zero-hour contracts but also on some of the other issues that I want to mention shortly. They weaken the position of workers in the workplace.

Let us talk a little bit more about zero-hour contracts, because what the bill seeks to do is address this in a couple of ways. First, it says that an individual employment contract is required to contain only an indication of the arrangements that relate to the times that an employee has to be available for work. That provides little protection, if any at all. Under the bill, if the employer requires the worker to be available for work beyond their contracted hours, then they have to put an availability clause in the employment agreement, and the availability clause must include some compensation for being available for work. It does not say how much and, as previous speakers in this debate have said, that could be a minuscule amount—a symbolic amount. It could mean that the amount is rolled up into a salary. It actually makes matters worse. At the moment, the legal position of zero-hour contracts is highly dubious. The courts do not look kindly on them. This bill will institutionalise them, and that is the big concern that we have.

Despite what the member opposite, Phil Twyford, had to say, I think that this is a good bill, and, of course, I rise in support of it. When the members opposite say that we do not take our role seriously, I want to put on record that as a constituency MP, I do. I know that members on this side of the House do, and we will respond to an issue if it is raised with us.

This is an agile Government that is going to respond in kind and put forward a bill that can be debated in the select committee, and it may well be manoeuvred and malleable in parts, but that is a good thing. We want to have that debate. With respect to zero-hour contracts, anything that talks about prohibiting employers who do not commit to hours of work for employees and calls for prohibiting employers who cancel shifts without providing reasonable notice or who put unreasonable restrictions on employees with respect to secondary employment—those things are unreasonable. We agree with that, and we want to take the time to debate it and make sure that zero-hour contracts are used appropriately and that flexibility is retained but that it is an appropriate mechanism of employment law.

The other thing that I want to touch on briefly is, of course, paid parental leave. As a mother who has had two premature children—at 32 weeks and 36 weeks—I want to say that extending paid parental leave will be of benefit. I am pleased that both sides of the House agree with that. It is going to be a great help to those families who have premature babies, including extending paid parental leave provisions to have keeping-in-touch days, which, I think, for professionals and other women—or men, for that reason—who take paid parental leave and who work will enable them to get into the workforce and keep in touch and not lose any confidence in respect of their profession.

I think this is a good bill. I think that it will be well-received in the select committee. Of course we will have some robust debate, but that is part of the process, and I welcome that and support this bill.

It will be known to most members of this Parliament that every time the National Government touches a piece of employment legislation, either it completely turns it to custard or it takes rights away from working people—that is what it routinely does. It does not necessarily enhance the rights of employers or make it easier or better for them, but it always penalises workers. This piece of legislation is a bit like the curate’s egg. I know it is a cliché. Maybe some parts of it are not actually too bad, but there is one part of it that is an absolute shocker and it will turn workplaces and those who use part-time workers and casual workers into an utter shambles. I am going to come back to that in a minute, but I do want to acknowledge, as I said before, that there are some parts of this legislation that are maybe not too bad on the face of it, actually, and we will work with the Government and our colleagues in other parties at the select committee to work our way through the bill and make sure we get the best out of it.

It is disappointing that the provisions on paid parental leave do not meet the very clear expectations of most New Zealanders that we will have 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. This was in the Sue Moroney legislation—the work that Sue Moroney has championed and has been the vanguard of—but that is all right. It is typical for this Government—just do a little bit, sort of put the reel out, and just do enough to sort of get the monkey off the back. And it has done that.

I am intrigued by this new reference, this new provision—this new employment law beast called keeping-in-touch days. I wonder whether this is a bit of self-interest from the National Government. Knowing how far out of touch it is, members opposite are now needing to set aside special days to put themselves in touch. I am not going to criticise them for doing it, and I am happy to grant them leave for as many days as they need in order to be in touch again because they are desperately out of touch, as has been demonstrated so often just in the last few weeks.

I want to turn to what I think is the critical part, the essential part, of this piece of legislation, bearing in mind that the Minister who introduced this legislation has gone on record publicly several times to say that it will deal with the evils of zero-hour contracts. Of course, we now know that it will not. Anybody who says to the public of New Zealand, to the workers of New Zealand, that there is now legislation before Parliament that will put to bed the evils of zero-hour contracts is misleading New Zealanders, and that is unacceptable.

I do not want to turn this into a Committee stage speech, but I do want to prevail for a moment on clause 87 and the proposed new sections 67C to 67H because I do not know how a Minister or Cabinet or members doing their job of looking through this legislation before it is even introduced could allow this to get through the approval channels. These are the provisions that are dealing with—or that Government members say will deal with—zero-hour contracts. They provide for hours of work to be provided in an individual agreement or a collective agreement, and then they provide for this beast called the availability provision. The worker is required to be available under the employment agreement. It talks about an “availability provision” being “a provision in an employment agreement under which—(a) the employee’s performance of work is conditional on the employer making work available …”—no guarantee of work; it is conditional on the employer making it available—“and (b) there is no obligation on the employer to make work available …”.

This takes us back to the 19th century, and we are now back into the sort of stuff that Charles Dickens wrote many books about. This is true exploitation, and the fact that this could even be contemplated as a reality is a disgrace on that Government. Things have become so bad with the slow and steady erosion of employment law by this Government that expectations on standards are now so low that this Government can write into a piece of legislation and describe what is abject exploitation of working people in this country. And those members opposite are doing it shamelessly and with smug little smirks on their little faces. This is what employment law has come to in New Zealand today.

Then the bill goes on. It says that there might be a requirement for compensation, but it does not specify what that is. It does not even specify how it is determined, and, of course, we know how that works in the weird world of the National Government. The individual employee is meant to rock on up to the employer and exercise the fullness of their bargaining power by saying: “Oh, I want compensation because you haven’t made the work available. Even though you’re not under any obligation to and even though there’s nothing in my employment agreement, please pay me compensation.”

Those opposite of a mad mind seriously think that this sets an employment standard that we should relish and welcome. It creates no enforceable standard at all. It is the removal of any standards. It is the absence of standards, and they have the temerity to introduce this in a piece of legislation called the Employment Standards Legislation Bill.

This is an outrage, apart from being sheer stupidity. This is the appalling thing about this legislation. If this Parliament is doing its job and if the members opposite have any conscience, then this clause, this provision, cannot survive the legislation-making process as the bill goes through this Parliament. As it goes from here to the select committee, if this provision survives in any form at all, then that will be an acceptance and an admission that under this Government this Parliament can no longer protect the rights and interests of good, hard-working Kiwis. It is acceptable in the realms of employment to have casual employment. We have had it for decades in this country. It is acceptable to have part-time employment—that suits some people. But it has never been acceptable in the hundred and more years of employment legislation and employment regulation to have provisions that allow the sheer exploitation of working people. We have never tolerated that. We have never tolerated it, and we should not tolerate it now.

I prevail upon the members opposite, and the previous speaker from the Government, Sarah Dowie, who stood up and said: “Yeah, sure, we’ll work some things out.” Well, you have got a lot to work out. You have got a lot to change here. You have got a lot to improve because, in its present form, this is nothing other than a sheer and utter disgrace. It has to change if this Parliament wants to hold its head up high and if every member in it wants to hold their head up high and say that we are a Parliament that is about fair and just laws, because that is what should guide us.

We are a fair people. We are a sensible people and a pragmatic people, and we want good employment regulation because we know that alongside the army of very good employers, there are the exploitative and the bad employers. Workers look to this Parliament and say: “Make sure that amidst all our employment regulation, we cannot be taken advantage of. Make sure, when you are passing laws affecting our rights and interests as workers, that we cannot be exploited.” It is not too much to ask, and it is what workers around New Zealand are asking of this Parliament. They are asking it of every MP in this Parliament, and we owe them nothing less.

We will support this bill to be scrutinised closely by the select committee, but with a very clear expectation that all members of Parliament on that committee, including the members of the Government, make sure that this bill is something that we can be proud of, something that adds to the rights and interests of workers, something that helps employers manage their workforces carefully and sensibly, and something that does not exploit.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the first reading of the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. I can tell the House that this bill shows the Government’s commitment to ensuring that employment law is fair and supportive for the diverse work requirements of both employees and employers. We are trying to fix various issues that are concerning employees. I was surprised to see the previous speaker, Andrew Little, getting so angry about us trying to fix those issues that workers are concerned about.

To make employment law fairer and supportive for employees and employers, this bill aims to amend various employment-related statutes. The amendments proposed in this bill are wide ranging. These measures are to strengthen the enforcement of employment standards like the minimum wage, annual holidays, and written employment agreements. To support that enforcement, employers will be required to keep records to demonstrate compliance with minimum employment standards.

In general our labour market is functioning well. Our employment relations framework is aiming to strike the right balance between flexibility and certainty. We want flexibility for employers and employees, but we also want to provide them with certainty. This bill is also about addressing the issue of agreements called zero-hour contracts. Zero-hour contracts are where employers are not required to commit to any number of hours of work for employees but they expect employees to be available all the time, employers can cancel any shift without reasonable notice or compensation to the employee, employers can make unreasonable deductions from employees’ wages, and employers can prevent employees getting into secondary employment. To me this is unfair because employees cannot plan their finances and they cannot plan their personal lives. To me both parties are important: employees and employers. It is about having that mutual agreement.

This bill addresses the zero-hour contracts issue by making it a mutual agreement between employers and employees. For example, if an employee agrees to work for 10 hours for an employer, then that will be put up front in the agreement. Then the employee can decline to work for that employer for more than 10 hours. On the other side the employer will not be obliged to offer more hours to that employee. Also, the employer will not be able to prevent the employee from getting into secondary employment unless there are real grounds for it. However, they will be still able to ask employees to disclose information about their secondary employment, which is fair because businesses need to protect themselves, and they need to know whether there is any conflict of interest and whether there are any intellectual property issues.

Finally, as I said, this bill addresses wide-ranging issues. The other component is the paid parental leave scheme extension and increased flexibility. This bill is to change the definition of an eligible employee and will be extending paid parental leave entitlements to more workers, including seasonal workers, casual workers, and employees who recently changed their jobs. Paid parental leave will also be extended to primary carers. Primary carers do not include biological parents or formal adoptive parents, but for primary carers to qualify for paid parental leave they should be in employment before taking up the role of a primary carer.

This bill is about balancing the relationship between employees and employers and is also about meeting the needs of both employers and employees. It is a great bill. I support the bill. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

on behalf of the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: I move, That the Employment Standards Legislation Bill be reported to the House by 12 February 2016.

Motion agreed to.