Employment Relations Law Reform Bill

The vote on those schedules is surely indicative, is it not? If this country in, say, 12 months’ time was so foolish as to vote for Labour, what we would actually get is a Labour-Green-Māori coalition Government. That is the kind of coalition we would get, because that is exactly what those votes would represent. What is more interesting is that the Green Party and the Māori Party have tried to push Labour even more to the left—than Margaret Wilson has. So we just know as an absolute fact that a Labour-Green-Māori coalition would be fundamentally a more left-wing Government. That is the real prospect facing our country.

In contrast, all the parties running from the centre through to the right are voting for a sensible approach and growth. I have to note that United Future did actually give a common-sense vote today—it is a fairly rare event, I might add. That is the big political contest that faces this country in relation to these crucial issues. Employment relations is one of those fundamental divides. One believes either in giving unions more and more preferences whenever and wherever possible or in equality and choice in the workplace, so that everyone is treated equally in negotiations.

It is interesting, is it not? National has put a real stake in the ground around the point and principle of equality. That has appealed deeply to New Zealanders. Dr Brash is telling New Zealand to extend that principle across the totality of New Zealand life—not just in the area of race relations but across all aspects of our nation’s life. In the area of employment, we want people to be treated equally. We want the 1.7 million workers—the 80 percent of New Zealander workers—who have chosen not to be in unions to be treated exactly the same as unionists. What could possibly be wrong with that principle of equality? What could possibly be wrong with that? Yet this Government, aided by its Green Party and Māori Party lackeys, is saying no to that basic proposition. That has to be a tremendously dangerous signal to New Zealand.

In the last 3 weeks, strikes either have been threatened or have happened in crucial transport sectors—Air New Zealand tomorrow and Ports of Auckland just 3 weeks ago. We just know for a fact that the unions will target the vulnerable sectors of our economy. We are uniquely dependent on exports. A greater percentage of our economy is devoted to primary exports than in any other developed country. The unions know that. For many, many years they had feather-bedded, cushioned provisions in those key industries. That held back New Zealand enormously, and the Minister knows the truth of that. For three decades we had lower growth than any other OECD country. It was a fool’s paradise. The crunch came in the 1980s. All of that was stripped out over the next succeeding 15 years, and this country has had the benefits. We have had higher growth. The Government itself has benefited from that growth.

I am delighted to take a call in this debate on the title of the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill. All I can say is that that title is not even close to what it should be. It should really be something along the lines of: “How do we find the mechanism to get money out of the workers and fund it through the union movement, so that it can help Labour with its election campaign coffers?”.

Hon David Cunliffe: That’s unworthy.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: No, that is exactly what it is. I say to Mr Cunliffe, who is the man more hated by his colleagues than any other member in this House, that had the National Party ever been passing legislation through this House late at night and had the Business Roundtable—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but interjections should be rare, reasonable, and relevant—or witty if possible. I invite members to look up Speakers’ ruling 56/1.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: There is no chance of any of those three coming from Mr Cunliffe. Had the National Party been passing legislation late at night and had the Business Roundtable or Business New Zealand been sitting out in the back room, the Labour Party absolutely would have been waging war about that. I ask members to look at who is pulling Labour’s strings, and to look at who is the driving force behind the Labour Government. Of course, National was absolutely never prepared to have that. It never happened, and never would under a National Government, because we made our own decisions. Who was skulking around in the lobbies, just straight through the wall in the little briefing rooms, and acting as an adviser, we are now told?

Brian Connell: Who?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Ross Wilson, the head of the Council of Trade Unions, that is who.

Brian Connell: He wasn’t allowed here.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: No, I did not think he was allowed in here, either. We have had an interesting ruling from the Speaker that the Minister or the Minister in the chair who is running a bill has the right to have whomever he or she wants in the precincts of Parliament. There are some phenomenal implications for that. Let us imagine if, when the Prostitution Reform Bill was going through, we had had some prostitutes in the back room giving the Minister advice. What sort of a headline would that have given this Parliament?

But, no, Ross Wilson was sitting out the back string-pulling: “This is what we need in the Labour movement.” What they want, because this is the most important element of this bill, is the pseudo-compulsion of joining a union and paying a bargaining fee. The sting in the tail is that if one does not want to join a union or pay a fee, but still wants to be a free member of society and just get on with one’s job, there is a second double-sting that says: “You don’t have to compulsorily join the union, and so on,”—that sounds good, except for one thing—“but you still have to pay money through the form of a bargaining fee.” If members have ever heard of: “We catch you if you go left; we catch you if you go right; we catch you, anyway” sort of trick, then that is what this bill is. Why? Well, the union coffers have to be built up with money. This has nothing to do with principle and nothing to do with workers having an individual say in their employment contracts.

At the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we heard, over and over again, the following comments from a plethora of really decent, honest, good employers. I will give members an example. A man called Bill Dalbeth runs the Howick bus company in my area, and he is a really nice man with a good family, who are well respected. They run their private bus company, and do it very well. If members were to go and have a talk to the employees of the Howick bus company they would be told that he is one of the best employers in the country. At the committee I asked him how many of his staff were unionised, and he said it was probably two-thirds. I asked him how he felt about that. He said that it would be easier for him if they were all unionised and he would be very comfortable if they joined up, but he respected their choice not to do so. So it is not like he is anti-union, because he told us that it would be easier if all his employees were unionised. I said to him: “After you’ve negotiated your collective agreement each time with those who are organised in the union, what do you do with the other third?”. He said: “Quite simply, we do not want a second class of citizen. We do not want to be accused of treating our staff in different ways. We just say to them: ‘Look, guys, this is what we’ve agreed to with the two-thirds who are unionised, and it’s the same for you. OK. Nothing different, nothing special, nothing extra.”

How sensible is that? Who would not support the right of employers to say that they did not want two classes of citizen or two standards for their employees? But this Minister says: “No, we’re not going to have that. If you’re in the union you can have a sweetheart deal but if you’re not, the only way you can get it is by paying a bargaining fee.”

The Green Party, as everyone knows—and it has been promoted by the National Party—is supporting this bill, which does lead to greater fairness for workers and employers in industrial relations. It will lead to much better relations in our society. One of the previous speakers—I think it was Wayne Mapp—said that unions will now target vulnerable sectors of our economy, such as the waterfront. He referred back to the recent industrial dispute involving waterfront workers and their employers. Well, that dispute was largely over the question of casualisation. As the proportion of the workforce that is employed full time on that work goes up and the casual sector goes down there will be better relations on the waterfront, because there will not be a volatile workforce. There will be a more stable workforce for employers, and everyone will be much happier. The more full time workers there are the more workers can satisfy the needs of themselves and their families, so that would be very much a step in the right direction.

I cannot quite understand what Maurice Williamson was saying. He said how unjust it is that the increases negotiated by unions do not have to be passed on to non-union people in the workplace. Well, I listen to the National Party sometimes talk about hard work—about people being rewarded for their hard work, and all the rest of it. If one allows—as existed prior to this amendment that is going through—the situation of freeloading, one has people who do nothing to help to improve their conditions, and yet they benefit by riding on the back of their fellow workers in the same enterprise. I do not see how the National Party can stand for that and still support the idea of people working and benefiting from their work.

The National Party goes on about the question of choice, and says that people have chosen not to join a union. Well, the fact of the matter is that during the period of the Employment Contracts Act the proportion of union members in the New Zealand workforce went down very dramatically. It has stabilised, and in some areas has come up, under the Employment Relations Act. But it is still at a very low level. One has to ask why New Zealand has such a low level of unionisation. I have just been to Norway and Sweden, which have a very high proportion—60 percent or something—of the workforce unionised. The reason for New Zealand’s low level of unionisation is that it has been hard, even under the Employment Relations Act sometimes, for unions to talk to workers and to try to get them to join the union. Of course, in a lot of workplaces, particularly the smaller ones, the employer can put quite strong pressure on people who might want to become union members, not to become union members. So as this bill better establishes good-faith bargaining it will help, I think, to improve that situation and get New Zealand back closer to what we could consider to be an international norm among the more developed countries in terms of the level of unionisation.

Ross Wilson has been criticised very much in the debate this afternoon as somehow giving orders to the Government. I do not know the details of all the accusations that have been raised, but I did read a press release today from the said Ross Wilson. I only wish that he could come into the lobbies and tell the Government members about it. But he has not made very much impact on the Government yet. I will just read out two sentences of that press release, which relates to the Ahmed Zaoui case: “It is fundamental that the Inspector-General should have to take into account Zaoui’s human rights and the Court of Appeal decision should be acted on without further delay. It is understandable that our Government should …”—

I rise on behalf of the ACT party to speak on clause 1, and I say that in the view of the ACT party this bill should not be called the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill but should actually be called the “Trade Union Promotion Bill”. Perhaps it should even be called the “Return to Compulsory Trade Unionism Bill”. I am obliged to the Green member, because he has proudly said to the Committee that this bill has gone through it with the support of the coalition of Labour, the Greens, and the Māori Party. If we look at the polls we see that the only way Labour can be the Government is if that is the coalition—Labour, the Greens, and the Māori Party. The Green Party has made it quite clear that the purpose of this bill is to promote trade unionism. The member said that the level of union membership should go to some international norm, and then he cited Norway and a figure of 60 percent. He also made it clear—I do not think I am misinterpreting what he said—that in his view this bill does not go far enough. In fact, the Green Party had a number of amendments to the bill, none of which have been accepted, and no doubt those will be part of the agenda.

What I do object to is the Green member’s claim about freeloading. If we look at this bill and the previous bill, we see that they actually make it illegal for employers and their employees to enter into free negotiations between themselves. We heard evidence again and again from employers that they almost never get any constructive proposals from unions, and that most of the advances that have been made in conditions and in pay come from the employer. It is the union movement that freeloads. That is not just my opinion. Ninety percent—that is the real figure—of the people in the workforce have decided that they do not want to belong to a trade union, but Mr Keith Locke knows better than them, and so does the Labour Party and so does the Māori Party! They are going to make those people join unions, but they are going to do something else as well.

Worse than compulsory unionism is that fact that the 90 percent of employees who have not joined the union now face having to pay what is called a bargaining fee. I call it a blackmail fee. Those people will not be able to have the same pay as their fellow workers unless they pay that bargaining fee. Where will the bargaining fee go? It will go to the trade union movement, and what will the trade union movement do with that money? Will it be used to advance the interests of people who do not belong to a union? Of course it will not; the unions will give it to the Labour Party.

It is no wonder that this Government listens very carefully to the trade union movement. In my time in the House I have never seen a member of the trade union movement actually be brought into the lobby of the House to discuss a piece of legislation as it is going through. I think that is completely unparliamentary.

Lindsay Tisch: They got caught out.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Well, yes, and we actually also know, because of the Official Information Act, that this bill was written by the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, and that—

Brian Connell: They are the architects.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Yes. The Government had a series of secret meetings with the council. I say to the Government again that this is a very extreme piece of legislation. It will promote collective bargaining. That means employers have to sit down with their competitors to discuss their conditions. Why should they do so? This legislation does do that through the bargaining clauses I have mentioned. It also advances the grievance industry, in terms of people being able to bring bogus wrongful dismissal cases.

In my view this bill is actually based on a Marxist idea, which is that there is an unequal bargaining position between employers and employees. How out to lunch is this Government? Right now, there is a shortage of labour and employers are at a disadvantage. They have to pay large sums of money to attract labour, in order to be able to get the labour they need, yet this bill is being advanced as part of the Green, Māori Party, and Labour Party agenda.

I want firstly to pick up on the point that the Hon Richard Prebble has made, which I think is a very good point. It is the fact that in his time in the House he has never before seen the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions not just draft a bill, as it has done in the past—and we know that, thanks to the Official Information Act—but be invited into the lobby. I know that the senior Government whip, Jill Pettis, is the person who has admitted to bringing Mr Wilson into the lobby, but the real issue is why she brought him in. She answered that question, from Radio New Zealand, by saying that she brought him in because the Minister wanted him. So the Minister in the chair, Paul Swain, wanted to have Ross Wilson’s view. It was not good enough just to take the view of the officials, so the Government brought Ross Wilson into the lobby where the departmental officials are. One can only assume, of course, that the departmental officials ended up in a very compromised position, taking their instructions from the Council of Trade Unions. That is an outrageous position to place the officials in, and it just shows the level that this Government will stoop to in order to get its legislation through.

I say to the members of the Labour Party—who are in an arrogant frame of mind over many issues, and this particular bill is one of them—that not one business in New Zealand that made a submission to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee was in favour of this legislation. When those Labour members go back and wander around their electorates, they will say they listened to people, and the legislation will not be all that bad. If they had listened to people, why did they not change the bill? They have actually made this bill worse than it was. Under this legislation we will see multi-employment collective agreements that lock up the ports and the transport industry, and that subject those industries to union bullying, to union threats, and to going back to the old days—and they were not good old days—of union domination. Already, Ports of Auckland is saying that that is what will occur in the ports around the country. It has told the Government that the ports will be targeted by the union movement.

What has been the Government’s response to that? The Government’s response has been to say we should trust it, because it thinks the unions will behave responsibly. The unions may behave responsibly up until the time of the election, and then all bets will be off. This is a straight trade-off. Members of the unions have been told to keep their heads down, and that the Labour Government will effectively deliver them the mechanism to give this country compulsory union membership. That is what the bill does. The bill states to employers that if they have 10 staff, four of whom join the union, and they negotiate with the union to pay those four staff a certain rate, they cannot pay the other six the same rate without risking that they end up before the Employment Court for undermining the union. That is the reality of this legislation, so employers are already looking to find ways around it. They are already saying that they will just contract work out and avoid employing staff. Every employer everywhere we go says that he or she will avoid employing staff.

Late in the year 2002, about 6 months after I came into this Parliament for the first time, I was sitting with quite a large group of Wellington business people. In terms of the conversation we were having, they asked me why United Future had gone into a supply and confidence agreement with the Labour Party. Straight away, I replied that it was firstly to keep the Greens out of the Government. They responded immediately by saying they thanked God for that. They were very, very delighted at that. But they wanted to take the conversation a bit further, so they asked me how we could possibly be working with the Labour Party, given some real concerns they had about the occupational safety and health legislation that we were in the middle of at the time. I replied that I shared those concerns, but I would try to answer their questions by saying that within the Labour caucus there is a faction that is a bit more to the right than some other Labour members, and that I thought we sort of bolstered it up. They looked at me with some incredulity and said: “Really! There are some people like that in the Labour Party?” I told them that there are some people like that in the Labour Party, and that if they thought about it they would realise those Labour members are very balanced, common-sense people. However, I said that there is another Labour faction that is extremely left wing. They asked me to give them an example of that, so I told them I would. I said that after I had listened to some of the Labour members during the occupational safety and health debate I had come to the conclusion that their world view was that all employers in New Zealand are irredeemably evil, and that all employees were immaculately conceived.

The reality is that if we want to have some balance in our industrial legislation we have to proceed on the assumption of some realities. Of course there are bad employers and bad employees, and there are greedy employers and bludging employees. The whole point is that we need to get the balance right in this legislation. I do not think we have done that. The existing status quo situation is fine. There is an old adage: if it ain’t broke, why try to fix it? This is a very, very serious matter, because whilst this legislation has been before Parliament—and I know the Transport and Industrial Relation Committee has made some improvements to it—I have had employers from different parts of this country, from Dunedin, where I am buddy MP, right up to Auckland, where I visit, say to me that their real worry is that this legislation will actually be the final straw that means that some employers—and we are talking about small-business employers in the main—will actually give it away. That would be a very, very sad day, indeed, for the future of our country.

I say to the Government that it should be very, very careful. As we know, at the moment Germany has a very high rate of unemployment—more than 10 percent. When I have talked to German politicians and analysts about why that is, they have said that one of the major reasons is the inflexibility of the labour market in Germany. We have before us there a living example of a nation that has got the balance wrong, and those things are very hard to wind back. On this occasion the Government has given in strongly to a pretty extreme left-wing view of life. I do not think the bill has the necessary balance, and for that reason, as all members know, we will vote against it. I sincerely hope that we will not see small-business people just give the game away and say that this is the last straw, after the occupational safety and health legislation and all the other things that have come their way under this regime. Some of those business people ask me whether I know they are taking home less money at the end of the week than most of their staff. The people who own the business and who are working 70 and 80 hours a week are taking home less money at the end of the week than some of their staff.

Small-business people have a breaking point. I am very worried and concerned that this bill will push them over it, and that we will see some of those people move out of business. That would be a tragedy for our future, for our economy, and for the growth of this country.

I move, That the question be now put.

I was very interested in the contribution from United Future, and I tell that member that another piece of legislation that will push small employers over the edge, and where the employer will be second-best to his or her staff, is the Holidays Act. You had a chance—United Future—to address the evils, from the employer’s perspective, of relevant daily pay. In fact, it will get through only on your vote. You had a chance to address it. Do not sit there sanctimoniously and tell this Committee—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Will the member please not bring the Chair into it.

PETER BROWN: I would not dream of bringing the Chair into it. To be honest, several employers spoke before the select committee about the Employment Relations Act as it is now, and almost without exception they said: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If we heard that expression once, we heard it close to 100 times from many employers—maybe not 100, but at least a significant number of times. If we want to do anything with industrial relations in this country we should be introducing more freedom and flexibility, both for the individual working person and for the individual employer.

First and foremost, we should remove the monopoly that unions have on collective contracts. It is farcical to say that New Zealanders, as a group, cannot get together and work out who will negotiate on their behalf with their particular employer in a reasonable and fair manner. One does not, and should not, have to have a union do the whole thing for one. That is an important change we should make to our industrial legislation.

But does this legislation do that? No, it does not. The explanatory note in the initial bill sets out—and I could not believe what I was reading when I read it for the first time—“To achieve this, the Act acknowledges the inherent inequality of power in employment relationships, and seeks to balance the interests of employers and employees through the promotion of unions and collective bargaining,”. Employers do have a little bit more power than employees, and one would expect that. They run the show, or at least, they are meant to. They are responsible for the location of the place, organisation, management, administration, finance, and financial risks. Employees do not take any of that into account. And one cannot have power without responsibility; at least I hope one cannot. Maybe the Labour Party disagrees with me on that.

It is important that the employer has his rightful place in an employment relationship agreement. This legislation distorts that terribly. I agree with Gordon Copeland. I chastised him a little bit earlier, but he is absolutely correct. Some small employers out there believe that this is just about the last straw. If it has the negative impact that they believe that it will have, then I think they will close up shop. But when this came up at the select committee, Labour members—Lianne Dalziel in particular, as I recall—said to employers and the other members of the committee that this legislation would have no effect on small employers or medium-size employers and that it would really aim only at the bigger employers who have large workforces.

I ask the Minister why we do not put a clause in the bill that states just that: “Nothing in this bill shall impact on the operations and activities of small to medium-size employers.” Put that in, and that will be a significant improvement. But no, it has not been put in.

This legislation has the potential to do a lot of damage. Firstly, it undermines the employer’s thinking. It also gives working people—the employees—the false understanding that they will be better off from it. However, I would say that employees will not be. There will be moves to engage people on contract and special arrangements to find loopholes in this legislation so that they are not covered by it. That will be to the detriment of employment and the employment relations in this legislation. New Zealand First does not have the fear of unions that some of my colleagues on the right have. Collective strength is an important ingredient in an industrial setting.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I note that the Government has started to move closure motions. We have been going now for 37 minutes, or thereabouts. This is the final debate on very important legislation and it is the peroration of a number of debates during the Committee stage. It is important that we have an opportunity to express our views, and a number of members on this side of the House would certainly like to do that. I bring it to your attention that we would certainly expect to have more calls than what the Government intends with its anticipated closure motions. I would ask that you give consideration to those members on this side of the House who have spoken during the Committee stage, who are seeking calls now, and who wish to make a contribution in this Committee stage.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I will not take any more points of order. I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 70/1, and I will give that serious consideration.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

Mr SPEAKER: I have already ruled on this.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: I know that you have. I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It is a new point of order and I raise it from this point. The Standing Orders were changed, and this might be the second session under the new Standing Orders, whereby, by agreement, now we do not debate the schedules and we do this part at the end of the debate. Some of us, and I am sure you, find it a bit unusual, Mr Chairperson, but it has made for a better debate, because we do not have those narrow debates on title or date of commencement. However, my point is that when that was changed, the Standing Orders Committee did so with an understanding that whilst the debate would be wider, whoever was the Opposition of the time would not be disadvantaged. It is not a strict rule, but in this case, instead of having a debate on the title, the commencement clause, and the schedules, which would have been 3 hours, or something like that, or probably 2¼ hours, because the schedules would have been a lesser debate, we have one debate. I ask you to bear that in mind as part of the overall process.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am well aware of the situation. If the member would like to look at page 63—[Interruption] He did. Well he knows exactly what the situation is.

I move, That the question be now put.

In speaking to the title of the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill, there are two particular issues that I would like to cover in these few minutes. I simply want to make sure I have the chance of expressing in this Chamber my concern over how these issues will impact on businesses in New Zealand. The two issues I particularly want to focus on are the provisions relating to the restructuring of a business, and bargaining fees. I will deal with the first issue.

I hope the Government, as it seeks to pass this bill through the Committee stage today, realises what it is doing to businesses. Surely the Minister in the chair, Paul Swain, can recollect the year 2000, when this provision was previously before the Parliament. It came into this Parliament as clause 66 in the original Employment Relations Bill. Such was the outrage expressed by businesses throughout New Zealand, that the Government backed off. It was a huge issue. I know that Willie Jackson was a member of this Parliament at the time and he felt quite strongly about supporting clause 66. He was on the Employment and Accident Insurance Legislation Committee, and the chair of the select committee at the time, Graham Kelly, had to knobble him. I was there at the time. It was in July. I have the notes from the meeting where it happened. Sue Bradford said in this Parliament the other day how she continued to fight for it. She withdrew her motion at that select committee meeting. She claims she continued to fight for it. She withdrew her motion.

This was a huge issue at the time. Now the Government has brought it back, despite the fact that business has continued to argue that this will devalue certain businesses hugely, for obvious reasons. Think of situations where staff have to be taken over, with their employment conditions intact. Think of when Air New Zealand bought Ansett. The Government now owns Air New Zealand, which it had to buy as a consequence of this arrangement. Air New Zealand, because of Australian industrial law, could not restructure the employment arrangements in Ansett. Air New Zealand basically had to take on Ansett with all the existing employment arrangements in place. Air New Zealand thought it could change them. It could not, and it darn-near destroyed Air New Zealand. It destroyed Ansett, and darn-near took Air New Zealand with it.

I invite the Minister in the chair to reflect on that. A company as big as Air New Zealand had to have the Government bail it out, partly because of industrial law similar to this. I am not saying it is the same, but it has a similar effect. Air New Zealand could not change the employment arrangements of all the staff of Ansett in Australia. Consequently, it sank, Ansett was destroyed, and almost without Government intervention Air New Zealand would have gone too. That is what is going to happen to businesses in this country. This Labour Government ought to think very carefully before it does that. So that is the first issue I want to emphasise.

The second issue is the bargaining fees. I have had many years’ experience working with two of the biggest unions in the country, the teachers’ unions. The Hon Mr Trevor Mallard will know these unions well. Far from non-union members having to pay bargaining fees, I would argue that the unions should have to pay non-union members for constraining their ability to get decent pay arrangements. The big unions in this country stifle our most skilled people. Our most skilled teachers do not get paid anywhere near what they are worth, because of the union.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Of course they do.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH: They do not! Our most skilled teachers deserve far more, but the union always protects the poor, at the expense of the good. Far from those who are not part of a union having to pay bargaining fees, it is the unions that should pay compensation where non-union members are not allowed, under Labour’s laws, to be paid better than union members. They cannot be offered better deals than union members. So some of our most skilled people, especially in those big areas like teaching, do not get paid what they are worth, and it is outrageous.

I move, That the question be now put.

I have to say that when Keith Locke took a call earlier, a very cold shiver ran down my spine. Heaven forbid it should come to pass that if the people of this country do elect a minority Labour Government, sitting around their Cabinet table—not just in caucus, but sitting around their Cabinet table—will be the Greens and the Māori Party. If that does not send a cold shiver down one’s spine, nothing ever will. It will be an absolute disaster for this country, and about as big a disaster as this legislation will be if it goes ahead.

I think that fair and reasonable thinking people agree that employee relationships are all about balance. The best balance we can have is when employer and employee can sit down and discuss their employment conditions, without the interference of a third party that often has a political axe to grind. Under this Government, that third party will be the union movement. Make no mistake about it. This legislation has been inspired by the union movement. In fact, it has been written by the union movement. We needed no better evidence than seeing Ross Wilson summonsed—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I have heard this a dozen times before.

BRIAN CONNELL: Oh, there is Trevor Mallard calling out again. If ever we wanted a better example that the moratorium on genetically modified organisms should not have been lifted, he is it. It should not have happened. Ross Wilson was summoned to the lobby by the Minister, using Jill Pettis as his conduit—not, as one member has already suggested, to get his views, but rather so he could give his instructions on how the legislation should be promoted through the House.

This is payback time for the ex - union members who make up the current Labour Government, and there are 24 of them. The Minister who is sitting in the chair, and the other loudmouth sitting next to him, both maintain that they are neutral—they are not. All they are doing is paying back. I ask the Minister in the chair, and his colleagues, why, if unionism was so good, he needs to bribe workers to join unions. The reality is that the market is telling the union movement: “Up yours.” That is what the market is saying, because 79 percent of the workers in this country do not want to be party to the union movement, in any way. So the union movement, worried about its declining membership, went to its union mates in Government and asked them to help it out. Actually, what the unions said was that if the Government wanted union funding, it would have to do what it was told. The unions said: “You make sure that the union movement grows its ranks, otherwise we will cut off the money supply.”

This legislation will lead to strike after strike after strike. The union movement, even before the ink has dried, is starting to flex its muscles already. We are seeing it now in respect of Air New Zealand, we are seeing it in the Ports of Auckland, and I bet the freezing works are next on the agenda.

I move, That the question be now put.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The point that I brought to your attention earlier on is still a very valid point. This is very important legislation on which we on this side of the House want to have a say. There are still members on this side who have not made a contribution, and Government members have continued to move closure motions. I asked for your indulgence earlier on. Dr Mapp, who is a specialist in this area, and has participated—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Ha, ha!

LINDSAY TISCH: The Minister may laugh, but Dr Mapp is a specialist in this area and he has been seeking a second call. In my own case, I have not had a call on this part yet, and I do have a valuable contribution to make on areas that have not been covered. I seek your indulgence to allow this debate to continue.

The member is required under Standing Order 84(3) to make his points terse and to the point. I have listened to what the member said, and I have considered the situation under Speaker’s ruling 70/1.

I move, That the Committee divide the bill into the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2), the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2), and the Human Rights Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 265.