This Act may be cited as the Terralink NZ Limited (Transfer of Employees) Act 1996.

This Act shall come into force on 1 July 1996.

In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires,—

Notwithstanding anything in section 61A of the State Sector Act 1988, where the chief executive of the department finds, in respect of any duties being carried out by the department, that those duties are no longer to be carried out by the department and are to be carried out (in whole or in part) by Terralink, that chief executive may, subject to the relevant employment contract and to subsection (2), transfer from the department to that State enterprise, all or any of the employees of the department who are carrying out those duties.

Before transferring any employee under subsection (1), the chief executive of the department shall consult with the employee about the proposed transfer.

The terms and conditions of employment of every employee of the department who is transferred to Terralink under section 3(1) shall, unless varied by agreement, be based on the terms and conditions of employment that applied to that employee immediately before the date of transfer, as if the terms and conditions of employment were contained in an employment contract made between Terralink and the employee.

Where any employees of the department whose conditions of employment are governed by an unexpired collective employment contract are transferred, in accordance with section 3, to Terralink, the unexpired collective employment contract shall be deemed, as from the date of the transfer of those employees, to continue to apply on the same terms (including the period of the contract and any terms relating to new employees)—

Every employee of the department who is transferred to Terralink pursuant to section 3(1) shall, on the date of the transfer, become an employee of Terralink but, for the purposes of every enactment, law, contract, and agreement relating to the employment of each such employee, the contract of employment of that employee that applied immediately before the commencement of this section in respect of that person’s employment in the department shall be deemed to have been unbroken and that employee’s period of service with the department, and every other period of service of that employee that is recognised by the department as continuous service, shall be deemed to have been a period of service with Terralink.

No employee of the department who is transferred to Terralink pursuant to section 3(1) shall be entitled to receive any payment or other benefit for redundancy or otherwise by reason only of that person ceasing by virtue of that transfer to be an employee of the department.

Every person who, immediately before becoming an employee of Terralink by virtue of a transfer under section 3(1), was a contributor to the Government Superannuation Fund under the Government Superannuation Fund Act 1956, shall, for the purposes of that Act, be deemed to be employed in the Government service for so long as that person continues to be employed by Terralink; and that Act shall be deemed to apply to that person in all respects as if that person’s service with Terralink were Government service.

Subject to the Government Superannuation Fund Act 1956, nothing in subsection (1) shall entitle any such person to become a contributor to the Government Superannuation Fund after that person has ceased to be a contributor.

For the purposes of applying the Government Superannuation Fund Act 1956 in accordance with subsection (1), the term controlling authority, in relation to any transferee, means Terralink.