National and Labour have teamed up to get a piece of legislation addressing modern slavery and extreme cases of worker exploitation through the House as fast as possible.
The two opposing parties were required to unite on the issue and put the legislation through as a Member’s Bill – rather than a Government bill – because it did not have the full support of all governing coalition parties. The level of bipartisan support means the Member’s bill will bypass the biscuit tin ballot and be introduced to Parliament on the next sitting day thanks to Standing order 288. This is the first time that standing order has been used.
National and Labour said the Act Party and its MP, Workplace Relations Minister Brooke Van Velden, did not support the bill, prompting National to seek the support of Labour to get it across the line.
In a statement, the minister said she would “look to consider this bill put forward by other parliamentarians as a caucus member of the Act Party”.
However, it now won’t require her support to pass.
Typically, a Member’s Bill has to go to a ballot (colloquially known as the Biscuit Tin) and then be picked out in a lottery.
The bill was lodged by National MP Greg Fleming and Labour’s Camilla Belich. The pair held a joint press conference at Parliament on Thursday morning.
Belich said the bill targeted the “worst type of worker exploitation” – including servitude, slavery, sexual exploitation, child labour – “really worst types of treatment that human beings can do one another.”
Perhaps the most famous contemporary case of modern slavery in New Zealand is the case of 66-year-old Hawke’s Bay contractor Joseph Matamata, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for people trafficking and slavery.
His offending involved 13 people who were brought from his home community in Samoa to work in New Zealand over a 25-year period from 1994 to his arrest in December 2018.
Fleming said Matamata had confiscated people’s passports, put them into servitude and then been “exploiting them for years on end”.
“Had the framework that we’re introducing in this legislation and the changes to the prosecution framework coming through ... been in place, that case would have been identified and dealt with years earlier and saved hundreds of victims.”
The bill would require large businesses to report on how they identify and address modern slavery in their supply chains, create a public register of these reports and ramp up support for victims in New Zealand.
Fines of up to $200,000 would be introduced for companies that refused to report this information or published false or misleading statements. There would also be civil penalties of up to $600,000, public naming and potential liability for directors and senior managers.
The legislation would also give the Human Rights Commission a formal role and could see a “anti-slavery commissioner” established.
Fleming said the bill was expected to be passed into law before the November general election. Previously, while Leader of the Opposition, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said modern slavery was an issue he would “march in the streets” for.
Fleming said Luxon “could not have been more supportive” of the bill but “Act weren’t supportive of it, which is why Camilla and I have worked through this route.”
In a statement, Act’s van Velden said: “I will look to consider this bill put forward by other parliamentarians as a caucus member of the Act Party.”
“At the start of my term as Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, I made it clear what my priorities are, and I’ve worked for the past two years to progress those.
“They are reforms to the Holidays Act, health and safety and an Employment Relations Amendment Bill. All three will progress through the House this year.”
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.