Crimes (Theft by Employer) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thanks for the opportunity to speak on the Crimes (Theft by Employer) Amendment Bill. Given that there have been several weeks since we last considered this bill, I thought I would just take a moment to remind us of the bill in front of the House.

This bill was introduced in the House in the 53rd Parliament and it was then taken over by Camilla Belich, in Opposition, as a member’s bill in the 54th Parliament. The bill would insert a new section, section 220AA, into the Crimes Act 1961 to provide that an employer’s intentional failure to pay an employee any money owed in relation to that employment is theft. The bill details that theft by an employer in the context of this bill, should it be passed by this House, would have a maximum penalty of one year’s imprisonment, a fine of $5,000, or both, and in any other case, the maximum penalty would be a fine of $30,000. This bill was brought in to ensure that in circumstances where an employer intentionally steals money from an employee by, essentially, not paying them, that employer would be held accountable under the criminal jurisdiction as opposed to the civil jurisdiction.

One of the challenges that we traversed when we went through the select committee process—chaired by Katie Nimon, the member for Napier—was: what exactly is the size of the problem that this bill is trying to solve, and what is the number of employers that are actually undertaking theft from their employees? Through that select committee process, we worked through a number of amendments to try and clarify some of the intent. The amendments—all amendments—to the bill, through the Education and Workforce Committee, were unanimously adopted by the select committee. The recommendation of the select committee on the bill as a whole, though, by majority was that it doesn’t get passed by this House. However, the amendments were accepted by majority.

The first amendment and thing we tried to clarify through the select committee process was the meaning of an “employment agreement”. We thought that it was important that the term “employment agreement” had the same meaning as in section 5 of the Employment Relations Act 2000, and so there was a new subsection (3) inserted to make sure that that was clear to anyone who was reading the bill.

The second amendment that we traversed was clarifying the coverage for homeworkers. Under the Employment Relations Act, “employment agreement” includes a contract for services between an employer and a homeworker, with the term “homeworker” being defined in section 5 of that Act, and we thought it was important that we made it clear that this covered homeworkers, should the bill be passed by this House.

The third thing that we wanted to make sure was clarified through an amendment was what entitlements are covered. We spent some time as a select committee determining or looking at what exactly would qualify as theft by an employer and how you would determine what the entitlements that were covered are, and so we needed to make sure that this was clear in the bill when it was presented back to the House. We thought that the bill should be clearer on the payment in question being the payment required under an Act of Parliament, because, often, an employer can choose to pay additional things to an employee. There might be particular circumstances where they provide additional benefits that aren’t necessarily part of the package of employment. So we thought it really needed to be clear what the bill covered, and we defined that as being payments required under an Act of Parliament.

The challenge, however, even with the amendments in place, is that at the end of the day, the relationship between an employer and an employee is currently covered under the civil jurisdiction—under civil law—and, essentially, this amendment wants to take part of that relationship and put it into the criminal jurisdiction. At the moment, we have three pieces of legislation that, essentially, provide an umbrella over these sorts of circumstances. We have the Employment Relations Act, we have the Minimum Wage Act, and we have the Wages Protection Act, which really is related to unlawful deductions by an employer. This additional piece of legislation would add an unnecessary piece of legislative compliance when there are already existing mechanisms to ensure that employers appropriately remunerate and pay their employees. Indeed, Community Law Centres o Aotearoa expressed concerns about how this could be difficult to prove.

One of the things that came up through the process of consideration in the select committee was: when is withholding a payment from an employee intentional, and would you end up inadvertently being in a scenario where you have an employer being criminally liable because there was a mistake? Look, to be fair, we addressed a number of these issues, but not to a level of satisfaction, I think that would make sure that employers could feel comfortable that should this piece of legislation be part of the statutes of this House, they couldn’t get caught up in the unnecessary and costly additional layers of compliance that this House would, essentially, burden them with. I don’t know about you, Madam Speaker, when you are traversing the mighty—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you don’t bring the Speaker into the debate, Mr Bates.

CARL BATES: When I am traversing the mighty electorate—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s better.

CARL BATES: —of Whanganui—which I know you happen to pass through from time to time; the wonderful Whanganui electorate—and when I’m talking to both employees and employers, what employers are looking for right now is certainty about the future of the revenue of their businesses so that they can pay their staff, and employees are looking for certainty of their jobs and the relationship that they have in terms of their employment relationship, with the success and the continuing success of those businesses.

I think, really, that both parties are aligned in wanting to ensure we reduce the legislative burden, the red tape, and the compliance that sits around businesses so that the money that they have can go into where it’s most needed—and that is, keeping those businesses open and functional and returning a return—and ensuring that we’re able to provide wage growth to employees, and every time we add another layer of legislative compliance, we just add something else that those businesses are going to have to deal with.

That sort of relates to the other part of moving the relationship about employment from the civil jurisdiction to the criminal jurisdiction, and even the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions agreed that it could be difficult to prove when a non-natural person was being dishonest. It would be challenging to exactly understand in a court of law when a company, as opposed to a person behind it, was being dishonest in not paying an employee.

Not only do we have a very smally defined or ill-defined lack of clarity around the size of the problem; we have a solution to the problem that is going to create another level of legislative burden and that’s going to muddy the waters of the employment relationship between the civil and the criminal jurisdictions, and we’re going to add to the challenge that already can occur in the employment relationship when you have that small number of employees that are vexatious in their relationship with their employers. As per the select committee report, I do not commend this bill to the House.

The reason Carl Bates’ speech was largely incoherent is because the thinking behind it is equally incoherent. This is the pearl: the idea that because an employment relationship is a civil contract, the employer shouldn’t be liable for stealing—the parallel of that is if a person working at a bar nicks money out of the till. “Oh, it’s a civil relationship; we don’t want that to be criminally liable.” Of course an employee who steals from their employer is criminally liable. If they intentionally deprive their employer of property, then they’re criminally liable. But—this is Mr Bates’ argument; it’s all a bit confusing—if the employer intentionally deprives an employee of their property; that’s not criminal. The asymmetry of that relationship is typical of the National Party.

This is not some complex bill. It just says this: if you steal stuff from your employee, you’re criminally liable. If you know that you’re obligated to pay, if you’ve got the money but you intentionally choose not to pay them, if you intentionally deprive them of their entitlement to wages, you’re criminally liable. What does the criminal law do? It sets boundaries between right and wrong. To steal from your employee is wrong; it should be criminal. The idea that it’s a bit too much admin—in fact, the member used the term “red tape”, as if paying your employee honestly is red tape. That is shameful. That’s someone, I think, who once called himself an accountant, and yet here he is defending the right of employers to steal from their employees by intentionally withholding wages illegally. This is not a complicated bill.

As for the difficulties of prosecution and what’s the burden of proof and evidence, well, that’s a prosecutorial decision. As we know, the Solicitor-General has a very fulsome set of guidelines on when to make a prosecution. There are two fundamental elements: is the evidence there—does it meet the evidential threshold?—and is it in the public interest to prosecute? It’s not rocket science. Yes, if the evidence is cloudy, you probably won’t get a prosecution. If it’s not in the public interest, you won’t get a prosecution. But where we have a clear case of an insurer knowingly taking wages from their employee, the prosecution should and will follow.

That’s why this is a bill that’s properly before this House, and I’m hopeful that other parties in the House other than the National Party will support it. I’m sure the ACT Party, who are property-mad, will support it, because the right to property is one of their foundation stones. Our former friends New Zealand First, who used to be our coalition partners, I’m hopeful will stand up to what they say they stand for, which is the rights of workers—as does the Labour Party—and make sure this bill passes through the House. As for the National Party, dancing on the head of a pin with ridiculous and incoherent arguments about red tape and the civil and criminal distinction in employment relationships, it really shows them up. They should be ashamed of themselves.

I’m very proud that Camilla Belich has brought this bill to the House, and very hopeful we’ll see this through the next stage so we can look after workers’ wages properly. I absolutely commend this to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and good evening. I haven’t spoken in the House for a while, so perhaps I would just like to start with a shout-out to all of those in the Wairarapa electorate, from Central Hawke’s Bay, Tararua, and the Wairarapa. Spring is here, most have had tax relief, interest rates are on the way down, hard-working parents are now able to get FamilyBoost payments, commodity prices are better than they have been, and just in case the news hasn’t got through, announced today, the inflation genie is back in the box. Inflation is now at 2.2 percent for the year end at September, and the darkness before dawn, as Nicola Willis previously described the state of the economy under the previous administration, is finally starting to lift. Thank you for trusting us as a Government to manage the economy out of recession.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s your minute to do general debate; now you will speak to the bill.

MIKE BUTTERICK: Thank you. Now, the Crimes (Theft by Employer) Amendment Bill, in the name of Camilla Belich, is not one that we can support. The bill has been introduced for the purpose of criminalising the act of employers intentionally failing to pay employees rather than treating it under civil law.

The main provisions: the bill would insert new section 220AA into the Crimes Act 1961 to provide that an employer’s intentional failure to pay an employee any money owed in relation to the employment is theft. The bill would also set maximum penalties for this new offence of theft by employer. If the employer is an individual, the maximum penalty would be one year’s imprisonment, a fine of $5,000, or both. In any other case, the maximum penalty would be a fine of $30,000.

We have a view, in the National Party, that a significant number of employers are good employers. Yes, there will always be a very small number of employers that aren’t, but that doesn’t mean we need to run around and impose new legislation to address an issue that already has a clear pathway of resolution. That pathway, I might add, is a long-held practice in New Zealand’s civil jurisdiction of addressing issues of the sort that this bill seeks to address or reinvent and of doing so through a civil process.

This bill is unnecessary as there are prevailing mechanisms that actually already exist. The Employment Relations Act contains provisions to address circumstances where an employee isn’t paid or is paid less than the amount stated in their employment agreement. The Holidays Act contains provisions that address non-compliance and also allows for interest to be paid on any unpaid entitlements, and the Wages Protection Act and the Minimum Wage Act contain provisions preventing unlawful wage deductions.

Transferring the ability to adjudicate a dispute to a criminal court won’t speed up the process; it will almost certainly slow it down, which will not result in any improvement in outcome. All this bill will do is transfer said disputes from the employment relations space, for potentially making deductions from payslips and not paying, into the criminal prosecution space. This will more than likely result in a number of unintended and unnecessary consequences.

To sum up, at present the failure to pay an employee is currently dealt with as a civil matter under the Employment Relations Act, where the mechanisms I’ve already mentioned exist, and where the employer and the employee have a clear duty to act in good faith and penalties already exist if they don’t do just that. The actual theft of money is dealt with under criminal law, and I refer to an article from 23 May 2023 that says—and I quote—“Such a law could however potentially make it far more challenging to undertake a deduction from wages even in valid cases and has the potential to foreseeably expose the employer to criminal liability, or at least the threat of such risk. The Wages Protection Act 1983 and 40 years of case law makes it very clear on how a deduction is to be actioned, the advent of this may give miscreant employees more impetus to refuse to allow deductions in legitimate cases.”

We don’t need to impose further unnecessary complications on those in our region that are the lifeblood of our local economies, those small to medium businesses that have persevered, for far too long, under the burden of a recession they didn’t cause—not now, when there’s light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not necessary to implement new and needless legislation, adding frustration, cost, and complexity. That’s why National doesn’t support this bill.

Perhaps Labour may want to reflect on this bill. Perhaps they’ve been sidetracked, dreaming up further ways of relieving those in our communities that have endured so much for so long under their administration. The Labour Party’s latest attempt to do this seems to be fixated on not only more rules but also more tax. They seem quite addicted to tax.

Helen White: This is nothing to do with the bill. Back to the bill!

MIKE BUTTERICK: I’ll get to the bill.

But they’d tax our land, they’d tax our beds,

And they’d tax the tables upon which we’re fed.

Yes, back to the bill. All this bill does is transfer disputes, potentially around deductions from payslips and not paying from the employment relations space into the criminal space, and we believe that would have all manner of unintended consequences.

We heard in the select committee from the Community Law Centres o Aotearoa that they express concern that the offence would be difficult to prove and easy to defend, noting that dishonesty offences are typically very difficult to prove. Business New Zealand noted the very high threshold that “beyond reasonable doubt” imposes in criminal cases compared to the balance of probabilities standard in the Employment Court and how this makes proving intention especially burdensome for prosecutors. The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions pointed out that mens rea can be very hard to establish for non-natural persons, as my parliamentary colleague Carl Bates alluded to earlier.

Shanan Halbert: It was a terrible speech.

MIKE BUTTERICK: It was a very good speech from Carl, the very hard-working member of Parliament for Whanganui. It’s a great electorate, that. It’s almost as good as the Wairarapa.

The New Zealand Law Society submitted that section 219 of the Crimes Act 1961 frames theft with reference to “dishonestly and without claim of right”, taking, using, or dealing with property. They contended that the use of “intentionally” in clause 4 could inadvertently capture situations where employers genuinely withhold paying employees money owed, and that clause 4 could create situations where employers are made criminally liable for not paying money that is legitimately and intentionally disputed, while the employer lacks the intention to deprive their employee of what they are owed.

Overall, there are existing provisions in the Employment Relations Act, as mentioned previously, to protect employees with pay disputes, and the use of the Crimes Act would have too many adverse consequences and be too difficult to prove. So, as I said, the National Party—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Turn the page!

MIKE BUTTERICK: Apologies?

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Oh, just turn the page if you’re going to keep reading. You may as well turn the page.

MIKE BUTTERICK: Yeah, I can turn lots of pages if you like—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member was reading quotes, and that was why I was letting him get away with the pages.

MIKE BUTTERICK: Yes, I could finish my poem if the member over there would like. It took me a while to write. I was just talking about how they’d tax our tractor, and they’d tax our ute—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Now you’re back off the bill—

MIKE BUTTERICK: Back on track? Back on track, Madam Speaker?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Back to the bill.

MIKE BUTTERICK: To finish off, National won’t be supporting this bill. It’s unnecessary. It just adds more regulations, another complexity that employers don’t need. There are many mechanisms that already exist to protect employees. We do not support this bill.

This is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wanted to start with something that a friend of mine, who’s another employment lawyer, once said to me, and it really stuck: “When you don’t have capital, time is what you’ve got to sell; that’s all you’ve got.”

When somebody takes your time—contracts that time—and then takes it from you, it’s actually more serious than it is in many situations, and I want to give an example of where I’ve seen this impact. I had a case when I was a junior. I had a senior lawyer and I was the junior, and it was in the Employment Relations Authority—it was probably the tribunal back then; it was quite a while ago—and it was with Oh Calcutta restaurant. They took on some Indian employees from India. They took $2,500 for them to come into the country and then they employed them on contracts which said that they would be paid $350—I think $250 was actually paid, but they had a contract that said $350—and then they had another contract with this company seal on it saying the lesser amount.

When they made a fuss about that—they were working, by the way, 92½ hours a week; they were working lunch and dinner—they were chucked out on the street and they were, basically, told that they would have to leave the country. I remember threats that were made about how they would never be paid and they weren’t paid at that point. The employer intentionally took their money. They had children back in India. They were terrified about losing their ability to work here.

That’s an example of what happens when you don’t watch. What was the strangest thing about this case is that halfway through the case, we were talking about the fact that they paid this extra money to come to the country, and the tribunal member wouldn’t believe it because they’d never seen it before. I look back and I think if we had only noticed what was going on and how serious it was; if we’d only noticed, perhaps we would have avoided the pain that was caused to so many more employees in this country by that kind of habit and that behaviour which we had a blind spot for in New Zealand.

While I absolutely think small businesses are good employers often, and medium ones—and I am absolutely appalled that this would be suggested as a punishment to them. It is not. Those people pay their workers. It isn’t always the case. Sometimes you get this kind of scurrilous act, and the key word here was “intentional”. You had to be at the beyond reasonable doubt stage to meet this test. It was when you intentionally took someone else’s money, and that might be all they had. That might be all that they had to trade on, and you took it and you disempowered them. It is a power relationship and we accept that in the employment situation.

Now, what’s the difference—why is it that Camilla Belich and Ibrahim Omer went for a criminal standard here? Why is it? Because, when we say this is a crime, we say this is serious; we take it seriously. It’s very different. There’s another really practical reason: because the State looks after people in the criminal area. Criminal victims—the State looks after them. It says, “No, that’s not OK. You can’t take that person’s money intentionally, because they worked hard and you must not take their money.” That’s called theft and it’s serious and we take it seriously, and the State prosecutes, not the individual.

Think about my three men at Oh Calcutta. Do you think they had any money? They didn’t even have anywhere to sleep that night. They were not going to take a civil prosecution through without the help of someone. With that case, it was actually the help of a union. They hadn’t actually joined, but the union stepped in and helped, and that’s how they got there, but most of the time, those people are never going to take a case. They’re never going to take a civil case. Now, one of the saddest aspects of that case—and we did win the case and they didn’t actually close up; they did end up paying those guys out—was they only got paid for 40 hours a week, because the rest wasn’t even contracted apparently. There was some stolen time as far as I’m concerned there too.

We have a long way to go in this country before we get the settings right, and the first thing we have to accept is that there is a power imbalance. We have to accept that people in this situation deserve as much protection as we give other victims. They are victims, and tonight, if you vote against this bill, you’re voting against the recognition of people who have been exploited and power that has been misused. The power of money is a big thing in the life of somebody who hasn’t got it. Thank you.

What a bunch of crocodile tears—what a bunch of crocodile tears. Anyone would think they’d never been near the levers of Government. Well, can I remind the Labour Party that they’ve been in and out of Government for nearly 100 years, and now, after six years with an absolute majority of 65 MPs and having a full opportunity to put it through as a Government bill, you have the tenacity to turn up to Parliament tonight and advocate for workers—and most of you are former constituent MPs, can I point out—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We’re having a little too much use of the word “you” tonight—from both sides, actually.

CAMERON BREWER: They—they. Thank you, Madam Speaker. For a second, I thought you were saying I was transgressing from the bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you’re on the bill.

CAMERON BREWER: I know you’ll give us a minute’s grace.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you only get half a minute because you’ve got a split call.

CAMERON BREWER: OK, well let me start that grace period now, Madam Speaker. We are the party of workers, and the Labour Party know that. Shanan Halbert knows that. He knows that the person that represents the workers of Glenfield is Dan Bidois. He knows that. We’re also the party of democracy, and we listen to the parliamentary non-partisan decisions that come out of the Education and Workforce Committee. Can I read this, Madam Speaker, straight off the explanatory note recommendation of the Education and Workforce Committee, that the National Party is taking adherence to here: “The Education and Workforce Committee has examined the Crimes (Theft by Employer) Amendment Bill and recommends by majority that it not be passed.”

Camilla Belich: Yeah, that’s how select committees work.

CAMERON BREWER: And so after this, and Camilla Belich knows, this has been going through—the first reading was over 14 months ago—the scrutiny, the painful scrutiny and examination by the Education and Workforce Committee, it has come out with the recommendation that it not be passed. And now they have the cheek to oppose what our judicious, conscientious, and hard-working Education and Workforce Committee have recommended after listening to submissions, after listening to officials, after listening to business groups and industry groups.

Camilla Belich can go on as much as she wants, but she had six years—she had six years and an absolute majority. She could have stood up in caucus seven years ago and said, “Why don’t we make this a Government bill? I’m so concerned about it.” She could have stood up three years ago, with 65 MPs. She was jammed in the corner because there were so many MPs. They didn’t need to consult with anyone; they could have just done this on their own. They could have just whipped it up in the caucus room and said, “We’re passing it. We’re so concerned.”

The crocodile tears that Helen White’s been crying tonight! But, no, suddenly they get into Opposition and they’re all a sudden interested in this piece of legislation. They’re suddenly interested in this piece of legislation, and it’s all our fault for ignoring the prosecution—the hard-working, conscientious select committee. We are the ones that are listening to the non-partisan select committee—

Steve Abel: As if!

CAMERON BREWER: —the Education and Workforce Committee—Steve Abel—that decided on merit, and so happened to be majority, that this not be passed. We listen to what select committees have told us and the work that they have done and the examination that they’ve taken out, and, on balance, we are not going to go against the select committee and their hard work for the last 14 months. We are the party of workers; we are also the party of business. We believe, as my colleague Carl Bates has taken us through, in chapter and verse—that 10 minutes went so quickly, too—how these areas are comprehensively covered. The complexity that this would bring about is not worth going down that track. That’s why 100 years of Labour Parties have never taken this step.

The protection is there. It’s well and truly covered, and covered in a comprehensive way for New Zealand workers. We, Mike Butterick, went through the different statutes that are in existence to protect workers and the opportunities that are there for those that have had wrongdoing against them. The National Party, hand on heart, as the party for workers, cannot support this bill and go against the intentions of the select committee.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do love a good debate from my friend, my mate over there, Cameron Brewer. The thing I like about him is he plays it straight—you know where you stand—but that was one of the most terrible speeches that I’ve heard from him because he talked about the National Party being the party of workers. In fact, I’ll tell you what they’re a party of: they’re a party of cuts; they’re a party of chaos; they’re a party of broken promises; they’re a party that is out of touch, just like the Prime Minister; they’re a party of tobacco; and, just for Cameron Brewer and Dan Bidois, they’re a party that is closing down the North Shore Women’s Centre on the shore—how shameful. It’s my privilege to have delivered a lot of things to the North Shore, unlike those two: schools, police numbers, you name it. They haven’t done anything yet.

Cameron Brewer: And delivered a 9,000 majority.

SHANAN HALBERT: Tonight, it’s my privilege—

Hon Member: He’s delivered nothing. What’s he talking about?

SHANAN HALBERT: —to be able to talk about this particular piece of legislation. And I love that I rarked them up, because they know that they have delivered nothing. They have delivered absolutely nothing to Auckland’s North Shore. Just like the Minister for Auckland, they’re sold out on Auckland and they’re sold out on our communities—[Interruption]

Now that they’ve quieted them down, can I acknowledge my colleague. She hasn’t had six years in this place—my colleague of the class of 2020 Camilla Belich, and a good Northcote and North Shore resident herself. She does some good work. Can I acknowledge you, Camilla, and the work that you’ve put into this particular bill—also, my brother Ibrahim Omer for the work that he has done in bringing this bill into the House and carving this particular pathway. I look back, actually, to his maiden speech and his commitment to this House and, absolutely, his commitment to workers. That’s what the Labour Party stands for.

I just don’t understand how it is that the National Party believes that employers not paying their employees shouldn’t be a criminal offence. How is it that tonight they can vote against this particular bill that sets up a higher threshold when our most vulnerable workers are ripped off by their employers? I like to think that many people in this House have had a vulnerable moment in employment, perhaps when we were teenagers, you know, perhaps when, like me in hospitality, you had a run in with the boss and they threatened not to pay you. Well, in fact, this piece of legislation means that you do have to be paid. This bill amends the Crimes Act to clarify that intentionally not paying an employee their wages is, in fact, theft. The law as it stands does not address this, and this and wage theft are mainly followed up through the civil courts, rather than enforcement through the police.

I like to think that, around this House, in the many cases today, we have been able to support members’ bills on members’ day because they are particularly good kaupapa. This is another one that comes before this House, and it’s a test on who supports workers, who supports our kaimahi, our most vulnerable workers, to not only be paid what they’re worth but to be looked after and recognised under our workforce legislation. I’m calling on all of the ACT Party, the National Party, and New Zealand First tonight to support this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Well, it is my experience in this House that there’s nothing like an employment relations bill to bring out the fire in both Labour and National, and where those divisions lie. It is for the true balance in New Zealand First to come through and sort through the mess that we’ve been listening to.

First of all, for this Crimes (Theft by Employer) Amendment Bill, this is New Zealand First’s first opportunity to contribute to this bill. It was put into the House during those dark, wind-swept days when we weren’t represented in these halls. As the Hon Duncan Webb articulated in his speech, whilst we may have changed horses in the ensuing period, we actually haven’t changed our core values, and that is very much that we are an egalitarian party. Because we haven’t had the chance to be in this process up until this point, we’re taking the last call here, not for any nefarious reasons but for the fact that we weren’t part of that select committee. The bill did come up quite unexpectedly at the last members’ day, and we wanted to listen very carefully to what both sides had to say before taking it to our caucus for discussion.

It is the view of the New Zealand First caucus that this bill is not without some merit. New Zealand First has always taken a balanced approach to employment relations. We absolutely believe that a fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. We have an absolute history of championing workers’ rights, particularly around increases to the minimum wage, which we’ve taken into and been successful in coalition negotiations. We actually had Dennis Maga, the chief of FIRST Union, speak to our convention on the weekend. We are generally interested in hearing workers’ perspectives on employment relations issues under this Government.

Conversely, we also understand that employers are critical to building this economy. They risk their own capital and often put their family home up to provide employment and a living for others. Of the businesses in this country, 97 percent are, in fact, small businesses with under 20 workers or more. In fact, so much do we understand this—I could go back to the Hon David Parker over there who would remember this—that we absolutely arm-wrestled Labour to accept retaining 90-day trials for those small businesses under 20 workers, in the 52nd Parliament, because we do understand that critical balance between employees and employers.

I’d like to commend the member Camilla Belich for bringing this bill forward and picking it up from Ibrahim Omer, the original proponent of this bill. Thank you, Camilla, for your constructive engagement as we have worked through some of the details.

It is New Zealand First’s view that there are two clear anomalies in the law. It is already a criminal offence for wage theft of immigrant workers on work visas. New Zealand First cannot see why New Zealand citizens or permanent residents should not be afforded the same process of legal redress. Secondly, it is a criminal offence for an employee to steal from an employer. This, to us, seems an inequity.

New Zealand First will be supporting this bill through to the committee of the whole House stage. We, however, have listened carefully to the concerns on this side of the House. There are some things that we want to see examined further through that committee stage. This bill must focus on real crime—intentional and malicious acts of theft by employers; not unintentional mistakes or delays to the cash-flow issues. Without clear distinction, the risk is that honest employers facing financial hardship may be unfairly penalised.

Moving this issue from a civil to a criminal jurisdiction changes the burden of proof for both employees and employers. Criminal cases require more evidence and resources, potentially straining the justice system while making it conversely, potentially, harder for workers to successfully pursue cases.

Further, we believe that the shift from the balance of probability to beyond reasonable doubt will increase the difficulty for employees to prove theft by employers. The higher threshold could mean fewer successful prosecutions. This requires further investigation to ensure that the bill truly benefits employees, without creating unintended consequences.

New Zealand First is eager to ensure this bill does go to the committee stage and does get tested by all parties in this Parliament. We will remain engaged in working through the finer details. I’m sure the member will help us to alleviate some of those concerns. At it’s very core, we believe that business is about paying and being paid. A fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay, and you should be paid. With that, we’ll commend this bill to the House.