Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill.

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

I move, That the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I am very pleased this evening that with the third reading of this bill, and, God willing, its passage before the end of the night, this Government will be delivering on one of its election commitments. That is the commitment to make sure that workers across New Zealand have a decent and adequate entitlement for sick leave for themselves, and their dependants, of 10 days per year.

Having come out of the year of COVID, one of our learnings has been about the need to make sure that people have adequate sick leave, and I’ll speak shortly about why that is so important. I want to start off, though, with a brief comment about why this bill is so important in the context of the Government’s broader agenda for workplace relations. It is my vision as Minister—and this Government’s policy—to achieve workplaces that are fair, safe, and productive, and to build up a framework across our workplaces in which those principles are mutually reinforcing. We don’t see that those things conflict against each other, as has sometimes been the case in our past. We believe workplaces in which workers are treated fairly will be workplaces in which it’s safer for everyone and will be workplaces in which it is more productive, as well. This piece of legislation fits very well within that context because it’s about recognising the fundamental needs of workers to look after their health and recognising that there are benefits in that for the broader workplace and for the business that is concerned, as well.

Over the course of this debate, we have seen the differences in approach between the two sides of the House, and this came out most forwardly in the committee stage of the debate yesterday when we heard from the National Party a very negative, backwards-looking, low-road approach to employment relations. We were told that with the passage of this bill, workers en masse, apparently, will look to rip off the system and take sick leave up to the maximum, regardless of whether they are sick or not. We were told that employers en masse, apparently, will discriminate against women and people with dependants if this is passed. Well, on this side of the House—I said this yesterday and I’ll repeat it again—we have a much more optimistic view of the way that employees and employers treat each other in this country, and our ability to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and to have productive workplaces all at once. As I say, we don’t see those things as being in contradiction.

In fact, yesterday we saw from the National Party a Supplementary Order Paper that would have actually cut—actually cut—from the current legal minimum of five days the sick leave for part-time workers who have less than 2½ days of work per week. What kind of thinking leads you to that after a year of a global pandemic like COVID-19? I can’t even imagine.

But for us, as I said, this is about making sure that we have adequate sick leave entitlements for the benefit of workers and of workplaces, and for the broader public health interest. For workers, this is simple and this is so important that it bears repeating: this is about people being treated with sufficient dignity that when they are unwell, that when they are sick, they are able to take sufficient time to get well again. That they don’t feel forced into coming into work. That they don’t feel pressured into coming to work. They are able to stay at home and recover for their health and their wellbeing. I will go on to talk about some of the broader benefits and the productivity enhancements that we believe do flow from this bill, but, at its core, there is something here about how we treat people. I believe that people who are sick should be afforded the ability to be at home, within reason, so that they can recover.

This is also about the broader workplace. It’s about the fact that, again, after the year of COVID—how many times do we have to learn and relearn this? We don’t want people who are sick coming in to work, not just for their own benefit but for the health and wellbeing of the people that they work with. People who are sick spread illness to others in the workplace.

I reflected yesterday in the debate that we are beginning to build up evidence on record that over the course of the year, many workplaces have had reduced sick leave need because people have been staying at home. It’s very simple: this is about looking after the worker who is sick and their workmates, and, more broadly, this is also about the public health interest. In an era in which we are acutely aware of how communicable diseases can spread, it is surely more important than ever that we move past that old-time culture of just toughing it out, because if we continue with that, then we put ourselves at risk, not just at the workplace level but at the level of our communities and our society, of the spread of illnesses like COVID and other illnesses. We cannot possibly want that. The long-term implications of that not just for individuals and community and their wellbeing but for our economy are profound. So this is so important that people do have the right to adequate sick leave.

I said in my first reading speech that that culture of toughing it out is quite embedded. It’s certainly something that I’ve done and I’m pretty sure that other members around the Chamber have done, but, increasingly, I think New Zealanders and employers recognise that it is not the way ahead.

I’ve been encouraged over the course of this debate by how many people recognise the value of this policy. Of course, there have been people who have a different view. That happens whenever we have a change. But I recognise people like Michael Barnett from the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, who said that this is not just better for employees’ wellbeing, but it’s better for the workplace as well. He encouraged opponents of the bill to look at the long term.

There was an excellent comment from Jane Kennelly, a director at Frog Recruitment, and she spoke about her experience in her business of offering not just 10 days’ sick leave per year but unlimited sick leave, flexible sick leave. She said when she offered unlimited sick leave in her business, “people thought staff would take leave willy-nilly. But quite the opposite happened. We were well below the average just because there was an element of trust.”, and that’s right—isn’t that the thing? When we treat people with trust and respect and when people don’t have to worry about whether they’ll have enough sick leave to get through the next illness that they have or their dependants have, you can build more trusting relationships between the employees and the employers, and that’s where we want to take it.

The Government will be there as well. We’ve stepped up over the last year to support employers and employees with the COVID-19 Leave Support Scheme and the COVID-19 short-term absence payments. We’re not leaving employers and employees to their own devices; we will be there to support them where necessary, but let’s make sure that, fundamentally, people have adequate sick leave in the first instance.

I’d like to thank everyone who has participated in the passage of this bill so far. To those members of the select committee, who ran a very good select committee process; to the officials who have worked hard over the last six months on their piece of legislation, noting that this was one of the first pieces of legislation introduced by the new Government when we came into office at the end of last year; and to all of those people who have submitted and given their views on this bill, whatever those views were, I respect and thank them for that contribution.

The bill that the select committee sent back to the House and that we are considering today is a simple bill. It increases the entitlement from five days to 10 days per year for employees. It’s a bill in which we have tried to retain a balance. We have listened to the voices of employers, who have asked us to make sure that any changes that we do make are able to be implemented with a reasonable time frame. Therefore, the commencement of this bill will occur two months after Royal assent and the increases to entitlement will occur on employee anniversary dates—not all at once in one go—and that will enable payroll systems to adapt to the system. So we have tried to take a balanced approach to make sure that these provisions can be efficiently implemented.

As I move towards closing my comments this evening, I return to that broader vision that we have for workplaces in New Zealand—that is, workplaces in which we have fairness, safety, and productivity and in which those things rest upon one another and reinforce one another. The Government has a much broader agenda that I am very proud of and that we will be making progress on over the course of this term. We’ve announced fair pay agreements recently. We’ll be moving forward with making sure we have an adequate health and safety system to keep people safe in the workplace. But this reform early on in our term speaks to those values. It speaks to valuing people, making sure that they have the dignity to be well in their own lives. It speaks to looking after other people in the workplace. It speaks to the broader benefits of making sure that illness doesn’t spread, reducing productivity and causing carnage, potentially, across our communities and our societies.

I am very proud that our Government so early in our term has kept our commitment to follow through on this piece of legislation. It speaks to our values. It speaks to our vision with the employment relations system. It speaks to some of the lessons that we have learnt over the course of COVID-19. I thank everyone for their contribution to this important piece of legislation, and this evening I am very happy, as a promise kept, to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ve listened carefully to the Minister’s contributions at several stages of this legislation now, and, as I did the first time I heard him, I remain utterly unconvinced of his argument. This is a bill that he has correctly identified as being an election commitment made by the parliamentary Labour Party, deeply connected to the trade union movement and their influencers. He speaks about the future and a bright and rosy nirvana for industrial relations in this country, but the unions want to take us back—back to a time when there was conflict and when there was disharmony and when there was even lower productivity than we have now.

What the Minister didn’t speak about at all was the cost and who pays. So the cost has been estimated by his own officials at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to be a billion dollars a year.

💬 Christopher Luxon: How much?

A billion dollars a year, Mr Luxon. So that’s a billion dollars a year, or nearly 1 percent of the nation’s total payroll, that this Government is foisting upon business in a way that produces nothing more. So the Minister talks blithely about a view of the world that is rosy and bright but doesn’t match reality.

Last night, we heard him in the committee of the whole House speaking about the world that he saw. Well, he clearly has no understanding of how business operates or how some people and some employees operate. I don’t think there are many—in fact, they usually roll out one, the only member of the Labour Party caucus who is a business person. It’s a small business somewhere in the South Island. They roll this person out very regularly, and then the rest of the time it’s the trade union delegates that get up and speak. So what happens is that you have a Government party that is utterly and totally disconnected from the reality of the commercial world and totally disconnected from the reality of day-to-day pressures, particularly on small businesses trying to cope already with the challenges that the last 12 months and COVID have provided.

That brings me to another point. The rationale for this legislation has actually been COVID. This is a bill that’s been brought in under the cover of COVID. Actually, if it was supposedly the cover of COVID that this bill was set to achieve its objectives, then surely it would have made sense for this bill to have a finite and limited time frame. But, no, this is the Government using COVID to introduce long-held views about employees and trade union objectives, long held and long sought by their influencers. Now, I don’t think that that’s going to deliver for New Zealand employees, it’s certainly not going to deliver for New Zealand employers, and it’s going to be, ultimately, bad for productivity, and we already have a huge problem with this.

Greg Harford is the chief executive of the Retail New Zealand organisation, and they represent thousands of businesses, and literally tens of thousands of people work in those retail businesses. Greg Harford came on behalf of his organisation to select committee and said that up to 20 percent of people working in retail are actually part-timers. That whole issue about part-timers has been a crucial element of debate and discussion and an unresolved issue in relation to this bill, and it relates to what’s referred to as prorating. So this bill seeks to give people who are employed an extra five days a year of sick leave. Now, that may be well and good for people who are employed on the old-fashioned 40 hours a week, five days a week kind of concept that the Labour Party’s rose-tinted glasses seem to think that most New Zealanders are still employed by. The reality is, of course, that employment and economic circumstances have changed, and the way people are employed has changed as well.

Greg Harford from Retail New Zealand points out that a lot of the people who work part time do so because they want to, because it suits them, or because it fits in with their lifestyle and what they want to achieve. So for an employer now who employs somebody one day a week, they’re going to have to give that one-day-a-week person 10 days’ annual sick leave—10 days. So if a person works one day a week—arguably, about 50 days a year—10 of those days can be taken as sick leave. But here’s the rub: if that person then has another job for a second day of that week with a second employer, they get another 10 days of annual sick leave—another 10 days of sick leave. If, heaven forbid, they work for five different entities over five different days, then you do the maths.

So the reality of this has yet to sink into the Government. They just don’t get it, and they don’t get it because they’re not connected with the reality of day-to-day business, particularly small businesses. They simply don’t have any understanding of it. So this lack of ability to prorate is already a problem, but it’s exacerbated massively by extending this to 10 days a year.

So we come back to the issue of what is a prudent, careful, responsible employer going to do when they start to look at candidates for a new job. Last night, the Minister rejected my saying this because he seems to think that everybody lives in peace and harmony and sweetness, and light descends upon everything. Well, the grim reality is that that is not the case. That is not the case for all employers and it’s not the case for all employees, and so what the Government is, effectively, asking business people to do is to, essentially, underwrite the good health of employees’ children.

The reason for that is simple. It’s because, often, sick leave is taken in support of dependent children, and that happens with quite frequent regularity. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, but when an employer is looking at two candidates and one candidate for a new job has no children and one candidate has a number of children, that employer is going to be thinking in their head, “What is the risk to my business and to the productivity of my business, the profitability, to the competitiveness of my business if I take the candidate with multiple children versus the one that doesn’t?”—that assumes, of course, that those are candidates of the same background, the same experience, the same talent, and the same ability to do the job.

I put it to the Government that, actually, businesses will do what they need to do to remain competitive and to remain profitable, and they will structure their business affairs in a way that achieves profitability and competitiveness. In some businesses, what will happen—and this is the case that Retail New Zealand have made and other submitters made to the select committee. What they will end up doing is actually not employing part-timers as frequently or in such numbers as they used to do. That will have a negative effect on people who want and seek part-time employment, but it also means that in terms of changing the way they do business, there will be businesses who simply automate out of their business a whole range of jobs.

They will do that, and we’ve seen that in so many business sectors already, and when what Governments like this Labour-led Government do is just foist more cost, more red tape—

💬 Christopher Luxon: A billion dollars.

—upon businesses—Mr Luxon says a billion dollars, and we shouldn’t forget it. It’s a billion dollars a year of added cost. They foist that upon businesses. Well, the Government can’t reasonably expect, then, businesses not to react in a way that is going to adapt and adopt their business to remain competitive and profitable, and that will be the outcome. It will actually be fewer jobs—particularly for part-timers—and it will be less opportunity, particularly for those employees who seek jobs if they have dependent children.

So these are the practical realities, and it’s got nothing to do with a jaundiced view of the world, as the Minister likes to characterise it. It’s a simple reality of business, of commerce, and of human nature. So I make no apology on this side of the House for us opposing this piece of legislation.

If the Government was genuine and sincere about using COVID as their cover for introducing this legislation—and remember, this legislation was introduced under urgency, sent to select committee for a truncated select committee process over a summer period, and it has represented the very worst of process and the worst of doctrinaire, ideologically driven, centralised thinking from a Labour Government, socialist at heart, trade union in their history, in their politics, and in their view of the world. We on this side of the House have a fondness for business, for creating jobs, for creating opportunity, and for creating employment for New Zealanders who want to work and be productive.

Well, my goodness me, Mr Simpson. Why on earth is it that that member has so much disregard and distrust for the working people of New Zealand? To stand there and assume that because we’re increasing sick days from five days to 10 days, employees are going to be so distrustful and they are going to rip the system something shocking—I honestly cannot believe it. I cannot fathom that Mr Simpson is stuck in his 1950s’ world view of employees.

Now, as an employer and a small-business owner, I welcome this change. I welcome this change because, quite frankly, I would far rather have staff members staying away when they are unwell than coming into work, spreading their illness—

💬 Chris Bishop: At least you have some experience.

—which, in turn—Mr Bishop—means that more staff take more time off, therefore costing more in productivity, and there is the financial cost to the employer if all staff members are heading away on sick leave all the time. Just because sick leave is increased to 10 days per annum, it does not mean that every staff member is going to take their 10 days’ sick leave all at once, all in the same week, all on the same day. However it might sound, I just can’t comprehend what it is the Opposition are trying to say. What this does is it allows—

💬 Chris Bishop: Why don’t you listen?

Well, if the member has something worth listening to, then I would listen, but there is no argument worth listening to from that side of the House. What this does is it ensures that employees will not come to work sick, spreading their bugs, and therefore affect the productivity of the business.

In fact, if you think about it, we compare ourselves quite often with Australia, and they actually, over there, provide 10 days’ leave per year for workers. We’re probably one of the few countries in the OECD that do not.

So I stand here very proudly as a small-business owner from the South Island supporting this piece of legislation. I think it is fantastic. It is perfect timing, and I commend the Minister for bringing this piece of legislation to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s an absolute privilege to take an unexpected call on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill.

Now, I can kind of understand the rationale for this. The Government wants to improve the sick leave approach and give people an extra five days, doubling it—yeah, OK, I understand that. But it’s really easy to pass a piece of legislation imposing cost on someone else, and this is one of the biggest issues I have with the Government, with their raft of legislation they’ve been putting through. It is the unintended consequences, and when you have a business community that are having to step up to the plate here because, quite frankly, it is only businesses who will be picking up this cost—$1 billion a year of increased costs on businesses. We’ve been through an incredibly challenging period over the last 12 or so months with COVID and there have been businesses that have really struggled through that period. Some haven’t made it. Others have done really well, but, actually, it has been an incredibly challenging time for business owners. Regardless of their particular industry or whether they’ve done well or not, the uncertainty created by COVID has been incredibly stressful. Alongside that, we’ve seen, firstly, last year, an increase in the minimum wage, and then again this year, a further increase in the minimum wage—

💬 Hon Members: Whoo!

—and the other side are saying, “Great, fantastic!” Well, yes, but who’s picking up that cost? It’s not the Government covering that, actually; it’s businesses having to pick up that cost.

This is the fundamental point the Government just don’t seem to understand—that businesses do not just have an endless bank account. There are hard-working business owners all around the country struggling every day to make a real go of their passion, of their interest, in whatever industry it is. They’ve had the innovation, the entrepreneurship, the drive to go out and create their own piece of paradise in New Zealand, and good on them for doing that because we are incredibly lucky to have such a strong business community in New Zealand. I think they’d really appreciate a bit more support from this Government. This sort of legislation bringing in an extra five days’ sick leave is just a step too far on top of all those other measures that I’ve just mentioned, including now we’re hearing about another public holiday as well, and that’s a direct cost straight to business owners, as well. It’d just be great if we could see from this Government a bit more consideration for the impact their legislation has on business.

The consultation period, as well, through this bill was very poor. Like we’ve seen on a number of pieces of legislation, the select committee process hasn’t been adequate. There hasn’t been sufficient opportunity for New Zealanders to actually have their say, to engage in the democratic process and share their views, because, quite frankly, we don’t have all the answers here in Wellington. We rely on the likes of those business owners to share their views on what the impact is for this sort of legislation, and when the other side of the House arrogantly says “No, we know best. We’re not even going to have a select committee.” or “We’re going to have a truncated select committee process”—and we’ve seen that many times already over this parliamentary term—it’s simply not good enough.

So my concern is that there are going to be unintended consequences from this, and look, I have absolute confidence that there are, by and large, across most businesses fantastic relationships between the employer and the employees. That leads to a successful business and, as a previous business owner, I can understand that. We have those solid relationships. That is the foundation of a good business. But there are times when those relationships get exploited, and the risk here is that that is pushing additional cost directly on to business owners, and, quite frankly, it’s disappointing to see that from the Government.

So we are not supporting this. We would have liked to have seen a very different approach to it, but, unfortunately, the Government has the numbers. They’ll push it through as they see fit, and my concern is how many businesses are going to look at this along with the other minimum wage increases, the additional public holidays coming, the extra cost of compliance, and regulatory changes, and just say “Actually, this is all too hard. It’s too hard to be a business owner in New Zealand.”, and that, for me, would be the real tragedy. So I’d really encourage the Government to consider that with their subsequent pieces of legislation and see if they can actually give business owners in New Zealand a better deal. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take this short call to speak on this very, very important bill. But before I do so, I just want to comment on Mr Simpson’s statement that this is something that’s being pushed by a trade union movement. This Government, from day one, made it clear that it’s going to support hard-working New Zealanders, and this is where it’s coming from. When he talks about the union movement in a way that’s so dismissive, he’s talking about 400,000 New Zealand employees, and it’s a shame that he’s talking about them in the way that they’re some sort of—I don’t know.

I also want to thank Minister Wood for the good work that he has been doing not just on this bill but the good work that he’s doing to support the hard-working Kiwis. Thank you, Minister, for everything that you’re doing, because this is the message that I’m getting from every hard-working cleaner, security guard, caregiver—they can’t thank you enough. Please keep up the good work.

A lot has been said about the sick leave increase. We’ve heard a lot of compelling testimonies and evidence from workers’ unions and the stakeholders, and a lot are in support. We also heard some counterarguments as well. That’s something that we respect. About 400 people have submitted on this bill and we thank them for that.

Our hard-working people have been undermined for the last nine years of the National Government. There was a lot of frustration and a lack of support. But, thankfully, this Government has stepped up and rolled out the COVID-19 wage subsidy, and a lot of them managed to stay home when they were sick, when they were unwell, or they managed to stay home when their loved ones were vulnerable.

This bill is not designed to only support the working people; it also will benefit businesses. Employees turning up to work when they’re sick is going to infect others, and that’s a loss for the employer, as well.

I will share one story about myself. In 2012, I was working at Victoria University as a cleaner, and I was sick with a bug. I called the supervisor to tell him that I was sick, and he said, “You don’t have enough sick leave and you have to come to work.” I don’t blame him, because it’s the rule—it’s the law. I ended up coming in. The next day, three people were off. They were sick, and that was just from my team. There were other people from other teams as well. This is a real story. I have no reason to lie about this.

All businesses are doing this already and they are happy. Things are productive for them and things are working for them. Various studies show that having healthy and happy and valued employees is good for business. In fact, the Australian survey suggested that the healthiest workers who use sick leave when they need it are up to nearly three times as productive, and they’re less likely to take time off than the least healthy.

I just want to ask people who are opposing this—I caution. I just want to ask them if they ever have a family member who is staying in a care facility who is being looked after by caregivers, and then I want them to ask that worker if their loved one supports that worker having enough sick leave, or 10 days’ sick leave, is good or bad. I will just leave it there, because the answer will be quite obvious.

Preparing for this, I’ve been talking to a few people, and one of the people that I have talked to was Lulu, who is a proud E tū member and a cleaner. Lulu has got a sick son who needs a lot of care. She doesn’t have enough sick leave. If she is sick, she has to turn up to work, because if she does not, she’s not going to get paid. That means she can’t afford food and she can’t afford medication for her son.

Inequality levels in this country have been getting worse every day. Hard-working Kiwis have been undermined, they have been forgotten: people like Shirley, people like Helen, people like Elizabeth—cleaners, security guards—people like Rosella, who’s a caregiver. These people deserve better than this. This will make a difference in their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Let’s tell them thank you for the good work that they have done for us last year and that they continue to do. The least we can say is thank you and allow them to stay home when they are sick or when their family members are sick—this is the least we can do for them. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m really pleased to rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party for the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. I have been following this through the House, and I’ve got to admit that I feel slightly conflicted today. On one hand, extending sick leave to 10 days as a minimum is just so long overdue, and we’ve been hearing the evidence of the harm of limited sick leave in terms of people turning up to work sick or actually forgoing the income because they take unpaid sick leave, and struggling to pay their rent, and the stress that that’s put on families and communities. We’ve also heard of people not having enough sick leave to be able to care for their children when they’re sick and they leave their jobs as a result of that, which is harming our workplaces as well as our families and our communities.

This is so overdue, and when I hear from the Opposition about the cost to employers around this, one, I just don’t hear them understanding that, actually, there’s a cost to employers of people coming to work sick or having to leave their job because they cannot manage their sickness and their employment because they don’t have enough paid leave. I don’t hear the modern employment approach coming from that side of the House around having understanding and trust in a workplace and how you create a positive workplace. That is none of what they’re saying. All we’re hearing is union bashing and a complete distrust—

💬 Hon Member: That’s right.

—of people, and I’m hearing their confirmation of that. The evidence is there are a lot of people who have 10 days’ sick leave, who have five days’ sick leave, or who have unlimited sick leave who do not take their full entitlement. That, I understand, is the norm rather than the aberration, which tells us that, actually, the norm is people do not exploit these provisions. They are exploited where there is a low-trust environment, and we actively need to work to change that, and that is one of my points of disappointment with this piece of legislation.

I do not believe and the Greens do not believe it goes far enough. We wanted to see the provision in the Employment Relations Act return to how it was before National built in this deep mistrust of employees, of enabling employers to require proof even after one day off work, without reasonable grounds. We want, if somebody is going to require you to have a sick leave, a medical certificate—that’s the word—that, actually, they have reasonable grounds for believing that that person wasn’t actually sick before we burden our health system and demonstrate that we don’t trust our staff. We do not believe it’s constructive for that to be the norm.

We also wanted to clarify that we heard in submissions around a sense—and I know case law doesn’t necessarily support this. But people were telling us, around accessing sick leave for mental health reasons, that, actually, people feel that there’s a barrier to that—that it’s not evident that it is covered by sick leave. I think that also then speaks to the fact that we don’t have a purpose or a clear strategy around why we have sick leave, but, actually, sick leave is an essential part of our health and safety system. We should be recognising that when people come to work impaired due to sickness, it creates a risk in the workplace, and that when people are getting sick more often, then it can also be a sign of overwork, burnout, and stress that should be being monitored in our workplace, and employers should be accountable within the health and safety system for that. Now, none of that thinking, unfortunately, has been done, and I really think it is a challenge for us as a country, if we are wanting to improve productivity, and if we are wanting to support people to be safe in their workplaces, that we should be doing that thinking, broader than just the extension of the days.

We were also disappointed at the delay in the introduction so that some workers, while we’re celebrating these 10 days and talking about the importance of it really passionately in the House—at least on this side—won’t be able to access that until around July 2022, and that, I know, for a lot of the people I’ve spoken to, feels a really long way off. We have to acknowledge that people will be leaving their jobs, they will be turning up sick, and they will be feeling deeply conflicted and worried about the care of their kids for another year or more because of that balance that we heard about tonight. The Greens think, actually, that our kids and our families and the wellbeing of everyone in the workplace comes first, and we would have liked to have seen the 10 days come in right from the beginning.

We also weren’t supporting the provision in the bill—and sought to amend it—that will reduce the number of unused days that can be carried over. At the moment, you can carry over 15 days, and this bill reduces that to 10 days. It keeps the maximum total the same, but it reduces what people can carry over in real terms, and we didn’t see the need for that trade-off. If somebody hasn’t been using their leave, it’s pretty clear that they’re not going to be ripping anybody off. Sometimes, though, when somebody has accrued that much, it means they’ve been there for a while, and if they experience a really serious illness, having that up their sleeve for them or their family can make all of the difference in keeping somebody in unemployment and regaining their health unhindered by the additional stress of financial worries, which can have a real impact on people’s healing from sickness.

I did just then, finally, want to talk to the point, before my final point, to just address my real concern at the narrative coming from the National Party about this legislation leading to employers discriminating against women because they will see women with and they’re comparing to, I think—what was the phrase? If they’re being asked to underwrite the health of their employees’ sick children, then when considering two job applicants, one with children and one without, the employer will choose those without children. That is, to my mind, a deeply, deeply irresponsible narrative that is justifying and validating illegal discrimination.

In this country, you are not able to discriminate against people on their sex or their status, and to be saying that that is what is going to happen is de facto endorsing it and that is, I think, an appalling failure in leadership. It also doesn’t make sense to me when so many of our big companies have unlimited leave and actually have a lot of women employed. They’ve looked at those applicants and they’ve still chosen the best person for the job, and that has not been out of fear that that person will take unlimited leave and will exploit sick leave provisions or that children will be a burden on their workplace, because they’ve looked at the skills of the person and what they can contribute. I really, really just think the National Party needs to catch up to the fact that we’re no longer in the 1950s.

So in a final point, again, to go back to the positive of this, I want to just recognise, again, those people who right now have used up their sick leave through sickness, cold, flu, not going to work because they have not wanted to spread that to their workmates. Our experience over the last year is we’ve seen the risk of people turning up to places sick, and that is a selfish act. But when somebody is doing that because they cannot afford not to, then that comes back on us as a society to make the changes necessary to enable them to stay home when they are sick, to keep all of us safe. The Greens, on that note, are very pleased, if slightly disappointed, to support this bill.

Order! The member’s time has expired.

I rise on behalf of ACT to take a short call in opposition to this bill. The saying “Flogging a dead horse” springs to mind, but there are a couple of things that I’d just like to mention. This bill has definitely divided people into two camps: those who think businesses can afford all of the new added costs they’ve had to endure over the last few years, and those who just know they can’t. I’ve read and listened to those on the other side of the House say that if businesses can’t afford it, they shouldn’t be in business. That sort of lack of understanding comes across quite strongly.

Just last week, a business on Oriental Parade had to close its doors after 16½ years in business. On the door was pinned a note that said, “Government policy has seen our costs go up significantly over the last year, and we expect this to continue.”

The submitters to the Education and Workforce Committee were definitely divided into two camps. We had business owners who put themselves on the line, taken the risk, and employed people. They were concerned that they just wouldn’t be able to afford these additional costs. The employees who submitted were varied. Some thought they needed four weeks’ sick leave; not just two. A number of employees submitted and said that they supported the bill but that it wouldn’t really affect them, as they had a great relationship with their employers. What is the problem that we’re actually trying to solve here?

The mention of pro rata was just brushed off as if it meant nothing, but it is a very real argument. If I employ one person every Sunday, they are entitled to 10 days off—10 weeks off. That’s just a fact—that’s just a fact. The suggestion that employers may just watch who they employ a little bit more carefully was dismissed. It was suggested the other day that that’s going back 60 years, which is pretty close to when fair-trade agreements were around.

The suggestion that employees might abuse the extra leave and just treat it as annual leave was just brushed off, as well. But that shows an amazing inability to understand how business works and it shows that members opposite actually don’t speak to business owners.

We compare ourselves with other countries when it comes to minimum wage, but ignore the most important factor—that is, New Zealand has much, much lower productivity than all of the countries we compare ourselves with. I haven’t actually been able to find the research that Minister Wood talks about that shows there is a higher productivity. I’d be interested to see it, because I can’t find it. To think that paying people more, giving people more holidays, and increasing sick leave will increase productivity shows a poor understanding of business.

Employees were looked after during COVID, and rightly so. Businesses were assisted in getting a loan if they needed it. Businesses had to go into debt in order for employees to have a job. This was the support that they got.

The timing for this bill is very poor. Obviously union-initiated and pushed through under the cover of COVID—a solution looking for a problem. Businesses need a break and at least some security in what’s going to happen next. ACT opposes this bill.

I’m really humbled—really humbled—to stand and take a call on this really important piece of legislation that supports workers. Now, workers are also employers, and I’m really proud to support this piece of legislation that actually addresses some of the concerns that have been raised by the other side of the House. It is absolutely wonderful to hear so much from the other side of the House about their concerns that this bill might lead to discrimination against employees. They’re concerned that workers will be discriminated against: women, people who have dependants—not just children, but parents, aunties, sisters, brothers—and caregivers. So it’s heartening to hear that the other side of the House is worried about this potential discrimination. But I call on them to have a think about having an element of trust in employers that they are actually capable of making sensible decisions about how they look after and invest in their staff, and about how they can run their businesses effectively and productively.

It’s really interesting that they talk about discrimination, because what this does is it frees so many of our workers up from discrimination, because, at the moment, the law as it stands, with only having five days, discriminates. The cost is borne mainly by women. When you only have access to five days and you are the person more likely to be doing the caring for sick children or dependants, it is because you are a woman, OK? So the discrimination with that five days, that pressure that adds when you have to decide whether or not to take unpaid leave, to quit your job, send your kids to school sick because you will not be able to pay the rent—that is a cost borne by women.

It is a cost borne by those who dominate public-facing service industries: those involved in health, education, and care; home support workers—80 to 90 percent of them, women. Those who are in those public-facing industries are more likely to have close contact, more likely to pick up infections and more likely to pass on illness, not just to their co-workers, but to the vulnerable people that they care for in their classrooms, in their hospital wards, in their doctors’ surgeries, and in vulnerable people’s homes. This cost, currently, with only five days, is borne by our children. They are sent to school unwell because their parents cannot afford to take unpaid leave or to quit their jobs. Kids get dosed up with the old Pamol—“You’ll be right, I’ll pick you up at 3 o’clock.”—and everyone crosses their fingers and hopes for the best. Because of the cost that is being borne by these families, it is a financial cost, it is stress, and it is something that is borne by a part of our society.

So those children go to school and they pass the bugs on to their classmates, to their teachers, and, of course, the teachers—you know, it is exacerbated by them not staying home and getting well quicker and avoiding passing those germs on. I know of young people, teenagers, who have had to take time off school at the cost of their education because they’ve had to stay home and look after siblings or their grandparents because mum or dad has had to go to work because they have no sick leave.

It is currently our most vulnerable members of society who are bearing the true cost of the public health interest of people staying at home as we shift from the tough-it-out way that we’ve done things to being supported to make decisions that keep us all safer—their families and their fellow workers. The Minister has talked about having a fair, safe, and productive workplace, and I would add trust and good faith as something that the Opposition should be comfortable with.

I need to thank the Minister for his leadership in helping us to work towards becoming a place globally that is seen as providing world-class pay and conditions. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call. I call Ian McKelvie—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, as with my colleague Tim van de Molen in the chair next door, it is somewhat of a surprise to be taking a call on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. I’ve got to say I’m a little staggered at some of the comments coming from the Government benches, mainly because I’ve been an employer for much longer than any of them have—quite obviously—and not only have I been one for longer than them but I’ve had quite a lot of experience of this sort of thing.

I think one of the things that concerns me about the result of this bill and where it gets to—there’s a couple of things that concern me and I’ll get on to them. One of the things that concerns me is the more we regulate the labour industry, the more we stick to the regulations. I think that’s a real challenge for this whole sector in New Zealand, because if we impose regulation and legislation on industry, employers, and employees, then those regulations are going to become more and more stuck to and more and more rigid, and there’ll be no tolerance left in the business—and I think the point’s been made a couple of times tonight already. A lot of the business of employing people and working with employees relates to tolerance and the ability to let people get on with their own lives and make sure they make the best of it. As I said a minute ago, the more we regulate and legislate, the more likely we are to stick to those legislative parameters and cause some problems.

The other thing that concerns me about this bill and a number of other bills that are in the pipeline, and certainly the result of this bill as it comes to the House for its third reading, is that it’s all very well to go to 10 days’ sick leave and to extend the holiday that people are able to take, but the problem is all of that cost goes on to the employer. If there was another way of doing that, it may well be acceptable, but the problem with New Zealand is we have such a lot of small businesses. We’ve heard a bit tonight about the productivity levels of New Zealand, and this is just going to add some further stress to the productivity level. Employment opportunities, I think, are going to get much tougher, and I think tomorrow, between 2 o’clock and 3 o’clock, we’ll see why that’s going to be, because there is a lack of confidence in our business community in New Zealand at the moment and they are nervous about what might happen. I think tomorrow will prove, probably, the reason for that nervousness.

So if you lose the confidence of the employer sector in New Zealand, you’ll find that the number of jobs in New Zealand drops quite quickly and quite dramatically and that would be a tragedy for New Zealand for a couple of reasons, actually. One is we’d probably lose a large number of our employees to Australia—and I think that’s quite likely to happen—and the second is our unemployment levels may well rise. Now, I’m not saying they will, but the more pressure you put on employers, the more likely that is to happen. I’m all for supporting employees and making sure they have the best possible chance to have a decent life. I listened to one or two of the speeches from the other side of the House tonight and, frankly, I think the description they gave is very unfortunate, and, hopefully, it is isolated to a very few businesses around New Zealand.

So the purpose of this bill is to increase the availability of employer-funded sick leave for employees. The reason for it—and I guess you could think about COVID and blame COVID for it, or say that COVID was responsible for it. We’re going to blame it for everything for the next 20 years in New Zealand, I imagine, but I guess it’s an example of that. It’ll be very interesting to know the number of people that actually take more than five days or need more than five days’ sick leave a year, and whether this bill changes what’s historically happened very much at all. Only history will tell us that, but it will be very interesting to see where that takes us to and the result of that as we move forward.

So I think that, as I said earlier, the more we get involved in regulation and legislation around employment relations, the more intolerant those relationships become, and it worries me that we’d be moving down that path. In fact, I think we’re going back to a time in history when, and, again, I’m one of the few in this House that will remember, every summer holidays when you wanted to go to the South Island, the ferries were on strike, and the world stopped—I didn’t actually go on the ferry on holiday, because I never had holidays in those days. But it is a challenge for us and I think it’s something we need to seriously consider. The issue that we’ve really got is that there aren’t many people in New Zealand who remember those days when we had labour relationships in New Zealand that were far from satisfactory, and I just hope that this sort of bill doesn’t take us back there. So thank you, Mr Speaker.

I call Helen White—five minutes.

I rise very proudly to speak in support of this bill. I have been a business owner, I’ve also acted for lots of businesses, and I’ve acted for employees, and I have been worried about the lack of sick leave and our attitude towards sickness in the workplace for a very long time. I am absolutely thrilled to see this.

The reality is that our businesses can’t afford not to have a provision like this around sick leave, because this is the very sort of thing that stops pandemics spreading. This is the very sort of thing that stops the flu spreading, and the flu actually kills a lot of people every year. If an employee comes to work and they are sick, then they pass it on to others. Other people pay the price as well in that situation. They pay a financial price and it is risky, so I am absolutely thrilled to see this.

I do note that the arguments that are being used with regard to discrimination also just don’t equate with my experience of employing. I have employed people and I’ve employed them on boards and various things, and I’ve never considered their sick leave entitlement, because what you’re looking for is the best person for the job and we’re employing human beings, not machines. It is not just a statistical exercise. I know lots of good employers, and I know that they would be appalled if you thought that that was their motivation.

Finally, I just wanted to say that the impact of this bill is not actually on most of us in this room, because most people in this room, if they were employed, were employed with 10 days’ sick leave. It is our poorest workers—it’s actually our non-unionised workers—who have these provisions in their Act, and that is where we should be targeting. These are the very workers who need our protection. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to take a call on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. First, I want to thank the Minister for introducing this bill into the House. I note that this legislation was signalled in the Labour Party’s 2020 election manifesto. It was an honour to chair Labour’s policy council leading into last year’s election, and it is wonderful to be able to stand alongside my colleagues tonight and deliver on a promise made.

In New Zealand, we have a culture of being staunch and toughing it out when we are sick. I recall, in my 20s, some of my friends proudly stating that they had never taken a sick day. It wasn’t that they had never been sick; it was that they had bought into a culture that said that if you stay home when you’re sick, then you’re somehow less productive or not as capable. I know that I’ve turned up to work when sick, partly because of pressure on myself to complete a task or project or not wanting to appear weak.

Amongst supermarket workers, I often had workers concerned about letting the team down if they didn’t go into work when they were sick, especially at busy times of the year. This was the culture that was allowed to permeate throughout the retail industry, with many workers reporting to me that they would be quizzed by their employer about why they couldn’t go into work. They’d be asked for great detail about what was wrong with them. They’d be told they didn’t sound sick—never mind that they might have had a serious splitting migraine or terrible period pain. They were pressured to come into work when they were sick, and this used to happen an awful lot.

What we saw last year with COVID was, finally, a recognition that when we are sick, we actually need to stay home. Our culture of sucking it up has actually changed, and that’s a good thing. Going to work when you’re sick, which was once a common occurrence, is no longer acceptable.

In a previous speech, I spoke about the lowering of sick leave levels—which my colleague Helen White has just mentioned—when people do stay home. I mentioned this little tool, and I have a graph—I haven’t quite figured out how to do A3 printing in this House yet. I have a little graph from the Ministry of Health’s flu tracker survey. What it clearly shows is in 2019, we had very high levels of reported influenza symptoms. In 2020, when people stayed home, those symptoms dropped right down. Again, in 2021, because the message has got through to stay home when you’re sick, these rates are continuing to track along the same trajectory as last year, which is a really, really good thing.

Our experience over the last year has shown that when people stay home, it stops the spread of illnesses through workplaces, on public transport, in schools and supermarkets, at churches, mosques, and synagogues, and at movie theatres; and at events. Increasing sick leave provisions supports those workers who do the right thing by staying home from work when they are sick and by ensuring they don’t lose income from doing so.

Now, the other side of the House has implied that those with dependants or of a certain age or of a certain gender may miss out on employment opportunities as a result of this law change. I remind those members opposite that that is illegal. As the Minister said during the committee stage of the bill last night, on this side of the House, we have a view that most employers actually strive to be good employers, that they value diversity, that they value the wellbeing of their employees, and that they treat their employees with respect. That is the vision we have of employment in this country, a vision of fairness and of good faith between employers and employees; not one where we legislate for the lowest common denominator. That’s not aspirational.

Some of the people bemoaning tonight that the sky is falling criticise this legislation because of the risk that some workers will treat sick leave as an entitlement and will fake their illness. Now, there will always be a small group of people who abuse the good faith that their employers show them in all aspects of employment. But, again, we don’t legislate for the lowest common denominator. There is good case law that shows that if people abuse sick leave, they can justifiably be dismissed, and I want to put on record tonight that that is the correct thing to do if people misuse their employment entitlements.

I want to end the speech tonight by thanking all of those workers who have lobbied and campaigned for sick leave improvements for years, and I want to particularly mention one of my good friends and the delegate at Pak ’N Save Richmond, Jenny Wells, who has lobbied hard for the workers of Pak ’N Save Richmond in my electorate of Nelson. They will in a couple of months’ time be receiving 10 days’ sick leave a year.

This is an excellent piece of legislation. It is an overdue piece of legislation. It signifies a big improvement to minimum employment entitlements that are needed in New Zealand. The change we are making tonight shows respect for workers, their families, and our communities. I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

This is a Government that may not deliver on infrastructure, it may not have delivered on the slow tram down Dominion Road, it may not have delivered on houses, but it has delivered for the unions—there’s no question about that. So those union members can be very happy that this is a Government very much focused on their concerns and their desires.

I suppose the point I’d make first is that we’re here one day before the Budget, and we’ll be interested to see what the figures are tomorrow. We look around the world where the US economy is at boom-time growth levels likened to the roaring 1920s, we see the Chinese economy expand a record 18 percent in the first quarter in an annual rate, the UK is growing faster, and a number of countries around the world have economies that are booming. We’ll wait and see what New Zealand is doing, but my fear is that we are only coming out of COVID quite slowly and there’s enormous pressure on the New Zealand economy, notwithstanding the fact that this Government is borrowing at a faster rate than any Government in our history. They’re borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars every week in order to pump up the economy—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is not a Budget speech. Come to the bill.

You’re quite right, Mr Speaker. I’m just giving the context to this bill, which is to say that we’re in a time when we’re facing real economic challenges, and what do we get from this Government? Do we ever get any legislation through this Government focused on enabling the economy to grow faster?

💬 Stuart Smith: No.

No—no. Is there anything, any legislation, that is focused on growth and expanding the productivity of this country? No. What we see, week in, week out, is more legislation focused on redistribution and on extra regulation, forcing businesses to pay workers more. Now, in perfect world, of course the whole purpose of Government policy is to have higher wages—that’s what we’re all about. Everybody on both sides of the House, all sides of the House, wants New Zealanders to earn better wages and higher incomes.

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: No, you don’t. You never do.

Of course we do.

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: No, you always argue to reduce labour costs.

I’m not going to take lessons from the deliverer of the slow tram down Dominion Road for three years. You might not have delivered your slow tram, but you’ve delivered for the unions.

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: Reducing labour costs—that’s what you stand for.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Both of you—when you say the wrong pronoun, you mean me. Cut it out.

You’re quite right, Mr Speaker. The point I was trying to make before I was rudely interrupted by “Mr KiwiBuild” was that we are all focused on increasing incomes. But if you want to increase sustainable incomes in this country, you have to have a stronger economy, and, if you want to have higher incomes for New Zealanders, we need to be more productive and generating stronger things. So you can force employers to pay people more, as this Government has done with very, very rapid increases to the minimum wages and changes to entitlements—you can force employers to do that, but you can’t force an employer to stay in business if their business is no longer profitable. You can’t force an individual to say “I’m going to put my money at risk in a business and keep employing people.” if they’re not able to make it happen.

So, when we think about this bill, I think of a woman in the Epsom electorate who I know well, who has a small business in Mount Eden and employs a number of young people—primarily part-time students—and they’ll, typically, work one day a week, so they might work 50 days a year. One of the interesting kinks of the sick leave entitlements is that they’re not prorated in any way. So that means that, even if you work only 50 days a year, you’re still entitled to the full five days’ sick leave a year. This bill introduced by this Government doubles that to 10 days’ sick leave a year, and it’s still not prorated in any way, shape, or form, so even if you’ve actually only worked one day a fortnight—so you’ve only worked 26 days a year—

💬 Hon Michael Wood: Like the National caucus.

—then, like the Labour Party caucus, you only work one day every fortnight, or 26 days a year. Or perhaps the Labour Cabinet only work one day a fortnight. So you only work 26 days a year, but you’re still entitled to 10 days’ sick leave.

The reality is that we all, of course—of course—work on the assumption that everyone is focused on the best interests of whatever enterprise they’re working for, but the reality in life is that some people don’t. The experience of this lady who employs people in Mount Eden is that her young employees know the rules, know what’s entitled, and they see sickness leave as an entitlement, and they take the full five days. Her worry is that if they take the full 10 days and she’s only employing them for 50 days a year, that becomes quite an impost on her as a business. She is struggling to survive, and she wonders, in combination with the higher minimum wage and various other entitlements that have been passed through, how she’s expected to stay in business.

The members on the other side just mock and are full of scorn and don’t care about this. They think this is just ridiculous concerns of centre-right parties. It’s not. It’s concern for the reality of life for these small-business people, who are struggling to stay afloat and look after themselves and their families.

Any responsible Government would take this seriously and recognise that at a time when small businesses are struggling to go through a difficult period in our economy and when we have great uncertainty as to what’s going to happen. The rest of the world, as I have said—the UK, the US, China—may be growing rapidly this year, and we may or we may not, because we don’t know when the vaccine will roll out—and I’m not going to stray too far from the topic at hand—

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: Triple A from Standard & Poor’s.

Well, that’s right—triple A. Well, the complacency that we see on the other side of this House about the New Zealand economy is something to behold. I just hope that their complacency is justified. But when I look across the world at the challenges that we face, the immense borrowing that’s been brought on, the immense amount of money that’s been printed by the Reserve Bank, the incredibly low interest rates, and the massive inflation in asset prices that we see, I see that there are real risks on the horizon.

So where do we get our growth and where do we get our increasing productivity from? We get it, ultimately, from people being prepared to risk their money to invest in new businesses and investing in better plant and machinery—investing in their businesses to become more productive. But who would make those investments right now, when there is so much global uncertainty and then so much domestic uncertainty from a Government that keeps changing the rules all the time? That is the risk.

So it’s not compulsory for people to risk their money in new investments and to start new businesses and to employ people, and this is the mistake that this Government makes time and time again, in so many areas. It’s the same in housing, where we’ve got a real crisis around rental property. They seem to miss the basic point that it’s not compulsory for people to rent out houses, and if you make it too difficult, too expensive, and too risky, people won’t, and then the supply will shrink. The same thing with employment: if you make it too risky, too difficult, too challenging, and too expensive, then fewer people will take the risk, and that means that fewer young people, in particular, in New Zealand will have the opportunity to have a job.

The proposition on the other side right now from Michael Wood, the Minister—he’s got it all under control—is that “I can double costs in this particular area and many other areas, increase costs significantly, and it will have no implications or no consequences for businesses. Everything will be fine.” Well, that is your proposition. I’d be very interested to see how it works out. But my concern for employers and employees across this country is that what we’re doing right now is making it more difficult for those people who are trying to stay in business and provide opportunities both for their customers and for their employees.

While everybody would like to have as much sick leave as they possibly can, and in a perfect world there would be no questions asked at any point about sick leave and people could have all the entitlements that they want, we also recognise that we live in a world where New Zealand businesses are struggling to compete globally, and we should take that seriously. The impression I get from that Government in this bill is that they are not taking those concerns seriously, and that—

Order! The member’s time has expired. E noho.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, and thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a real privilege to be the last speaker in the third reading of the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. Isn’t it wonderful that Mr Paul Goldsmith has found back his mathematical skills and he has found out that two times five is 10, and everything else that he managed to add up in this particular speech that he did?

This bill is, of course, about delivering on our commitment to increase statutory sick leave from five days to 10 days. As we have heard from the Minister, that is a promise kept. By increasing sick leave to 10 days, what we are doing is we are supporting our workers and we are giving more flexibility to working families. Not only that, as we’ve heard all the way through the debate, but it is something that the Opposition has closed their ears to—but when staff stay at home when they are sick, this will benefit businesses. We heard it time and time again: workers that stay at home when they are sick don’t spread their bugs and don’t make the rest of the workforce sick. Hence, people are more productive and, not only that, but happier and healthy in the workforce, and that carries a cost.

On that aspect, I would like to also correct the member Scott Simpson on his simplified version of the cost involved in this exercise. Yes, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment did give an estimated cost of increasing sick leave, but what it did not take into account in that cost increase is the fact, of course, that there are plenty of benefits as a result of fewer illnesses being spread through workplaces and the resulting fewer absences, and also the increased productivity from a healthier and happier workforce. So all of that needs to be added up.

But, really, what I would like to say is that it would be great if the Opposition would take some lessons and talk to Christopher Luxon, who can tell them a little bit about how unions and how businesses can actually work together. They don’t have to be pitted against each other. They don’t have to hate on workers. They can actually work constructively and collaboratively together, and, in that way, achieve some really great things. In fact, Business New Zealand’s 2019 Workplace Wellness Report said that a lift in absence rates may be an acceptable price to pay for an overall happier, healthier, and more productive staff.

So, with that, I’d like to thank our submitters and I’d like to thank everybody who supported this piece of legislation but a big thankyou also to the honourable Minister Michael Wood for bringing this bill to the House as one of the first items of legislation that he brought to the House. This is legislation that shows the importance that this Government puts on keeping workers safe, hence keeping New Zealand safe. Thank you, and I commend this bill to the House.