Employment Relations Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I move, That the Employment Relations Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 17 November 2025.

I know that many businesses want to do the right thing by their workers, but they are facing increasing uncertainty about how employment law will be interpreted, and they face large potential costs if they get the law wrong. In particular, labour market regulations have become more complex, making it harder for employers and employees to reach solutions that work for both. Policies that were meant to benefit workers have only added to business uncertainty and the cost of doing business. Uncertainty and unreasonable costs discourage investment and hiring, locking Kiwi workers out of employment.

The policies in this bill aim to restore business confidence to hire and to increase opportunities for Kiwis. Flexible labour markets are the best environment for businesses to grow. When businesses thrive, our economy thrives, and it’s only with a strong economy that we can lift wages, create opportunities, and help Kiwis get ahead. With these objectives in mind, I’m introducing this Employment Relations Amendment Bill. The bill enhances labour market flexibility, reduces compliance costs, and rebalances the personal grievance setting. It implements several ACT-National coalition commitments and supports the Government’s Going for Growth agenda by helping to make New Zealand’s business settings more competitive with respect to employment.

The bill implements four policies: it provides greater certainty for contracting parties; it strengthens consideration of and accountability for the employee’s behaviour in the personal grievance process; it introduces an income threshold for unjustified dismissal personal grievances; and it removes the 30-day rule and associated compliance and information requirements to support the expansion of 90-day trials and reduce red tape.

I will now briefly describe each change and my reasons for proposing them. First, I’m providing greater certainty for contracting parties. Contractors play an important role in New Zealand’s economy and society. The reliability and efficiency of services provided by contractors is a hallmark of our modern age. Contracting arrangements also provide significant flexibility for workers, particularly those who cannot or do not want to commit to standard hours—for example, through gig work. However, currently a contractor can challenge their employment status in law despite being a contractor. This creates uncertainty and extra costs for business, potentially placing at-risk various business models that use contracting arrangements. To give greater weight to the intention of the contracting parties, the bill establishes a gateway test establishing an exclusion from the definition of “employee” in the Employment Relations Act.

This new approach will provide businesses with more certainty to protect—with innovative business models involving contractors where this is appropriate—and enable businesses to offer better terms and conditions to their contractors with less concern that it might impact the contractor’s status. By maintaining and growing contracting opportunities, I expect the new approach will help with the cost of living. This will especially benefit workers who cannot commit to standard hours or who find benefit in flexible work, like people who are job hunting or re-entering the job market, students, or parents with young children. This Government favours policies that create opportunities for these groups of people rather than narrowing their choices.

Secondly, I’m strengthening consideration of and accountability for the employee’s behaviour in the personal grievance process. The current remedy settings are imbalanced. Remedy reductions for contributory employee behaviour have decreased in recent years and instances of serious misconduct are still resulting in employees getting remedies. For example, in 2022, a restaurant worker was fired for stealing food from the restaurant, but the employer still had to pay the employee $21,000 in compensation for hurt and humiliation. In 2021, a truck driver was fired for falsifying information on their timesheet, but the employer had to pay the worker $10,500 in compensation for the humiliation and distress caused by the job loss and 13 weeks of lost wages.

These remedy settings reward poor behaviour and are not fair, so I’m introducing a suite of changes to address this imbalance, which are: removing eligibility for any remedies for employees whose behaviour amounts to serious misconduct, removing eligibility for reinstatement into a role and compensation for employees who contribute to the situation that led to the personal grievance, clarifying that the Employment Relations Authority and Employment Court have the full spectrum of remedy reductions—up to 100 percent—available to them, requiring the authority and court to consider if the employee’s behaviour obstructed the employer’s ability to meet their obligations to act as fair and reasonable employers, and increasing the threshold for procedural error to shift the focus solely to whether any errors in the employer’s process resulted in the employee being treated unfairly.

Next, I am introducing an income threshold for unjustified dismissal personal grievances. New Zealand’s current unjustified dismissal settings place a significant constraint on labour market flexibility. A poor-performing manager or executive can have a big flow-on effect for the entire business and create the risk of poor culture and low morale. So this bill introduces an income threshold of $180,000 per annum, above which a personal grievance for unjustified dismissal cannot be pursued. This change will provide greater labour market flexibility, enabling businesses to ensure that they have the best fit of skills and abilities for their organisation. It allows employers to give workers a go in high-impact positions without having to risk a costly and disruptive dismissal process if things don’t work out, benefiting the next generation of leaders to move up the career ladder.

Business and management practices have been shown internationally to be a key factor in determining firm productivity and export performance. However, research into New Zealand firms shows considerable room for improvement to reach best practice. By making it easier to remove poorly performing managers and executives while giving new talent a chance, I expect to help improve management capability and thereby lift economic performance across New Zealand. The bill preserves the ability of employers and employees to contract back into unjustified dismissal protection or to agree their own terms and conditions relating to dismissals.

Lastly, the bill improves freedom of choice and cuts red tape at the beginning of employment. Currently, if an employer is party to a collective agreement that covers the work of the new employee, an employee’s individual employment agreement terms must reflect the terms of the collective agreement for the first 30 days of their employment. This is known as the 30-day rule. The 30-day rule makes it difficult for employers and employees to agree bespoke terms and conditions, such as a 90-day trial for new employees. Expanding the availability of 90-day trials was an ACT-National coalition commitment that supports workers who may struggle to gain employment and, also, give employers greater confidence around hiring. The bill removes the requirement that the terms of a new employee’s employment agreement should reflect the terms of the applicable collective agreement for the first 30 days of employment. This expands opportunities for employees and employers, allowing them to agree on a wider range of employment terms at the very start of employment.

The minimum disclosure and related employer obligations that have existed since the Employment Relations Act was created are retained—for example, the employer would still need to inform an employee that a collective agreement exists. Retaining these provisions achieves the optimal balance between supporting freedom of choice and access to information to inform that choice for workers and reduces the compliance burden for employers.

In conclusion, this bill will enhance labour market flexibility, reduce compliance costs, and re-tilt the personal grievance system to better balance employer and employee interests and discourage poor behaviour. The outcomes of these changes will be a more productive economy with higher employment, higher wages, and thriving businesses. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Here we go again. It’s a bit like Groundhog Day—the number of times that we have poor legislation that hurts workers from this Government and this House is just disgraceful. This is yet another piece of legislation that is a direct attack on workers. At least this time we are seeing that we’re going to have a select committee process—well, I hope that’s what we’re going to have—

Tangi Utikere: Nah, shortened.

Hon JAN TINETTI: —a select committee. Maybe it will be there, my colleague Tangi Utikere. But it just really fails to surprise anybody these days that we are seeing so much of an attack against our workers in this country, and this bill is certainly another display of that from this Government.

Based on what we heard from the Minister—that word “balance” again. How many times have we heard that? I would say to the Minister that there is never a power imbalance in the industrial situation where the employer has had their power taken away from them. It does not happen. All that is happening in this particular case and other legislation that has been like it has been that the worker has been put on the back foot completely and put into a situation where it is being made even more difficult for them. I’ve said it in this House before: I cannot understand why other parties in this coalition Government back up a situation where workers are put in such a terrible position.

First of all we hear about the contractors and introducing the gateway test for determining if someone is a contractor or an employee. I went to visit the Uber drivers last week who were taking their case to the Supreme Court, having had it go through the court twice that the courts had determined that they were employees and not contractors. Yet here is the Minister putting in a piece of legislation that has now the potential to absolutely overturn all of that work that they have done.

I heard what those Uber drivers have to put up with. I heard how they are taken on initially, thinking that maybe they are being respected as contractors, but that is not how it turns out to be for them. They are held absolutely under the thumb of their employer. The company absolutely holds them under that thumb and they have no discretion with that employer. I challenge any member of the other side of the House to go and talk to those drivers to understand the experience that those drivers have on a day-to-day basis. They are being treated as employees, and yet the company is saying, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, that’s not the case. They’re just choosing that.”, which is absolutely wrong. I am disgusted that we are having this discussion in the House here, once again questioning those people, those drivers, and putting them through this.

The other area that I want to talk about is the removing of the 30-day rule. All that’s about is the Minister has this overinflated view, which is completely wrong, that the unions have all this power and “we’re going to dismantle them and take them out of the industrial situation.” Firstly, I’d say, “Good luck with that.” But, secondly, I would say, “What is wrong with giving workers 30 days of protection of the collective agreement that exists within their workplace already?” Anybody who has an ounce of understanding of employment law about them understands that that is the protection that those workers need to get themselves into the workplace, to understand their job, and to understand their choices without having people sort of put it out there that maybe that’s not for them before they’ve even started in their job.

This is a Government who is absolutely hell-bent on putting the rights of the workers right to the bottom of the pile. It is absolutely shameful that we are seeing pieces of legislation time, time, and time again in this area. Labour absolutely opposes this bill and we look forward to hearing people against it in select committee.

This is a Government that does not give a damn about working people in this country. We’ve seen it with the dismantling of pay equity, we’ve seen it with 90-day trials, and now we’re seeing it by a Government that is attacking our Uber drivers and people who have collective agreements in their workplaces that lift the wages and working conditions.

I can’t believe the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety when she tells us that this is a bill about higher productivity and higher wages. There’s nothing in this bill that delivers this. Actually, I think the Government members who have ever used an Uber should hang their heads in shame. They should realise that like many of us in this country who have benefited from the drivers who are currently being subjected to terrible conditions by Uber as a company, they have benefited from those drivers. They have gained time from being able to access a driver to take them to the constituency meetings, to the public meetings. They have benefited from the labour of those workers who right now are fighting through the court system to have their status as employees recognised. That would give them greater safety nets, greater protections, and better working conditions.

I think the next time that any Uber driver sees the Government members getting those services, I hope those drivers give them a zero-star rating as passengers because they will know that these are members of a Parliament who have decided to basically go on the side of the company—a massive company by the way, Uber—that has actually managed to drive down working conditions for people across the globe. Yet the members across the House are quite happy to go on their taxpayer-funded Uber trips while not actually addressing the working conditions of those very same drivers. Shame on the Government members who benefit from the labour of those workers and yet turn their backs on them when convenient and side with massive corporations raking it at a time of a cost of living and inequality crisis.

This bill also contains anti-union provisions by basically preventing workers from automatically being part of a collective agreement and being offered better working conditions. This has nothing to do with better wages or better working conditions, as the Minister has said, because, effectively, what it does is it creates more barriers for people to be part of a collective agreement where workers together can fight for better wages and the so-called higher productivity that the Minister claims to champion. If anything, all this bill will do is keep thousands of workers in lower-paid situations.

When we’re talking about some of the contractors in this bill—and I want to go back to Uber drivers—many Uber drivers end up taking that gig because they simply cannot not make ends meet with the full-time jobs that they have. Many Uber drivers have to take up the gig because they just cannot survive. Yet the Government, instead of addressing those working conditions, has decided to go and take sides with a massive corporation that is not delivering safety and decent incomes for these drivers.

I don’t know if MPs realise that, for example, when an Uber driver is picking up a passenger, they don’t know who it is. They don’t know where that passenger may be going. If, for example, the passenger decides to rate an Uber driver with zero stars they could automatically lose the ability to maintain income as an Uber driver, and they have very little recourse to address that. It’s really hard to go back to that massive corporation and get some sense of justice if, say, for example, a passenger who was being racist decided to give that Uber driver zero stars or just simply didn’t like them.

What this means is that because they don’t have those protections that they could have if they were considered employees, they’re basically at the mercy of this massive corporation who has decided to not have an adequate duty of care for these drivers—their labour actually benefits us as MPs, and it benefits countless people across the country who use the labour of Uber drivers to get to work, to get to doctors, to get to their social events. I think if we had a Government that actually cared about workers, they would not be basically putting the boot on countless Uber drivers across the country and they would not be union-busting by preventing workers from joining collective agreements that grant better wages, better conditions, and indeed a much more productive workplace.

The Greens will continue opposing this bill and want to mihi it to all the Uber drivers and to the Workers First Union who have been fighting this massive corporation to seek justice.

This bill is about supporting our Government’s Going for Growth agenda. It’s about helping our businesses grow, especially small to medium sized businesses, which often don’t have the resources to navigate some of the current settings that this bill is trying to change. In New Zealand, 97 percent of businesses in this country are small to medium enterprises, so they employ fewer than 20 people. They play a vital role in our economy. They’re our farmers and our rural contractors, our hairdressers, our real estate agents, pharmacies, tradies. They account for 30 percent of employees and 25 percent of GDP. This bill will help them grow and innovate. It will strengthen the economy, lift wages, and help hard-working Kiwis get ahead. I commend this bill to the House.

New Zealand First also supports this bill. We believe the Minister is bringing in sensible changes. New Zealand First is always a champion of labour market flexibility. We believe that that is a key component, and, as the previous speaker, Suze Redmayne, pointed out, it is the Going for Growth agenda. We see this as a key pillar—having a good, flexible labour workforce that is fit for a modern working environment.

Some of the key components here include amending section 6 of the Employment Relations Act to provide a clearer definition for a contractor. We’ve heard from some of the Opposition speakers, and they’ve focused very heavily on the Uber situation. This actually improves that; it gives some clarity. There has been a lot of legal ambiguity. It’s not just about Uber; this is a massive part of our employment workforce now: the gig economy. Contractors are becoming more and more prevalent in the workforce. We’re clarifying that with a gateway test so that some of these highly legally contended situations can be sorted out. We’re cutting them off at the pass by being much clearer, on the way into an employment contract, where you stand.

In terms of the threshold for personal grievances, personal grievances have been—and there’s certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest it—weaponised in a number of areas, so we are raising the threshold for that. Employees can be held accountable for serious misconduct. And the flexibility to move on—employees earning over $180,000—for an unjustifiable dismissal; that is also key. These are not vulnerable workers; these are workers who are highly paid and are expected to be able to perform at a certain level, and it can be heavily disruptive to a business and productivity to have underperforming senior employees and managers. I will point out, as the Minister did, that that can still be contracted into an employment agreement if they would like to do that on the way in. These are not vulnerable workers; they know what they’re doing. They have the capacity to do that.

I was interested in some of the commentary from the Opposition on the 30-day rule, because I would have thought that actually the best advert for a union is if a worker is coming on on lesser conditions than the union. Surely you would want to join the union and be part of a collective agreement. There is certainly incentive to join a union if they’ve got a particularly good collective agreement on the table. This 30-day rule is an anachronism, it goes back to the Labour Party, and it is tied to the unions. It is unnecessary. The unions will still have plenty of access to get to these workers and put them on a collective agreement, should the workers look to do that.

In conclusion, this is about flexibility, it’s about fairness, and it’s about enabling the conditions for growth. We are going to have to grow this economy. We have been in a serious situation, we’re growing our way out of it, and labour market reform is part of that set of responses that this Government is bringing forward. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Kia ora. First of all, I’d like to stand in strong opposition to this bill. I’m not sure what it takes for a Government to understand that penalising workers’ rights is not an economic strategy. It is not about growth. That is a bad social policy. This whole Government’s idea of economic growth being at the cost of underpaying people and of penalising those who are at the bottom of their view of the worker food chain does nothing but create more hardship on many of those families and communities that are already experiencing hardship. What we’ve got is a community who are struggling to pay $18 for a kilo of butter. They are struggling to find employment, they’re struggling to find access to stay in employment, and we’ve got a whole factor of drive-down of salaries going on. It’s been really confronting to see how this Government sees that growth is best to happen by standing on the heads of those who need the most support.

When we see that this bill is stripping back core protection, I want to say that I’m horrified, but, sadly, with this Government’s track record towards workers and workers’ rights, I’m not horrified. I’m, again, sadly, underwhelmed by what it says are solutions for economic growth.

Let’s look at some of the things that this bill’s doing. First of all, it’s going to heighten the workers’ vulnerability to be unjustifiably dismissed. It’s great if you have employers that are good, but, unfortunately, this opens the doors, as it does for many situations, for those worst-practising businesses and employers. That’s why employees’ rights were put in place in the first place. We’ve got, sadly, a sector which has a high proportion of Māori and Pasifika workers, of migrant workers, and of contract-style mahi, and they are going to remove every protection that has entrenched equality.

This gives the employers more power. When you’re in a climate where there isn’t a heck of a lot of work, that then creates an opportunity for employers to exploit the most vulnerable. That’s what this bill is about. Cruelly, that does appear to be what this Government has been about: exploiting those who need support the most.

We’ve got nearly 144,000 New Zealanders, which is about 5 percent of the workforce, or one in 20, who are employed as self-employed contractors. I just want to say that again: one in 20 in New Zealand are employed as contractors. So we’re not talking about a small amount of people here; we’re talking about a large proportion who are already disadvantaged, who are already struggling financially, who are already feeling the trauma of exploitation. When we look at that, we’ve got Māori participation in those industries, we’ve got high levels of contracted casual work, significant across agriculture, across forestry, fishing, mining, construction—all the sectors that have a whole lot of vulnerabilities going on.

Then we looked again at the 30-day rule—and I have heard my colleagues talking about it prior. The 30-day rule acts as a lifeline. It gives kaimahi time to consider union membership before being pressured into an individual agreement. Without this rule, employers could use the divide and rule tactics, which is real—the peer pressure to keep Māori kaimahi, to keep Pasifika kaimahi, to keep those who are not savvy on what their rights are, on weaker contracts from day one. That’s a really tough position to claw back from. It allows employers to opt out of collective conditions on day one, and it creates a race to the bottom. It’s the opposite of what our workers need right now, especially, again, in the cost of living crisis.

We’ve also seen some stakeholder views. The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions has described this as a radical employment bill that threatens every worker in Aotearoa.

Look, we already know you’re good at flexing muscle. We’ve already seen the Government flex its muscle at those who are wāhine, those who are Māori, and those who are struggling. This bill makes it easier to continue to have a Government that flexes its muscle, that exploits its power to put imbalance in the workplace and constructively dismiss workers while making it harder for those workers who are out there struggling, trying to bring home money for their whānau. It also makes it really hard to keep those employers accountable. There’s better ways to flex muscle for economic growth. This isn’t one of them. Kia ora rā.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. With great pleasure, I rise to speak on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill in its first reading. The area I want to focus on is this ability of people to be their own contractor, to run their own little business and take on a role like driving Uber vehicles—to take on that role—in their own time and terms and conditions, because, guess what! A lot of those people want the flexibility that being a contractor allows. Actually, I can think of opportunities where, possibly, the member for Palmerston North might eventually want to get an Uber to take him all the way up over the Brynderwyns, up to the North, to see what our roads are like and might respect the fact that Northlanders would like a new road. That would provide the opportunity for someone who’s a contractor to do that, and that would be one of the great things. So I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, here we are with another attack on workers’ rights by this Government. What a terrible piece of legislation. National and New Zealand First members should really be taking this opportunity to reflect on the type of legislation that this Government is putting before the House, because if you read the regulatory impact statement, all you see is ACT Party policy, ACT Party coalition agreement. This is a vehicle for the far-right, libertarian agenda of the ACT Party to be driven into to Parliament and put at the heart of our most important piece of employment legislation.

Every single one of these changes introduced today in this bill is absolutely terrible for working people, and I’ll tell you exactly why. The first issue is the absolutely unprecedented situation of this Government bringing a bill into the House to change the law in relation to contractors where there are working people using our existing laws, taking their case to the Supreme Court only last week. Why are they doing this? Why can they not have faith in our judicial system to be able to provide a just outcome for working people? Absolutely disgraceful behaviour to bring this bill to the House.

The actual change that they make limits what judges and what people can do in order to assess the real relationship between workers and between employers. So, at the moment, there is a test of the real nature of the job. So you look at: is this actually an employment relationship or is it a contracting relationship? That’s what our judges can do at the moment. This bill takes that away. It says if you have the word contractor written in a document, then you’re a contractor. Well, this is against all the international examples, this is totally different to the common law that applies in many other countries that we compare ourselves to, and is an absolutely disgusting, unprecedented attack on workers’ rights that will take New Zealand backwards, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

The second thing that they’re doing is making two changes to the personal grievance process. The first thing that they’re doing is actually making it so anyone earning over $180,000 in New Zealand can be fired at will. Now, you will all know people who earn that amount of money, especially on that side of the House, and when your wife or when your husband or when your brother-in-law comes home and says, “I went to work and I was told that I’m now sacked, and they didn’t give me a reason why.”, you can tell them—or those members on the other side can tell them—that the reason that that happened to them was because of this terrible law that you passed today.

The other thing they’re doing in relation to personal grievances is making a change which is totally unnecessary. In an employment relationship, often there is a situation where an employee may do something that is not 100 percent perfect; an employer might do something which is not 100 percent perfect. The situation that they’re bringing in says if the employee is anything less than perfect, they can’t get their remedies. Totally unrealistic and unpractical, and a totally ridiculous law to bring in. There is already contribution that can be considered by our courts.

The next thing that they’re doing is introducing a way of allowing not only people on high incomes but those on low incomes to be sacked at will. Now, we know that 90-day trials exist in New Zealand. These 90-day trials often can’t be implemented within the first 30 days if there’s a collective agreement, because collective agreements agreed by unions don’t have 90-day trials in them, so those people are protected for the first 30 days. This Minister is getting rid of the 30-day rule simply so people on low incomes in New Zealand can be sacked more easily—so they can lose their job.

There’s so much to say on this bill, but I just wanted to draw the House’s attention to this: another situation where we have a regulatory impact statement where all of the information in relation to international obligations is redacted. And why is this? Because we have free-trade agreements with lots of different countries that state that our employment situation should not decrease—and I bet you that that’s exactly what it says in this regulatory impact statement. They won’t share it with the House.

This Government has increased unemployment. It has made it harder for New Zealanders to get a job. And now, when they should be looking at trying to get people into employment, what are they doing? They’re implementing laws to sack people more easily. This will affect every family in New Zealand. The unfairness of this bill will reverberate throughout the years until the next Government gets in and actually brings some real balance into employment law, which actually provides protection for workers, and actually makes sure that they have the fairness they deserve.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak in support of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. The intention of this bill is to bring rebalance to the personal grievance settings. At the moment, it is out of whack. Business leaders in multiple sectors have told me that the personal grievance industry is a real major handbrake for productivity in multiple sectors. So that is why we are making some changes, as well as clarifying and increasing flexibility regarding work structures, for example, in contracting. Ultimately, this is about increasing opportunities. It’s about going for growth. Economic growth will lead to greater opportunities for workers. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. At a time when record numbers of New Zealanders are leaving our shores, when unemployment has reached new heights, and we have a record number of 47,000 New Zealanders leaving for Australia in the past year, this Government decides it’s a good time to further erode workers’ rights, to make it even easier to fire workers, and to take away their ability to be part of a collective agreement.

If it was not already looking bleak for New Zealanders, this bill is just one more nail in the coffin of workers’ rights, of New Zealanders being able to earn a decent wage, of having a fair income, and being able to afford the basic groceries to feed your family. That is what is foremost on New Zealanders’ minds right now, and this Government continues on a crusade to further take away workers’ rights and make it harder for people to get what they deserve.

So let’s take a look at exactly what this does. The number one I’d like to speak to is the removal of the 30-day rule. Let’s talk about the importance of that. It’s a vital rule that enables unions to engage with new employees in those first 30 days to give them the benefit of the collective agreement. By removing that, it means that employers can sign up an individual agreement and undercut the rights and the freedoms of workers. That is going to significantly compromise the rights of workers and potentially also the pay of workers if they’re on an individual contract as well.

So it removes that right and it removes the ability for that advocacy to take place. It’s stripping away the ability of the bargaining right of unions for workers to have fair wages and fair conditions. This is in the context of a cost of living crisis. This is in the context of a Government who proclaims to be doing more for New Zealanders, to be putting more money in their pockets, and to be giving back to the squeezed middle, as they put it. With one hand they say they’re doing this, but with the real hand, with the actual actions, they continue to erode workers’ rights.

The next one is around personal grievances, because what this does is completely take away the right to go through that process for a personal grievance. In fact, for anyone earning over $180,000, it takes away any ability to have a personal grievance. I do fear what this does, particularly for sexual harassment in the workplace, for women who have got to stand up and say certain behaviour is unacceptable. If you are earning over $180,000 in New Zealand, under this, it is impossible to take a personal grievance and that is deeply concerning for human rights, for women’s rights, in New Zealand.

It is really difficult to understand what the benefits of this bill are. It removes the obligation to provide an active choice in which the employer asks the employee whether they want to join their relevant union and receive that advocacy. It significantly weakens employees’ rights in the personal grievance process by removing any remedies for serious misconduct, removing eligibility for reinstatement into a role, and it also removes eligibility for compensation for hurt and for humiliation if the employee is found to have “contributed to the situation that led to the personal grievance”—yeah, I don’t even want to start there. This creates an absolute perverse incentive in the personal grievance process to pin it on the employee and remove the protections. It takes away their right for a personal grievance and it takes away their right for union representation.

If this Government is going for growth, they’re doing it the wrong way. This is holding people back. This is paying people less. This is paying it to their mates and looking after their own group of friends while watching the rest of New Zealand suffer and not even be able to put food on the table. Well, this will come back to bite them at the election, along with all of the other sad little bills that have eroded workers’ rights in New Zealand.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill does actually help support the Government’s going for growth agenda, and isn’t that what we all want? Growth provides opportunities, and that’s what everyone in this House should actually aspire to.

These changes in the bill will enhance our labour market flexibility, they’ll reduce compliance costs and remove some of that red tape that we all love to hate, and they will bring the balance between employer and employee interests back to a sensible and practical place—and, again, that’s what we should all want. The changes will provide confidence, and confidence is what enables and promotes positive employment outcomes and opportunities. Outcomes do mean opportunities, and opportunities mean jobs. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Employment Relations Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Instruction to Education and Workforce Committee