Third Readings

I move, That the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 3), the Holidays Amendment Bill, the Minimum Wage Amendment Bill, and the Wages Protection Amendment Bill be now read a third time. Between them, these bills will make significant improvements to the fairness and productivity of all workplaces across the country. Employees such as casual and seasonal workers, workers who have recently changed jobs, and workers who work for more than one employer will now be eligible to receive parental leave payments. Primary carers other than biological or adoptive parents, who none the less still have a primary responsibility for the care, development, and upbringing of a child under the age of 6, will also be entitled to parental leave payments and leave. This includes whangai arrangements.

Employees will be able to keep in touch with their employer during the period of parental leave payments, undertaking a limited number of hours of work if both parties agree. This will enable them to take part in a training day, for example, without losing their entitlement to paid leave, and they will have a greater flexibility and choice in how they take their unpaid parental leave. Going back to work during this time will not end their paid leave entitlement. Alongside the extension to 18 weeks of parental leave payments from 1 April this year, these changes will make a significant difference to families raising children in New Zealand. The changes support families during an important time in the child’s life while supporting attachment to the labour market, so that it is easier to transition back into work when the time is right. The parents of babies born prior to 37 weeks’ gestation will be entitled to additional weeks of parental leave payments—which could be as many as 13 weeks extra—to better support them during what can be a particularly challenging time.

The provisions strengthening the enforcement of employment standards will ensure that we have a robust compliance and enforcement regime for these minimum standards. There is a comprehensive range of sanctions available to deal proportionately with all non-compliance, from infringement notices for breaches of record-keeping requirements to significantly higher penalties for the most serious breaches. Employees’ rights will be better protected, and compliant employers will be able to compete on a more equal playing field.

The main change to these provisions as the original bill passed through the parliamentary process has been to the record-keeping provisions. The work done both at the select committee and in the Committee of the whole House has significantly improved these provisions. All employers are required to have a record of the hours their employees work each day and the pay they receive for those hours. This record is essential, both for correctly calculating minimum entitlements and demonstrating compliance with those entitlements. Guidance is provided as to how this requirement can be met. This guidance balances the need to have an accurate record of hours and pay when necessary for calculating and demonstrating compliance with minimum entitlements while avoiding imposing unnecessary compliance costs on employers.

The provisions also make it harder for individuals or other third parties to hide behind corporate structures of the employer and evade responsibility when they are knowingly and intentionally involved in breaching employment standards. Being able to target both individuals and companies will strengthen the incentives to comply with these important legal obligations. Finally, the changes in these bills get rid of zero-hour contracts and other unfair practices in employment relationships. I have always been confident that the original bill was in very good shape in this respect and that it struck the right balance of mutual and reciprocal obligations for employers and employees. However, amendments have been made in the Committee of the whole House to availability provisions, the notice period for shift cancellations, the obligations to put matters in writing in the agreement, and a number of other minor technical amendments.

💬 Hon Members: Minor technical amendments!

The crowing has started already. I did think they would leave it until the end of the first speech, but no. As a whole these clauses will make employers consider carefully whether they truly need availability provisions while still providing flexibility in circumstances where there is a genuine need for them. This means a better balance of flexibility for employers and certainty for employees.

In conclusion, I want to reiterate my thanks to the submitters for their contribution to improvements to the bill, to members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, under the sage chairmanship of my friend Jonathan Young, and to the officials who supported the committee and me in what were very important and complex drafting challenges. I also want to thank members of this House and of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, who worked with me to make some minor changes to the bill.

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

I have no doubt—the crowing has started—that in these final debates we will hear many members of other parties giving themselves high praise and pats on the back for their vital and earth-shattering contribution to improvements to the bill. Good on them. Let them claim whatever victory they think they deserve. I claim no such praise, but I do reflect with a small amount of pride that I may have achieved a rare thing—a significant change to employment law that looks likely to have the unanimous support of all parties in this House, right across the political spectrum. Perhaps this is a victory for Parliament as a whole.

I also want to add this. The real winners today are not we members who congratulate ourselves so heartily on whatever victory we may claim. The real winners are New Zealand employees, who, when these bills are passed, will have a materially improved parental leave entitlement, strengthened requirements on their employers for record-keeping and other obligations, and the end of pernicious conditions known as zero hours. They are the real winners. I commend these bills to the House.

I agree with the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety that this is a most unusual—in fact, I would say, unprecedented—occasion on which a piece of employment legislation, which typically divides this House, certainly as it went through the Committee stage received, as I recall, unanimous support from members of this House. There may have been one exception, and it is the dog-tail to the National Party, but we do not have to dwell on that. The idea that all but one member in a House of 121 MPs should support a piece of employment legislation is, I think, an important occasion. But there the pat on the back will end.

They say that success has many parents—whether or not on paid parental leave—and failure is an orphan. But we will take credit for making changes to a piece of legislation that would have entrenched what the Minister described as a pernicious device that employers were, in fact, using during the course of this legislation passing through this House.

Let us be clear about what the legislation does. It does make improvements to paid parental leave. It does not go as far as the changes that Sue Moroney has been campaigning for, and had huge support for, for many, many months. There is a sense in which the Government is responding to the demand of the people, not leading the people. But that is not unusual for National Governments when it comes to employment law, employment rights, and workplace issues.

As for the enforcement regime, I cut my professional teeth as a lawyer on what was then regarded as pretty basic work, called time and wages book inspections of employers. It was pretty routine. Actually it was a legal obligation, and has continued to be since, for employers to keep a record of the hours their employees work and what they are paid for them. The idea that things have become so bad on such a widespread basis that in 2016 we have to pass another law reminding employers that they have to keep a record of the standards and terms and conditions under which their workers are employed is an outrage, frankly, and reflects poorly on this Government, and I want to come to that.

I want to say this, too: as I said, this legislation represents a step forward on many fronts for workers—and I have outlined those aspects. It was encouraging to see that, at least at the Committee stage, there was widespread support, and that was unprecedented. But let us go to some basic principles. Having a set of rules about how relationships are conducted in the workplace is absolutely vital. Those rules have to be clear, they must be fair, and they must reflect what society regards as right.

You know, there is a moral element when it comes to workplace law and workplace rights. Public debate in New Zealand about workplace rights and employment law so often descends into meaningless claims about flexibility, about red tape, and about costing jobs. So it was disappointing that the Minister, in his introduction of this third reading debate, could not avoid references to having “a more equal playing field”, to “unnecessary compliance costs on employers”, or having “a better balance of flexibility”.

Let us get one thing absolutely clear: it is the common law of employment, which still exists in New Zealand, and which statutory law—the law that this Parliament passes—so often has to grapple with. It is common law that creates the unequal power relationship in employment. It is the common law duty to obey. The ACT Party will understand this, because it thinks that all statutory law should go and we should revert to common law, which, by and large, in the workplace, is the law of the jungle. The duty on the worker to obey is what creates the inherent imbalance of power in the workplace relationship. That is why what this House does on employment issues and on workplace issues is so vital and so important, and what we do in this House every time we pass a law relating to employment and workplace rights sends a signal.

The Minister can claim credit for saying “Here is a piece of legislation that improves workplace rights.”, but if we look at the other 29 pieces of employment legislation passed by this House under this Government, with its majority, each and every one of them takes away workplace rights—each and every one of them changes that inherent imbalance of power in the workplace towards the employer. And now, 8 years on, 29 pieces of legislation later, here we have a piece of law that just starts to crawl in the other direction, but that is about all it does.

Consider this: there never was a law, or anything, mandating zero-hour contracts. What there was was a record of employment law changes that sent a signal to employers that the rules are in their favour, or, in some cases, that the rules do not apply, or, in some cases, that the law just does not matter—go for it, do what you like, do what you can get away with.

Something about our employment laws, something in our workplace culture, has given a signal to employers that they can do what they like. The idea that anybody—an employer, their highly paid high street lawyer—thought that it was OK to draft an employment agreement with a clause in it that said: “You are obliged to turn up to work, but I’m not obliged to offer you any hours of work, and if I haven’t got any hours of work for you, I will send you home and you will get no compensation for it.”

Where in our egalitarian tradition did that ever come from? Where did it come from? I regret to say that, in my view, it came from this House passing law after law after law that said to workers: your rights do not matter anymore; we are interested in the interests of only one group of people—the powerful and the privileged, who happen to be your employers. That is what they have done—that is what they have done.

And here is the real test: how is it that in a country whose employment jurisprudence has been driven by two basic principles—the principle of mutuality and the principle of reciprocal obligation—driven through our employment jurisprudence. Employment Court judges, Court of Appeal judges, and even Supreme Court justices more recently, are saying that the principle of mutuality and employment is an absolute founding principle. And yet we have a culture in this country that has allowed employers to sign up workers and to bully workers into accepting that this was an OK practice. Something has been seriously wrong. It is not acceptable and it is not right. It is right that we have laws that establish a moral standard of acceptable conduct for employers.

The idea that we would have agreements that create that provision, and they never go to court to be tested, is testament to something else, and that is the fear of workers to test their legal rights—to challenge the wrongful conduct of employers. How could we possibly be surprised about that when we have Government departments—giant Government departments—including the department responsible for administering our employment legislation, that cannot even get it right and cannot pay its staff right.

I hope that passing this legislation—I hope it will be unanimous, although I am even prepared to concede that ACT’s vote is not that important; I hope it will be unanimous. I hope this will be the start of a process of New Zealand workers now receiving a signal that they matter, that they count—that this Parliament does not just side with the powerful and the privileged; that it sides with ordinary working New Zealanders, that there are moral standards—not just minimum legal standards, but moral standards that we expect of employers and others about their conduct towards the people who work for them. These are the people who do have a duty to obey, the people who do not have the means to go to court, and who do not have the means to engage high-paid, powerful lobbyists to preserve their interests.

We will support this legislation—it is an important step. I want to acknowledge the work not only of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee but also of Iain Lees-Galloway, Sue Moroney—our representatives on that committee—and others who have stood firm and fast, and realised and accepted that our culture, that our values, must change, and that a signal will go, from this day forth, to New Zealand workers that now we will start to make laws that look after them, that respect them, and that give them a chance to get ahead and to pursue their Kiwi Dream.

Can I just acknowledge the speeches so far in this very important debate. This legislation has been touted as a great victory for workers in New Zealand. I am not going to speak on that, but I want to say that it also shows the great response of the select committee process that works in this Parliament. A bill went to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, it had aspects that submitters disagreed with, and through the process of submissions, the committee’s 11 members heard the views of employers and employees. The committee came to some great discussions, and, with the assistance of some very intelligent and very balanced officials, came up with recommendations that by and large, as the Minister has said, addressed this issue around zero-hour contracts.

I acknowledge my colleague on the other side of the House Iain Lees-Galloway. He brought further amendments to the Committee of the whole House, which the Committee supported and which have taken what the select committee did one step further. It is important for us to understand—and I make my remarks today to acknowledge its work—the select committee process. Mr Lees-Galloway’s description, given on Tuesday evening, of a zero-hour contract as being “a permanent, part-time agreement with no fixed hours” is something that I added a further dimension to in my speech on Tuesday evening when I said that a zero-hour contract is a “permanent part-time agreement with no fixed hours and a requirement to be available to the exclusion of other employment opportunities.” It is this definition that our select committee addressed and, in my mind, brought an end to zero-hour contracts according to the definition that I have talked about this afternoon.

A casual employee can have an agreement or an understanding with an employer to be a permanent part-time employee with no fixed hours of work on an “as and when needed” basis. They can simply agree to that, and it can become a casual employment arrangement, which fulfils Mr Lees-Galloway’s definition, but they are still free to pick up other employment as it is available. There are many, many thousands, tens of thousands, of casual employment agreements that work for not only the employers but the employees in our nation. But as soon as the employer says “You are to remain available in case I need you, and that means you can’t accept any other employment, but you’ll only get paid for the hours you work for me.”—as soon as that is stipulated—it becomes a zero-hour contract. There is no mutuality of obligation, certainly from the employer to the employee.

It is that definition, that expression, of an employment arrangement that I believe everybody in this House completely disagreed with. Everybody on the select committee also disagreed with it, and we worked hard to ensure that it was changed. In fact, if you read the commentary on the bill as reported back you will see the committee’s comment that “We do not believe that availability provisions should be banned. Employment situations exist where these provisions are used appropriately and benefit both employer and employee. Maintaining flexibility in employment relationships is a legitimate policy goal. However, we agree with submitters that the bill could better express the policy intent of upholding mutual obligations in these relationships.” It goes on to say: “We therefore recommend amending proposed subsection 67E(3) to require genuine reasons, based on reasonable grounds, for including an availability provision in an employment agreement.”

The crux of a zero-hour contract is the availability requirement. So what we did is we altered the bill, we deliberated on it, we agreed on it, and we brought it back to the House. We said an availability provision must not be included in an employment agreement unless the employer has genuine reasons, based on reasonable grounds, for including the availability provision and the availability provision provides for the payment of reasonable compensation. The reason we wanted that is that we wanted to ensure that employers were very, very careful about actually genuinely needing to have the availability of a worker, and that if they genuinely did need that—and it was not because they were lazy in rostering and lazy in managing the workflow, but that the job actually required some extra availability—they would ensure that there was reasonable compensation for that.

So there was never ever going to be a time when somebody would be held back from doing any other work would not be paid for it. So I think we did some great work on the select committee. I want to congratulate the officials. I want to say thank you to the members of the select committee. Andrew Little, the Leader of the Opposition, made a comment today that I think is worth noting—that this Parliament has done a good job for the people of New Zealand.

The passing this afternoon of this legislation arising from the Employment Standards Legislation Bill represents a significant and decisive win for the labour movement in New Zealand because we have got here today because of the efforts of thousands of ordinary working people—people who got out on the streets and protested, people whose unions bargained with their employers to get rid of zero-hour contracts. But they were not satisfied with that and wanted to get rid of them for every other worker in the country and so they came to Parliament to get us to make the change. It is a significant victory for people working collectively for the industrial and the political arms of the labour movement—working together to get better outcomes for working New Zealanders. Have no doubt about it. When this legislation is passed, working New Zealanders will be better off because zero-hour contracts will be gone for good.

That is something not just for this House to celebrate, not just for New Zealand to celebrate, but also for the labour movement to celebrate together. Andrew Little was absolutely right when he said that success has many parents, and failure is an orphan. I think it is a testament to just what a significant change this is to our employment law that so many people have wanted to share in this success. But I do want to make some acknowledgments today because this has been a team effort. That is how we work on this side of the House. We believe in the collective and this has been a team effort, so I want to acknowledge everybody who has been involved.

I want to start with Unite union, because that is where it all started. It was Unite union representing its members who work in fast food, who actually introduced the term “zero-hour contract” to New Zealanders. Nobody in New Zealand understood what a zero-hour contract was until Unite informed us and told us that this is something that we needed to work on. I want to congratulate Unite union on its success—some time ago now—in eradicating those zero-hour contracts from most fast food employers, but also on its work in ensuring that we went further than that. Unite can consider itself the real hero in this, and Unite union should pat itself on the back today because New Zealand workers—all New Zealand workers; whether they are Unite union members or not—are better off as a result of this.

I then want to acknowledge the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, because when we in the Labour Party wanted to put a member’s bill forward to attempt to address this issue, it was the Council of Trade Unions that worked with us to get that member’s bill written up appropriately and lodged here in Parliament. So that was the first point at which the Council of Trade Unions got involved. Of course, there have been many, many, many points since. The submission to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, along with the submissions of many other unions, and the submissions of employers as well made it clear that we had to do a lot more than what was in the original legislation if we were to truly eradicate zero-hour contracts. Thank you to the Council of Trade Unions for that, and thank you for the work over the last fortnight or so working with the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, working with officials, and working with us in the Opposition to ensure that we got this across the line. The Council of Trade Unions has been absolutely pivotal in making that happen.

The next group that I want to acknowledge are the other Opposition parties, especially those who are on the committee with us, the Green Party and the New Zealand First Party, because another pivotal factor in this was the fact that Labour, the Greens, and New Zealand First produced a shared minority view. We were of one mind on this and it was clear to the Government that it had a united Opposition that was working together on eradicating zero-hour contracts. It was on that foundation of the united Opposition that we were able to reach out to the minor parties.

I want to acknowledge Marama Fox because Marama and I have been talking about this a long time—not just since the select committee but before that as well. Marama took an interest in this and wanted to be informed. That meant that when we came back from the select committee and we were not satisfied with the result, Marama was ready to pick up her role as part of one of the Government’s support parties. Of course that was always where we knew we had an opportunity—to work with our friends in the Māori Party to make sure that we could pull together around this House a majority of parties that wanted to eliminate zero-hour contracts.

I want to acknowledge Peter Dunne for noticing when we had a lot to say about this after the select committee process, and for starting to question why it was that the Opposition was not happy with the legislation in its form as it came back from the select committee.

I want to acknowledge the Minister, because when we did come back from the select committee, and when there was clear opposition to the way the legislation was written, and when it was clear that we needed something much stronger, the Minister did reach out and for the last fortnight or so we have been working together to get this legislation into its final form where it truly could be a victory for working people. So, thank you, Minister, for being prepared to do that work, and thank you, Minister, for making officials available so that all the amendments that went up were properly drafted and were able to contribute to a good piece of legislation.

Minister, I want to say that I understand your predicament. I understand why you want to tone this one down a little bit, and why you want to perhaps suggest that these are minor changes. I must admit to being a little bit nervous myself about whether or not this would get through the National caucus. We perhaps wanted to just keep things toned down whilst things were a bit delicate as well. But, Minister, it is true that this is a significant change and is a significant turn-round in this legislation. We took this legislation from a bill that entrenched zero-hour contracts and turned it into a bill that eliminates zero-hour contracts. I do not know what planet you would have to be on to call that a minor change. That is a significant change and workers out there across New Zealand recognise that that is a significant change. We should celebrate the fact that this is not minor; this is significant. That is why everybody wants to be on board this bus; that is why everybody wants to be part of this celebration, because working New Zealanders are considerably better off as a result of this legislation.

I think what has happened in the last couple of weeks has been a very good example to people of how the next Government is going to work. Not only is the next Government going to stand up for working people, not only is the next Government going to fight when it sees injustices being done to working people, but the next Government is also going to work very, very hard to significantly improve the lives of working people. We are going to do that by being absolutely staunch in our values, by not being prepared to give an inch when it comes to the things that really matter to us and really matter to working people, and also by being able to work with parties around the Parliament to get real change. That is how the next Government is going to work. I think what people have seen over the last little while is a very good example of the way the Andrew Little - Labour-led Government is going to work in the interests of all working people.

I do just want to very quickly remind the House what this legislation does and why it is so important. Obviously, the bit that I have focused on is zero-hour contracts. It means that working people will no longer have to sit at home waiting for a phone call, desperately waiting to know whether or not they are going to get work. People are going to be more likely, after this legislation is passed, to have guaranteed hours. It means that they know what their income is going to be, it means that they can plan ahead in their lives, it means they can go to the bank and ask for a loan, and it means that they can go and buy a TV or a fridge or a bed on hire purchase and know that they are going to be able to make the repayments.

It also means that people are going to be able to live a decent life, because they are going to be able to know when they can have a life outside of work. That is important: to be able to have a life outside of work, to be able to join sports clubs, to be able to go to your kids’ school and see them playing sport, or being in a play, or see their assembly. It is important to be able to do the things that ordinary working people ought to be able to take for granted. Those were the things that people on zero-hour contracts could not do. That is why we had to get rid of them. That is why it is such an important change for working people.

But I also want to acknowledge the aspects of paid parental leave that, let us face it, are in the legislation because of the advocacy of the Labour Party and of Sue Moroney and of the wider labour movement. So we are pleased to see that in the legislation as well. We are pleased to see the improvements to employment standards as well, so that rogue employers will be far more heavily penalised if they see fit to flout the law. As I have said, this is a day for celebration, for the labour movement, for this House, and for New Zealand as a whole. After this law is passed, zero-hour contracts are history in New Zealand, and that is a fine thing.

Thank you for the opportunity. I rise in support of this legislation. All facets of this legislation support the employee: the paid parental leave aspect, the enforcement rules, and, of course, the elimination of the on-call feature of zero-hour contracts.

The Opposition members think they are the only ones who care about the employee. This legislation demonstrates that this side of the House, under the leadership and initiative of Minister Woodhouse, does care about the employee. Alongside increasing minimum wages, alongside voting for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we are a party that supports jobs. We support the employee.

With regard to zero-hour contracts, which were the case, the issue was about reciprocity within the existing law. There was not an appropriate balance between what the employee and the employer had in that relationship. It was really around the consideration that the employer was giving to the employee for the services that the employee was making available, in the giving of hours available to that employer. This balance has been rectified. The balance is much more fair. There is adequate consideration for the service that the employee now gives to the employer, and that is through the call feature that is still there. Employers can still have an employee on call, but, of course, now there must be reasonable justification or, in fact, certain justification, with reasonable consideration. That is all in new section 67E(3), inserted by clause 87 of the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. Those two conditions must be met before anyone can be on call. That, to me, is the nexus of this legislation.

There are considerations inside the legislation—some guidance to the employer and employee when they need to consider what is reasonable. The proportion of hours is one of those things. Where an employee has been given only minimum guaranteed hours, say, of half an hour per week in the extreme example, but is expected to be on call for the other 39 hours, then you would expect that reasonable consideration to be much larger than if the situation was more balanced. It is good that this legislation has those considerations inside it, to give guidance to the employer and the employee. That reciprocity, that balancing of consideration, is also there in new section 67G, inserted by clause 87 of the original bill, which relates to the cancellation of shifts. Of course, it is only fair that if an employee turns up and, having been given very little notice or no notice of cancellation, that adequate and fair and reasonable consideration should be given.

This is very good legislation. It is fantastic legislation for the employee, in all respects. I thank and note and acknowledge the collaboration across parties, as other speakers have done before me. I commend this legislation to the House.

I rise to take the first call for the Greens on the final reading of the legislation arising from the Employment Standards Legislation Bill—it has now been split into five different, separate pieces of legislation. Today is a very rare day in politics. For a lot of the time in this House we focus on worthwhile but actually quite mundane work. We make incremental changes. We change things bit by bit, shift things, and try to make things better. But today is the day where we actually stand united in the House to introduce real change that will make a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers across New Zealand. But make no mistake—this is only the start of a campaign for fair pay and decent conditions across New Zealand. Yes, we have dragged National, kicking and screaming, into outlawing zero-hour contracts, but there are more battles to fight.

This victory, to end zero-hour contracts, was won by three main factors—the leadership shown by ordinary people, through the union movement; the democratic dividend, caused by MMP and through the select committee process; and, last but not least, the fundamental decency of New Zealand people and the fact that we all believe in a fair go. I salute the coalition of people who got us here—a coalition led by ordinary working people, through the union movement, that has led to this point where we are banning zero-hour contracts.

I would like to acknowledge the Unite union for leading the campaign and making those massive changes, through bargaining, in the restaurant sector. I would like to acknowledge the other unions that participated as well—FIRST Union, E tū, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, the Public Service Association, and, of course, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, as well as countless other people who had the bravery to stand up, tell their stories, and lobby for change. The struggle is never easy, but when we get a day like today it is definitely worth it.

The story here is a story typical of New Zealand politics. It is the story of the community driving change. There has always been power in the union movement since the inception of the union movement with the Tolpuddle martyrs through to this campaign against zero-hour contracts. People have mobilised in this country to make change, whether it was to introduce the 8-hour working day, to abolish child labour, or to make New Zealand nuclear-free. Ordinary men and women have made those changes and fought for a better place, and we have been proud as Greens to stand alongside and support the union movement in the struggle for social justice. We have supported unions and our MPs have sponsored legislation like that abolishing youth rates under the last Labour Government, and we will continue to support unions today in the fight for dignity at work and fair pay.

Although unions are responsible for creating the public pressure in this victory, it is MMP that saved us from the Government’s legislation, which would have seen the sanctioning of zero-hour contracts. I have had my fair share of disagreements with Mr Dunne, but I applaud him for digging in. I also praise the Māori Party for standing up for its principles and forcing National to accept many of the changes that we proposed, along with Labour’s Iain Lees-Galloway and New Zealand First, during the select committee process and outlined in the minority report. And although we celebrate the success we have all won today, we still have a long way to go.

We have outlawed zero-hour contracts, but the reality is that there is still a lot that we have to do around insecure work. The 2013 New Zealand Council of Trade Unions report Under Pressure: A Detailed Report into Insecure Work in New Zealand outlined the sad reality that we have over 635,000 people in insecure work, 95,000 workers with no usual work time, 61,000 with no written employment agreement, 573,000 workers earning less than the living wage, and almost a quarter of a million Kiwi people saying that they have experienced discrimination, harassment, or bullying at work. That same report outlined five recommendations to fix it: stronger legal protections to prevent insecure work, improved income support mechanisms for insecure workers, support for the living wage, Government procurement to promote decent work, and union campaigns and bargaining to get secure work.

We have made some progress on the first one, but there are lots and lots that we have to do and, in fact, we have gone backwards in the last 7 years in some of the other areas. Yes, we applaud National’s backdown on this legislation, but let us not kid ourselves about the nature of this Government. Under the Key Government National has passed legislation that has made it harder for unions to organise. It has made it harder for working people. And let us not forget the Hobbit bill, written for Hollywood executives to target unionising in the film industry; the Health and Safety Reform Bill, which classified worm farms as higher risk than dairy farms; and of course the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, which took away tea breaks and weakened—absolutely weakened—the ability for working people to organise and for their unions to bargain.

This combined with the fact that the highest third of our population have seen their pay rates increase by eight times as much as the lowest third makes me cynical about where National’s heart truly lies when it comes to ordinary working people. But I am always willing to keep an open mind. I hope that the passage of these bills is the start of a genuine programme of engagement by National to actually serve the interests, the best interests, of New Zealanders—all New Zealanders, not just their rich mates.

I think I will start to close off now by again paying tribute to the courage and the conviction and the hard work of the hundreds and thousands of ordinary people who have made this success possible. I think we need to remember that whatever law we pass, even this one, is not a panacea. Exploitative bosses will continue to exploit. Yes, in this legislation we have increased fines—in the Wages Protection Amendment Bill. However, those fines depend on, firstly, investigation, and, secondly, on court action, and individual working people will find that very hard to pursue. Vulnerable working people on their own in their workplaces find it hard to access that.

The only protection that working people can rely on consistently is their unions. If we want to build fairness in the workplace, we need them. If we do believe in fairness, we need them. I encourage every New Zealander to get behind the unions in their workplaces, because it does and it will make a difference. We can celebrate today but we have got a lot more to do. But I commend this legislation to the House.

I would like to start my contribution today with a heavy heart, by sending the Melgren family my sincerest heartfelt condolences on the loss of a great man, Peter Melgren, who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly this morning in Tauranga. We are thinking of him and his wife, Troye; his children, Chontelle and Sheldon; and his brother, Philip. He has been a pillar of our community for many, many years. He was involved in the Tauranga City Council for 30 years and was recently the Mount Mainstreet manager. He will be greatly missed.

I stand with pride also today to speak to the legislation arising from the Employment Standards Legislation Bill and also—something that I have not done a lot of in my last 18 months of being in Parliament—to actually commend the bills to the House, in full support. It was a fantastic feeling, going through the Committee of the whole House on Tuesday and seeing the solidarity right around the Chamber. I just have to say that that was certainly something very, very good. We would certainly like to see more of that.

I do think, however, we have got a failure to communicate, which we saw last week when, to my shock and many others’ surprise, we heard Labour come out and support the legislation, despite there being no amendments made in the select committee being brought through. It made me stop in my tracks because we did, as Mr Iain Lees-Galloway said, together write up the minority report showing the solidarity of opposition, and the comment that comes to mind is: “We cannot support what amounts to a broken promise of working New Zealanders.”

This Government, let us be honest, has had many broken promises over the year—in fact, I brought a folder full of broken promises—so it was a big shock to New Zealand First, and to myself, when we thought: “Oh no, what’s going on here?”. But it was that failure to communicate, an obligation that we saw of this Government to approach New Zealand First and all Opposition parties to involve them in discussions and conversations. I leave it at this point, purely just saying that we are happy with the outcome, but I think it needs to be brought to the attention of the House that if you are talking about an open, transparent Government that is working for the best outcomes of all, then you really need to have that bipartisan approach with all members of Parliament.

It does make me, also, talk about the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee process where we saw the lines being drawn and the fight being given to try to get this resolved, when it came to zero-hour contracts, and yet at times it was like butting our heads up against the wall because the members of the Government were not wanting to rock the boat; they were wanting to keep it straight and steady. That I would like to see changed in the future so that we can actually have open, genuine dialogue where you can have an opinion on it and you can challenge your own party’s position to put something forward that is going to be for the betterment of New Zealanders. This is an example of exactly that, where we had to go out of the select committee to correct something—that was inherently wrong.

I was also a little bit embarrassed as a politician on Tuesday night when I saw on the news members of parties who were squawking and fluffing up their feathers, trying to take what they saw as their role in fixing up this problem. It is no wonder that New Zealanders sometimes hold politicians in such low regard, when we see this sort of sanctimonious pomp and self-imposed importance—where we saw members of parties thinking that they were eagles flying above our heads when they actually need to realise they need to come back down to Earth, get real, and realise they are turkeys like everybody else. We have got a job to do, we are public servants, and we are there to come out with the best possible outcomes for New Zealand and New Zealanders.

That aside, this bill is a fantastic bill. There is, probably, one main area that I will spend some time talking on, which I see as a flaw that will need to be fixed. I believe that with support from around the parties in this House we will resolve that, and that is around casual employment contracts.

This bill, though, does address the imbalance that we have had in this country for many years where employees are held back by some employers—not all. I know a majority of businesses operate and have always continued to operate in a professional manner with their employees, and have treated themselves and their workers as equals. This bill brings back the balance in that relationship. You cannot have any relationship, whether it be a sporting one, a personal relationship, or otherwise, if there is a power struggle between one person with more than the other. This bill addresses that and brings that balance into line.

Casual employment agreements do have a place in a modern workplace, and the Minister himself did actually come out at the Committee of the whole House and make that very, very clear—that a casual employment agreement, if dealt with correctly, is going to make up a large part of employment agreements around the country. We heard from submitters, many thousands of submitters—12,260 in total who took the time out of their day to submit—and hundreds of them who came in specifically to talk to us. I can only talk about one in particular, and this was a professional lawyer. When we talk about vulnerable workers, we think of uneducated people, but here we had an educated lawyer who was a mother who was struggling under a casual employment agreement to get enough hours and enough certainty in her workplace to give her a quality of life that we would expect somebody of that education to be able to handle.

Conversely, I had conversations with other people in similar situations, with another lawyer, in fact, who was on a casual employment agreement. It suited her to be virtually on call, as and when required—the difference being that there was a need for work by one person, who was a young mother, and the other was a semi-retired lawyer who, really, just did it as and when she felt. So the balance was naturally there. But when the balance is not naturally there, you do find that people on casual employment agreements can find themselves in a vulnerable situation where they are begging, almost, for the scraps of time from their employer to get work done. There is no incentive for the employer to actually get this person on to fixed employment—whether it be part-time or full time or on a contract basis. There is no incentive whatsoever.

What New Zealand First strongly proposes, and it is supported by the Greens and Labour—and we would like to see some support across—is to get a casual loading system for casual employment agreements. It works very, very well in Australia. The proposal is a 19 percent loading on a casual employment agreement, to incentivise the employer, because it is costing them more, to get that employee off the casual hours and on to fixed, part-time, or full-time hours.

How that 19 percent was broken down was 1.6 percent for bereavement and sickness leave. Of course, in a normal agreement you are not entitled to those until you have been working for 6 months, so that would be a loading. Then you have got 4.4 percent of statutory holidays, which part-time and full-time employees have the benefit of, so that would be considered a loading. So that is a total of 6 percent. Then we added 5 percent for the employee, to say: “You’re casual; we want to give you a bonus for that.”—and that comes to 11 percent. And then, of course, the 8 percent that is an entitlement to all workers. So we are talking, in actual fact, about 11 percent. When I asked the Minister the question of what this Government is proposing to do for casual employees, he obfuscated and passed the buck to Jonathan Young, the chair of our committee, for him to stand up and give me an address on that and an answer.

I was a little bit shocked because all I got was the Supplementary Order Paper read back to us verbatim and the statement that they cannot support this because there is no incentive for the employer to take them off that, because you are only talking about a small amount of a boost and that would not be enough to take people off that. I was shocked. I said: “Well, why don’t you make it 25 percent?”. I did scream that across the House, so it may not be picked up in Hansard. The reality is we need to address that, and I hope we get some cross-party support as we go further through this year.

Paid parental leave was fantastic—16 to 18 weeks. We would like to see that further increased, out to 26 weeks. There is much better enforcement in this new legislation. The inability for employers to take deductions out of wages has been removed. It is a much clearer, much more open and transparent employment agreement, and we do commend this legislation to the House. Thank you.

I am happy to take a very brief call in the third readings of this legislation and just say to members that it is amazing how, with the passage of time, much that was once considered almost not even thinkable becomes the norm. When I grew up, in the workforce, very early on, the idea of paid parental leave would have been a complete—well, you would not have even thought of it. I have got three fantastic kids. They are all adopted, so I did not even get the enjoyment part of it; I just got the kids, and the spending part of it. I did not get any of the money from the Government, or anyone else, for bringing them up.

But I accept fully that the world moves on. I accept that the Government has made quite a few changes—in fact, I think we have gone from 14 to 16 weeks of paid parental leave, and then, on 1 April this year, there will be 18 weeks of paid parental leave. That is just the way the world is moving. That is just the way other countries are going, and I have to accept that I am a dinosaur and living in the olden days—thinking that everyone should look after their own costs and pay their own way. I accept that; I fully accept it. I am happy to put it down on the record—in Hansard—dinosaur; there you go. But I also think that some of the flexibility that has been brought into the paid parental leave—so, you know, the identification of who was the primary caregiver and under what circumstances you could have variations, and so on—is important, and that is done.

I come to the next one, which is zero-hour contracts, and, again, I thought I was a dinosaur on this one, and then I realised I had misunderstood what was meant. When I worked in the aviation industry, and particularly in America, there were lots and lots of women—mainly—who had zero-hour contracts with the airlines to be flight attendants. And they actually loved it, because they did not have to take the call when it came; they did not have to be available. They could work at a florist, or whatever, but one day they would get a call asking whether they wanted to do a New York run, and they would say: “Hey, why not?”.

And that is what I thought zero-hour contracts were. And then I realised that they have got a more sinister element. That sinister element is: you will not be able to work for anyone else, and you will be sitting at home, by the phone, waiting for me to call you, and if I do not, you will not get paid, but if you work for anybody else, you breach the contract. That is just complete madness. That is simply, completely, and utterly mad. If you are going to hold someone’s time in your hand, then you have to pay for it, unless you say to them: “I’ll call you up, and if you’re free, and you’d like to come and do a few hours, good on you, but if you’re not available, or you don’t answer the call, that’s fine. I’ve got five or six people on my list, and I can phone around.” I would actually like to have that, say, in my electorate office—have two or three people whom I could call up from time to time and ask “Would you be able to do some covering hours on Friday, because one of my permanent staff is going to a meeting?”, or whatever.

So I think it is really good that this legislation addresses what I think is quite a pernicious element that says: “We’ll hold you in our hand. We’ll lock you in from any other employment.” By the way, you actually could do it with someone you did not like. You could say “I’ll lock you into a contract. You can’t work for anybody else.”, and then never give them any hours, which is just wrong. And so I congratulate all of the parties on getting this.

I think I have pretty much expired my time here, so I am just going to say—the last thing to try to do was enforce labour laws. I am a big fan of, if you have got laws—and there are rules about what makes up a good employer—that you actually enforce them. I am not a big fan of all the laws that we have got. I think some of them are way too Draconian and way too over the top, but I am a fan of, if they are on the books and they were passed by this Parliament, those rules being enforced. This legislation goes a long way to improving the enforcement, so I support this bill in all of its phases.

He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. What is the most important thing in this world? It is people, it is people, it is people. I want to congratulate all those thousands of working New Zealanders who independently or, more often, through their union shared their stories, and managed to claw back a modicum of dignity for themselves and other working New Zealanders. Achieving, in this legislation, the elimination of zero-hour contracts in this country and the extension of paid parental leave is something to celebrate. It is something for the people that has been achieved by the people. And it is an incredible honour to speak in this third reading of these bills and to see this passed into law.

Work is a contribution to our society that should be valued, but for all too many New Zealanders, work is a place where they feel undervalued and exploited. The consequence of that is that all too many people in this country are struggling to pay their rent. They are having problems even paying for the petrol to put in their cars to get to work, or, when their car breaks down, to be able to keep their bike in condition to be able to get to work. People in this country are struggling to put food on the table to feed themselves and their kids. That is the consequence of our current legal environment and how out of balance in favour of employers it is. This bill will, sadly, not fix that problem, but it will, and it does, claw back a modicum of dignity and set that standard just that little bit higher, and is a recognition of the importance of dignity in work and the value and importance of people being properly remunerated and enabled to have some stability in their lives.

There were 12,000 submissions on the original bill. People care, people fought for this, and it is a wonderful moment to see this House listening to the people. Alongside this and prior to this was Sue Moroney’s Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill for 26 weeks’ paid parental leave, on which there were 3,809 submissions calling for extended paid parental leave. Actually, only 3,795 were calling for that, but it was an overwhelming call from the people of New Zealand to look after our families, to give that support to our families. It is fantastic that although the Government painfully—oh so painfully—resisted delivering on the bill that was in front of the House last term, the call of the people and the fight of the people have won out in the provisions that were delivered in this legislation, where we see paid parental leave extended to more workers, so casual and seasonal workers will now be eligible for paid parental leave. It will be provided to primary caregivers, which will include the ability for foster and whāngai parents to be able to take paid parental leave, a reflection of our society in legislation—about time.

This legislation will also provide extra paid parental leave, which Sue fought so hard to get and for which all the evidence was there, for families who have babies born before 37 weeks. So this legislation is going to make a real-life difference to our families. The zero-hour contract aspect will have a particular impact for many of our children, because so many families are headed by sole parents, 84-plus percent of whom are women, who we know are far more likely to be in part-time and casualised work. This is something for them, and the Green Party is so proud to be able to give our respects to the workers who have fought and delivered this for the country. It is a start that we should be proud of.

Marama Fox—a 5-minute call.

E Te Mana Whakawā, nei te mihi atu ki a koe, e Te Whare i tēnei rangi, harerūia, harerūia.

[I acknowledge you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the House today; hallelujah and glory.]

It started last night, and it carries on today. I am proud to stand and take a call on this legislation, and I want to acknowledge Iain Lees-Galloway. He is right—and he was quite generous in his speech to the House—to recognise the combined efforts. In Māori we have a saying that says: Mā pango, mā whero ka oti ai te mahi. Pango, whero, in this case, kahurangi, kākāriki, pango anō kei reira, atu i te kōwhai, kua ea tēnei pire.

[Through black and red, the job will be done. Through black and red, and in this case blue and green, and black again is there beside yellow, and this bill has been fulfilled.]

This is a collaborative effort, and, in fact, we have to recognise that this is more than just a whole-of-Government response to the rights and the security of workers in this country; in fact, it is a whole-of-population response. Our country, our people, our workers, have come out and said “We need to have security for ourselves and our families.”

At this point, I just want to acknowledge the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety. The Minister has worked with our officials—and our officials in our office have gone back and forward and back and forward through many phone calls and discussions—and the Minister himself has been flexible. He has recognised that there is a duty of care for workers in this country, and he has made the changes necessary to protect workers through guaranteed hours and through adequate compensation for work. So I want to recognise him for doing that, and also the pressure that was brought to bear by the collective efforts of the people in this House and our nation.

Those collective efforts ensure that workers are paid adequately in the workplace—well, given guaranteed hours, actually; they all need a pay rise—but we want to recognise paid parental leave and the efforts of Sue Moroney to bring this into the legislation. But we also had been advocating for whāngai parents, who had not, until now, been recognised. They now have the ability, at the most pivotal time of a child’s life, to stay home. There is a quote that I use often, which I firmly believe in, that the most important work we will ever do is within the four walls of our own home, and that no worldly success can compensate for failure in the home.

This legislation has seen the extension of paid parental leave from 16 weeks to 18 weeks. We would like to see it go further, to 26 weeks, but it now has extended to ensure that the tikanga of whāngai is being recognised. Here the National Government has again accepted that a principle of tikanga—a kaupapa Māori principle—can be accounted for inside the law, so I want to acknowledge the National Government for that.

Before I finish—and I am not going to take too much more time—I want to acknowledge the efforts of the Council of Trade Unions, which has continually come and discussed things in a productive way with us, not bringing any pressure to bear. We have checked things off with it as we have gone along as well, and so I want to acknowledge the council for the way in which it has conducted conversations with us about the parts that it was concerned about in this legislation.

It is with great happiness, actually, that I stand to take a call to support this legislation, recognising the efforts of the Minister, recognising the efforts of the Opposition parties—specifically Mr Lees-Galloway—and also of all of the members of this House and our nation. Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā.

You have to say that today is really a good day. I think what we are discussing with these bills arising from the Employment Standards Legislation Bill is truly a very important piece of legislation and a credit to everyone in the House. But at times I have listened to some of the speeches and wondered whether, in fact, everyone on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and I certainly was a member of that—actually participated in this select committee consideration, because I think there have been a lot of contributions in that select committee, not only from the officials, who were very helpful in working through the various issues in this legislation, but also in a general way and as a forum for discussing many of these positions that we finally ended up with in this legislation. I want to acknowledge everyone on the select committee, and certainly my colleagues, who I do not think have been acknowledged properly, because I think that through genuine discussion we actually have arrived at a great place for New Zealand workers.

I think, just in the migration of the discussion of this legislation as it passed through the select committee, it has been an interesting transition, particularly from an employer’s perspective, because most employers do understand what is right and what is wrong. We had a number of submissions from employers who certainly had issues with what are termed zero-hour contracts, and we heard those submissions and respected those and listened to them very carefully, just as we heard the position of the unions, which were also very thoughtful in their deliberations. So I think—as a former employer myself—where we have arrived with the legislation is that we have ended up with something that is pragmatic, is fair, and, actually, is very useful in terms of achieving an outcome that will help both businesses and employees. I think the key question of this is how we treat our employees, particularly. There were certain circumstances where they were unfairly disadvantaged, and the rules that we have put in place around that deal with those and go to the heart of it.

But I just wanted to remind the House that there are still occasions when casual employment arrangements are fair, are appropriate, and are required by the contractors who are seeking those types of arrangements. So although we have made substantial changes and improvements to the zero-hour contract aspect for employees, where we have arrived at also caters for the flexibility that both employers and employees or contractors require. So I just want to thank everyone, and I also thank the Minister for the way he has driven this legislation through the House. I think, just paraphrasing Mahatma Gandhi, that the culture of a country is demonstrated in the way we treat our people. I think where we have ended up with this legislation is the right thing to do, and I am very proud to be associated with it. It is a good day in Parliament. Thank you very much.

It is a pleasure—a real pleasure this time, actually—to rise and speak on the third reading of this legislation, which actually started out being called the Employment Standards Legislation Bill, and anyone listening to that title would have thought: “What on earth is that all about?”. Well, it turned out that it was about people’s basic rights: people’s ability to actually have dignity at work, people’s ability to have time to spend with their families, and people’s ability to focus on their children and help them to get the best start in life. Those are some very basic requirements for what should be people’s happy and fulfilling lives but, sadly, in this House we have become so used to debating things that actually take away from people and that actually diminish people in their place in the world that, yes, we are feeling somewhat relieved to be able to celebrate this victory today.

And it is a victory. It is a triumph of democratic participation, and that is the thing that I feel most moved by with what we have achieved here today, because it is through people working collectively in their large organisations, like unions, down to individual people coming along and making a difference, and everything in between that has made this work. We in this Parliament could be used to doing things in this fashion much more if we had a progressive Government that was listening to the people more frequently and understanding what the issues were, because it should not be an infrequent victory for us to be able to do the right thing by New Zealand people. It should not be that we, as members of Parliament, feel that this is almost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Parliament to come together and do the right thing in such a common-sense way and in a way that actually improves people’s lives. Today I think people are getting a glimpse of the Government-in-waiting. They are able to see that a Labour-led Government under Andrew Little—who started off this debate for the Labour Party—will be able to lead and will make sure that the issues that really matter to people’s day-to-day lives are addressed. And Labour will work with a range of other parties, some of which we are used to dealing with.

And I want to thank all the parties that have worked with us in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to achieve what we have been able to achieve together over the previous months—and also parties that we are not so used to working with. I want to acknowledge Iain Lees-Galloway, who has done a magnificent job in leading the fight for getting absolutely rid of zero-hour contracts—not just tolerating them and moving around the edges with them but completely getting rid of them. That is the work that has been led by Iain Lees-Galloway and, in order to do that, he has been working with the National Party, and I have been giving him a little bit of gyp about that from time to time. But, hey, he just has to remind me that in order to actually increase paid parental leave, I have been working with the ACT Party, and I quite quickly remember that it is all a matter of degree.

But it is worth it because it makes a real difference in terms of people’s lives, and that is certainly what I came here to this House to do and I know that that is what my Labour colleagues came here to do, as well. The zero-hour contracts and the fact that they will no longer exist in New Zealand is a big victory. I think zero-hour contracts continue to hamper workers internationally, and no one has yet found a solution. I think we have found a solution. I think that here, in little old Aotearoa New Zealand, we have found a solution. It sounds pretty simple, and Minister Michael Woodhouse wants to diminish its importance, but workers now have to have guaranteed hours of work before they can be required to make themselves available for this type of work. It is a substantial movement.

For the Labour Party, we were not prepared to put our name to this legislation until that occurred, because the guaranteeing of minimum hours of work will make a big difference for all manner of workers. I stand here as the mother of teenaged children who are about to enter the workforce—I hope—and for me, knowing that they have that security makes a big difference to how I feel about them making their way in that part of the world. But it is not just young people. It is women—women who have worked for many, many years and who are very expert in their roles who have been exposed to and subjected to zero-hour contracts. It is migrant workers who have been subjected to zero-hour contracts, and it has increasingly been going into other areas. We had a lawyer come along to our select committee and tell us about her experience of being expected to be on a zero-hour contract. She put herself through that training and gained that knowledge and that qualification, only to find that zero-hour contracts were the only thing on offer for her.

So it is substantial and it is significant, but the story I really want to talk about is the very good extension to paid parental leave that has occurred under this legislation. I want to thank the 26 for Babies coalition, because it has worked relentlessly on this issue and it will continue to work relentlessly on this issue until we do achieve 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. But some of the measures that have ended up happening in this legislation are because of its work. Large organisations like Plunket and Barnados, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, and many other trade unions in this country have contributed to that debate and led that debate.

But it is also about what a difference one woman can make. Actually, the idea of having additional support for families where a baby is born pre-term came from a simple submission that was made on a bill that went through Parliament last year in my name. It was the submission of a woman by the name of Donnelle Belanger-Taylor. She came along to our select committee and she simply told her story. I say “simply” but actually I looked around the room after she told her story and I do not think there was a dry eye in that room, and that included the officials, and that takes some doing. But she was just talking about her life. She talked about the pressures on her when she gave birth to twins, and she had another young child as well. So she had three young children under the age of 5, two of whom were new entrants into the world. They were twins, and she through financial circumstances had to go back to work when they were 5 months old. She talked about what her day looked like. That is the simple story she told; that is what had us in tears. It was about being completely and utterly sleep deprived, being up feeding one twin or the other and then taking public transport to her job the next morning. Well, no—it was taking public transport to an early childhood education facility to drop her twins off, and then getting on public transport and getting to work, and then on three occasions through the day going back to feed those twins, getting back to work, finishing at the end of the day exhausted, getting on the train, going home again, and then going through the exercise all over again—for 5 days of the week. It was her submission that kept me awake at night.

It made me think about whether, on the off-chance, my bill did not proceed all the way though its final stages, and that if I got the opportunity to amend it, it was this group of families that I would work to support. I took an amendment like that to this House last February, in 2015. I really thought it was going to get the full support of the whole House because it was so affordable and it made so much sense. Sadly, on that occasion the National Government let us down. It voted against that very small measure. However, subsequently, after a lot of lobbying and a lot of campaigning, Government members have found it in their hearts to finally come good on this issue, and I thank them for doing that.

But I want to say to the voters out there in the public listening to this debate, let us just cut out the middle man. Let us just cut out the middle man in these sorts of debates. We could get progress much sooner, much faster, with a Labour-led Government being supported by a range of other parties in this Parliament, and the parents of babies born pre-term in the last 14 months could have had this measure. They could have already had additional paid parental leave if it was not for politics being played over their lives. Today we have learnt—I hope we have learnt—as a House how to stop playing politics with people’s lives and simply get on with it. I am going to continue to push for 26 weeks of paid parental leave for all families who are eligible for paid parental leave, and I hope that the Government will do what we have exhibited today, and come on side with that; not play politics, not threaten to use its financial veto, but do the right thing for families because it is the right thing to do. I want the Government to take a lesson from what this side of the House has been able to do in this instance in order to do the right thing for New Zealanders.

It is a pleasure to round off this debate with a brief call on the legislation arising from the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. I do want to echo the sentiments of all of my colleagues from around the House that this is momentous legislation. It is very good legislation, and it supports good employment practices in New Zealand.

I have only a short amount of time but I did want to focus on the outlawing of zero-hour contracts as we once knew them. There were employers who are abusing the privilege or the flexibility that was supposed to be afforded through those contracts, by holding people almost to ransom in their employment and not allowing them to seek supplementary work to help them, obviously, have a good lifestyle and do the things they should be able to do in a fair New Zealand. So it is wonderful that this legislation is prohibiting that and putting some minimum standards around what is and what is not allowed—to still allow flexibility but allow people decent employment practices that are fair and reasonable.

I talked during the Committee of the whole House about paid parental leave. Ms Moroney holds herself out to be an advocate, and she is, but there is also support on this side of the House to extend paid parental leave and all the great things that go along with that to support the bonding between parent and baby, or primary carer and baby. We will do that in a fiscally responsible way as we manage different and competing priorities throughout the portfolios that this Government has. But let us not lose sight of the fact that this is Government legislation. It was introduced by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, who saw an issue and wanted it rectified.

So with that, I thank the submitters for their time when they came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to talk to us. I want to thank the officials for their advice and their patience with us. I thank the select committee. We took the time to listen to the submitters. I thought it was very well chaired. Finally, I want to thank the Minister, who had the will to bring this legislation into the House and to take advice from all of his peers and put this in a form that is acceptable to everybody around this House. This is good legislation. It entrenches good employment practices in New Zealand. It is fair and I am very pleased to support it.

Bills read a third time.