This Supplementary Order Paper amends the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. An employee or employer may opt out of coverage of a fair pay agreement if they notify the chief executive in writing that they have a fundamental conscientious, religious, or moral objection to their coverage. The employee or employer is not subject to coverage of the fair pay agreement.

It is a basic principle in any free society that people are able to exercise conscience to refuse to participate or belong to anything. New Zealand has already gone through a period in which the State has forced people to comply with requirements for vaccines or masks which they have had fundamental philosophical or moral objections to. The result was a lot of people losing their jobs and considerable social division and protest. In the case of fair pay agreements, people are being forced into agreements they may personally object to but, unlike COVID-19, without any obvious public interest applying. There must always be recognition of personal objection and allowances for that.