Tapu Misa: Hobbit sorted - what's the next bad law?

Last week's law is so badly drafted it will do the exact opposite of what John Key promised Warner Bros and Jackson. Photo / Mark Mitchell

It's not the money that bothers me. As galling as it is to watch a corporate giant finesse extra millions out of the Government, I don't blame Warner Bros for wanting to nail down the best deal for itself. That's business.

Try to get away with that same behaviour as a teacher, though, and you're called greedy and told the Government can't just "magic up more money". And if you're an actor, wanting to, you know, please, Sir, have a chat about maybe, just possibly, getting the same conditions as overseas actors who come here to do the same job, you get death threats.

What a happy confluence of circumstances those bolshie overseas actors' unions, their boycott, and Peter Jackson's injured pride turned out to be for Warner Bros.

I'll buy the argument that the economic benefits of keeping the Hobbit movies in New Zealand, saving hundreds of jobs and our fragile film industry, were worth the extra money, even if John and Gerry made it way too easy for Warner by signalling ahead of time that they would do anything to keep the project here.

What is harder to swallow is the idea that we could so casually surrender sovereignty and the integrity of our law-making processes to clinch the deal.

Welcome to New Zealand Inc, small, desperate, and a little too ready to sell its self-respect for the casting couch.

Going cheap this week: an employment law change that aims to deprive workers in the film and video games industry of the right to collectively bargain or take action for unfair dismissal by specifying that they should always be regarded as contractors, rather than employees.

Whatever happened to the fiercely independent New Zealand that once stood up to the US over nuclear ships?

As Labour MP Charles Chauvel said during last week's parliamentary debate: "Once the euphoria of retaining the Hobbit in New Zealand wears off, and once all the union bashing bloodlust dies away, people are going to be disappointed with what remains. This is a Government that has reduced New Zealand, in the words of the Financial Times, to client status of an American film studio."

What next? "Do we give in to any multinational that asks for a labour standard to be diluted in return for some investment?"

The law change is supposed to avoid the situation a Peter Jackson company, Three Foot Six, faced in 2005 when the Supreme Court ruled that James Bryson, a modelmaker the firm had employed on The Lord of the Rings, was an employee rather than a contractor.

Chauvel, who was on the legal team arguing the Bryson case, said the Supreme Court decision - that Bryson was clearly an employee "by every test known to the common law and applied in this and every other common law country for over the last 100 years" - had settled the question of how you determine whether a person is a contractor or an employee. The court ruled that all the attributes of the relationship have to be looked at, not just the label attached to it.

The test was clear and well established. The law didn't need clarification.

Chauvel says last week's "rushed and botched" law is so badly drafted it will do the exact opposite of what John Key promised Warner Bros and Jackson. There will be more uncertainty and litigation, not less.

He points out that the provision making all film workers contractors doesn't apply to those covered by "an employment agreement", which is not defined by the new legislation.

That leaves the door open to anyone who wants to argue that they are employees, which means the court will still have to apply the same test it applied in the Bryson case.

Chauvel: "We're tying ourselves up in knots, we've sacrificed our sovereignty, we've thrown out due process - all for an amendment that simply will not do what the minister thinks it will."

Still, what's one more bad law rushed through under urgency to add to a growing number from this Government?

What makes this worse is that Warner Bros did not ask for a law change; Gerry Brownlee said so twice in the House last week. Brownlee said Warner wanted certainty, something the local union had already given after realising it had been well and truly outflanked.

It seems a relaxed Key was all too happy to offer up the law change, and dispense with all the fuss and bother of due process. Democracy can be such a drag.

Time is money, and changing laws on the hop makes you look nimble and active.

As Brian Gaynor suggested in his Weekend Herald column, it's a lot easier to ride to the rescue of a popular cause like The Hobbit than to develop a long-term economic strategy for the country.