Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Today is a pretty happy day for women in Parliament. Today, we are celebrating having achieved 50 percent women in this House of Representatives. It has been a long time coming—women in New Zealand first fought for and gained the vote way back in 1893. We were one of the very first self-governing entities in the world to ensure that women had the vote. But it took until October 1919 before women were allowed to stand for Parliament. So it took quite a bit longer before we even had the right to be on the floor of this House. Then, from there on, the first woman MP was only elected in 1933: Elizabeth McCombs for Labour. From then on, there was only a handful of women in the House. In fact, it took until 1981 before more than 10 percent of the House was female. It waivered and waned a bit over the years. When MMP came in, we got more women in the House. By 1996, the House was 35 percent women. We had our first woman Prime Minister in 1997, the second in 1999, and the third in 2017. But in terms of getting to 50 percent women in the House, it has only happened in the last few weeks. At the 2020 election, 58 women were elected; not quite there, we need 60 women to have half of the House. But with the way that MMP operates, in that people come and go during a term of a Government, we have finally reached the stage where there are 60 women in this House—50 percent of this House is female. I salute, in particular, my own party and the Green Party for the heavy lifting they’ve done on this. It has taken a long time for this big achievement, step by step by step, and there is still so much more to do; in fact, that is the case with all sorts of issues that concern women. Today, this bill, the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill, takes another one of those small steps for women. It is a bill which makes a small improvement but it has large implications.

The basic proposition of this bill—and it has come back from the Education and Workforce Committee with this basic proposition untouched—is of extending the time during which a person may take a personal grievance for reasons of sexual harassment. As the law stands at the moment, if a person has experienced sexual harassment, and, because of that, they wish to take a personal grievance, they can raise that matter within 90 days of the last instance occurring of sexual harassment. That’s not very long. It’s not very long for a number of reasons that I will set out in a moment. But if this bill progresses through Parliament, as we hope it will, then that time will be extended out to a whole year. So that is the proposition of this bill, and, as I said, it has come back from the select committee unchanged.

The select committee has done a wonderful job of clarifying some of the matters, of ensuring that the bill specifically addresses some issues that had not occurred to me as I drafted the bill. But the select committee has examined them and has improved the bill in this regard. I’m sure that the members of that committee will talk to those improvements as they take their turn to speak on this bill.

But let me tell you why I regard this as having large implications, even though it is such a small matter. The large implications are because extending the time for raising a personal grievance from 90 days to a year recognises the special nature of sexual harassment. It is insidious. It is shaming. It occurs because of a power differential. It is traumatising. All too often, it is not all that obvious; a person cannot quite understand what has happened to them. All too often, sexual harassment is just brushed off—“Can’t you take a joke?”, “It’s just a word.”, “Oh, it’s just a small pat on the back.”, “Oh, come on, you really want it.” Those sorts of attitudes are used to brush off sexual harassment and treat it as being of no moment. That means that the person who experiences it sometimes goes, “What’s happened to me? Was that real? Did it actually matter? Maybe I’m just making it up.” When that happens, and if the sexual harassment is particularly bad or pronounced, it can be traumatising. The reason it can be traumatising is because the person who experiences it is disregarded, is treated as an object, and is treated as being of no worth—or, if they have worth, it is only their sexual value that matters. That is why it can be important to have the longer time available.

The other thing about sexual harassment: it can be an employer—and that’s a common enough case—a boss, a manager, a fellow employee, also a customer, perhaps someone who’s just bigger and stronger, perhaps a fellow employee who is just making those truly nasty jokes. It can come from any direction.

Now, the important matter here is that it is sexual harassment that occurs in a workplace. Employers have an obligation to provide a safe workspace for their employees. So there is no personal grievance for sexual harassment that occurs outside of a workplace, but if it occurs in the context of a workplace, then a person can take a sexual harassment claim. So that is the basic nature of this bill.

You might be saying, however, “Is this a sledgehammer to crack a nut? Do we really need that time?” I contend that we do because of the traumatising nature of sexual harassment, but I also want to point out that it is not a rare problem; it is not unusual. If perhaps this only occurred very rarely, then perhaps we might not worry so much. Though, I suppose, I would still argue that we need to give people the proper amount of time.

But there was a 2018 law society survey done by Colmar Brunton, and what they found was that 31 percent of women and 5 percent of men working in legal environments suffered from sexual harassment. That’s the interesting thing about sexual harassment. I began talking about this bill as a step for women and that sexual harassment is a problem for women, but it is a problem for men too. Men do experience sexual harassment. But, like all of us, men may end up—even if they don’t experience it themselves—in a workplace where it is tolerated or accepted or part of the general atmosphere. For many, many men, that is a deeply uncomfortable place to be. So it’s not just that men can also be victims of sexual harassment; like all of us, they may have to tolerate a workplace where it occurs. So if we can fix this problem and take some steps towards fixing this problem, then we take steps for men too, because, after all, the patriarchy does harm men too. That is why this is a good bill.

In concluding my time, I want to thank a few people who have been so important in this bill. I want to thank lawyer Zoë Lawton, who ran a MeToo blog and collected stories, in particular from the legal profession, about where sexual harassment occurred. Zoë advocated for a change in the law. It was Zoë who proposed this change and discussed the bill with me. So, Zoë Lawton, thank you for your work in bringing this matter to the attention of the House. I am very proud to have taken this work forward on your behalf.

I would like to thank the Education and Workforce Committee—ably, indeed brilliantly, led by Marja Lubeck—who worked through some of the issues in the bill and clarified it. So it is now a better bill than when it first appeared in front of them. I’d like to thank the officials who assisted with that.

I would like to thank my intern from the Victoria University programme, Rowan Selwood-Eyles, who spent part of her internship working on this project with me, which I know she found satisfying and enjoyable. Rowan, thank you for your help.

Most importantly, I would like to thank the submitters who submitted on this bill. I read all the submissions. There were 43 of them—39 in favour, three against, and one irrelevant. There was overwhelming support for this bill. Many of the submissions—26 of them—wanted the bill to go further. I trust that the members of the committee will address some of those in their speeches today.

So thank you to the submitters. Thank you to those who brought this issue to me. This is another small step for you.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill, the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill that the National Party will continue to support. We are, of course, like all New Zealanders, concerned about sexual harassment in the workplace. To be honest, I’m very surprised to hear the previous speaker, Dr Deborah Russell, and backer of this bill being surprised to discover that men might be the subject of sexual harassment as if this was a new discovery. Of course that is the case. Men have always also been victims as well as perpetrators of sexual harassment, and that should come as no surprise to anybody who’s been in the workplace for a long time. This affects potentially all New Zealanders and all people who work in our workplaces. It’s a sad reality, and I, certainly, myself, as a young worker, have experienced it and wouldn’t wish it on anybody. So we’re all conscious of the impact of unwanted sexual advances in the workplace and want to ensure that the laws that we have in place give the opportunity for people to deal with that effectively.

So the proposition here is that the current laws enable a complaint to be made and a personal grievance to be made on sexual harassment grounds, but it has to be done within 90 days of the incident occurring—or becoming aware of the incident. You might ask, “Surely that’s the same moment”. During the select committee, we, of course, were referred to things like if there’s been communications emails passed around which amounted to sexual harassment that somebody became aware of a month after it had occurred. Well, then it’s from that point. That’s where the dates come in to impact.

That 90-day limit is the basic cut-off for personal grievances throughout the piece of legislation, and we think that is generally appropriate, because, again, you’ve got to think of the context of, particularly, small businesses. If there is an extended liability and period of uncertainty around personal grievances generally, then that can have a huge difficulty for small businesses who are overwhelmed with all sorts of uncertainty and uncontrolled liabilities, as it were, and this is one thing that they certainly wouldn’t appreciate having extended across the board. But the case was made by Deborah Russell and by this legislation for treating sexual harassment cases differently and for extending that period out beyond 90 days to a year. The case that was put forward was this is an offence of a special nature. It does take time for people to reflect on it and consider it. It’s difficult to come forward, it’s complicated, and the member has outlined all the range of emotions that go through them. In most cases, the reality is that people don’t do anything about it. That is something that is changing for the better over time, and more people are coming forward, not putting up with it, and raising their case, and things have been done.

This legislation—my hope is, in supporting it—will lead to more people coming forward over time, behaviours changing in the workplace for the better, fewer people being subject to this sexual harassment in the workplace, and fewer people going through all the difficulties that flow from that—particularly where they have few opportunities or few choices to do something else or go somewhere else or get another job or just depart from it. Those people who are trapped in a situation are the ones who are worst affected. We certainly see the logic in that. That’s why we’re broadly supportive of this legislation.

There was sort of debate throughout the select committee around just how targeted this is, and the person who brought it forward, Deborah Russell, did make the point that it was her expressed desire in this legislation to have this extension focused exclusively on sexual harassment. A number of people made cases for other grounds for personal grievances—whether it was bullying, whether it was general personal grievances, or a number of other matters—and we certainly weren’t in support of that for the broader reasons around being mindful of the uncertainty that many businesses—particularly small businesses—face. We were reassured that the member did make it clear that this bill had a narrow and singular focus on this area. That’s why we are supporting it. We’re looking forward to the discussion.

I do also want to take the opportunity to thank my fellow members of the Education and Workforce Committee—I’m not a permanent member but I subbed on to it for the discussions—

Marja Lubeck: We miss you.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —well, thank you——on this legislation, and it was a nice contrast to many of the other bills that we’ve had to deal with, which are slightly more contentious in that area. We certainly don’t do this lightly. We are very conscious of the pressure that many—particularly small businesses—are facing right now. They’ve been through very difficult times with COVID. They are struggling with broader cost of living pressures and with additional expectations being put on them on a regular basis by this Government. In general, we’ve been pretty critical of those. We’ve been critical of the sort of almost casualness with which this Government has added to the businesses: “An extra week of sick leave? Sure; fine.” Extra holidays, higher minimum wages, now fair pay agreements—a whole series of things which individually are well motivated and sound fine but collectively just make it so much more difficult for those small business to keep going and, collectively, certainly add to the overall cost structure and the cost of living pressures that New Zealanders are facing. There’s no sort of free lunch. If you do add substantially to the costs that businesses face, it does flow through to the prices that people pay, and that is something that is not recognised generally.

So as a general rule we are pretty careful—pretty cautious—about adding either direct costs or adding extra uncertainty on those small businesses. Now, this bill does add a little of extra uncertainty around liabilities for personal grievances. It just means that there is a longer period when people can bring cases forward, but we think, on balance, that is justified because of the nature of the particular area that’s being covered—sexual harassment. And it has, of course, as I say, had an impact on people, and it’s had terrible impacts on many people—mainly women but not entirely women as the point I made: men also—over many decades. I think we have made improvement over the last decade or so. People are much more willing to stand up and say, “No, it’s not appropriate.”, and to put more pressure on the employers—and not just employers but the general culture of workplaces—to have less tolerance for that behaviour. We think this is a useful step along that way. So we do support this legislation.

Thank you Madam Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to rise in support of the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill.

First of all, because it’s the first time I’ve spoken on this bill, I would like to congratulate my dear friend and colleague Dr Deborah Russell, who has been in charge of shepherding this bill through the House. And as we have heard from my colleague previously, she has done an excellent job in doing so. As we’ve heard, our Education and Workforce Committee received a total of 43 submissions from interested groups and individuals, and the vast majority of those who submitted supported the bill.

To put it very simply, this is a bill that puts in a very minor change to the Employment Relations Act, but it is an important change. The problem that this bill deals with is that in the current legislation an employee who wishes to raise a personal grievance that involves allegations of sexual harassment has a period of 90 days to do so. What this bill does is it amends section 114 of the principal Act to extend the period within which a personal grievance must be raised from the current 90 days to 12 months, where that personal grievance involves sexual harassment. This will ensure that employees will have time to process the experience in their own time.

The issue with doing this within the current 90 days is that often coming forward to report sexual harassment can be very difficult, and it’s common for victims of sexual harassment to wait for a long time to come forward, if they come forward at all. The most common defence to sexual harassment, in fact, is that the employee has not raised the issue with their employer. In cases of sexual harassment, 90 days is simply not enough time to raise a complaint. It’s important that employees have time to consider what has occurred and feel safe to raise it with others, and this bill will ensure that they have time to process and proceed in a manner that suits them best.

In a paper attached to the Auckland District Law Society’s (ADLS’s) submission on this bill, Simon Schofield, who teaches employment law at the University of Auckland, says that the 90-day deadline for filing personal grievances fails the victims of sexual harassment. It does not reflect the way sexual harassment plays out in practice, says Schofield, who’s a former member of the ADLS employment law committee. Victims deserve better, and the law ignores the reality of sexual harassment. Schofield says: “The truth is that the longer the law carries on in this unsatisfactory state, the longer that sexual harassment will continue to thrive in the shadows; the longer that perpetrators will avoid accountability on technical grounds and the longer that victims … will … be denied access to justice.”

In Schofield’s view, a major reason for the delayed reporting of complaints is the power balance in the employment relationship and a fear of retaliation. Complainants also fear generating ill feeling amongst co-workers. Instead, they will avoid or try to appease their harasser and often suffer from self-blame and guilt. The idea of reliving the experience in a courtroom can be traumatising. While the 90-day rule ensures employees can remedy personal grievances quickly, the argument isn’t relevant in the context of sexual harassment for the reasons mentioned.

We also heard this from a submitter that was already mentioned by the member in charge of this bill, Dr Deborah Russell. Zoë Lawton from the #MeToo Collective told us that “sexual harm is prevalent in New Zealand yet one of the most under reported forms of harm. With little accountability, many perpetrators develop a pattern of behaviour and sexually harm multiple people throughout their careers, in their communities, or in their personal lives. A major contributing factor to low reporting rates is that coming forward as an individual can be very stressful, isolating, and, ultimately, overwhelming.” She says it takes time for people to come forward for a wide range of reasons, including the psychological toll.

Zoë Lawton set up an online platform in 2018 to raise awareness about the prevalence of sexual harm in the legal profession and to enable people to share their experiences. She subsequently lobbied for amendments to legislation to increase access to justice for those who have experienced sexual harm, and that includes the amendments that are part of this bill. Several accounts from individuals that were posted on this platform were referred to by Dr Deborah Russell in her first reading speech on this bill. And it makes it clear that the change to this legislation will be welcome.

Our select committee heard from several submitters. I want to mention the PSA Women’s Network, who brought several women with them, all making personal statements. Thank you, Margaret, Nancy, Sonia, Michelle, Leota, Alice, and Nia. I’d like to echo the comments made by Deborah Russell before. We are very grateful to you and all those who courageously shared their very personal stories with the committee to ensure that their voices and those who were not able to speak up were heard.

One of the stories I would like to recall is one from a woman who at 18 started her first job as a receptionist. She experienced sexual harassment from an older male colleague. As a much older woman now, she has experienced sexual harassment on numerous occasions throughout her life, and stated that she has learnt through hard, bitter experience to stand up for herself when subjected to such inappropriate behaviour. In her submission, she told us that she is determined to do everything she can to ensure other people do not suffer the same fear, distress, and sense of vulnerability that she has.

I want to quote from her submission. She said, “When one is young and relatively inexperienced, it can be difficult to understand what is happening if you’re being sexually harassed by someone and even more difficult to know what to do about it. You need time to process the event, seek help, and find an appropriate and safe way to make the perpetrator accountable.” Another woman told us about her sexual harassment incident, stating, “It took me four months to get my head around how inappropriate a workplace incident it was. And then it took me a further three months to find another job to replace that one so I had enough money to live before I could move on and get out of there just so I didn’t have to face that person again.” So in her view, a year wasn’t even that long.

Another submitter we heard from was Fleming Singleton Law. They informed us that taking sexual harassment cases takes time and a lot of the complaints are usually years from when harassment first began. It takes time because before raising a grievance, the employee will have tried a lot of other mechanisms to deal with, and Dr Deborah Russell spoke about this already previously. It includes things like laughing it off, joking, brushing it off, minimising the experience, avoiding, attempts to stop it, then asking for an investigation. And after all that, people will then come for legal advice. And of course, by that time, the 90-day period is well exceeded. So regularly, people will be out of time before they can raise their personal grievance.

We also heard from the New Zealand Human Rights Commission. They talked about the significant barriers victims face to disclose harassment. They said victims do not feel empowered to come forward with complaints for a range of reasons, including feelings of shame, denial, fear of consequences, hopelessness, helplessness, and fear of facing scrutiny and blame.

Dr Deborah Russell alluded to some of the amendments that our select committee made, and we are reporting this bill back with them, so I just want to mention a couple of those. First of all, making the term “relevant period” specific to the nature of the personal grievance. So that means that it’s 12 months for personal grievances for sexual harassment, and continues to be 90 days for any other personal grievance. Our select committee initially also queried about the potentially retrospective nature of the bill and the member in charge clarified that is not the intention. So therefore, in the Schedule, clause 17 of new Part 4, inserted into Schedule 1AA, needed to be more specific, and that is how we have reported this bill back.

This bill will improve the personal grievance process for victims of workplace sexual harassment by allowing them time to consider what has happened to them before deciding to come forward. Everyone has the right to feel safe in the workplace and, more importantly, have time to safely raise an issue with their employer. What this bill will do is it will significantly impact workplace cultures of silence towards sexual harassment.

I would like to finish my contribution by again acknowledging all the submitters for their courageous stories and coming forward personally and in their papers to share those with us, the officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the Office of the Clerk, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and members on the Education and Workforce Committee, who all worked so collaboratively on this bill. It is great to see that this bill will receive cross-party support and I, again, congratulate Dr Deborah Russell for bringing it to the House.

Our select committee recommends unanimously that the bill be passed. We also recommend that all amendments unanimously be passed. And it gives me great pleasure and it’s an extreme privilege to be able to commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Debate interrupted.

This debate is interrupted. I will resume the Chair after the dinner break at 7 p.m. Thank you.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The House is resumed. When we rose for the dinner break we were considering the second reading of the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to rise and speak on this, the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill in this, its second reading. First of all, I pass on my congratulations to Labour MP Dr Deborah Russell who was fortunate enough to have this member’s bill pulled out of the hat—out of the biscuit tin, I apologise. So well done to Deborah for getting that opportunity.

The bill was examined in the Education and Workforce Committee, of which I am a member. There were 43 submissions, 19 of those submissions were made orally, and, as Dr Russell said, the vast majority of them were in support. The bill is relatively straightforward; it is raising the number of days that a personal grievance alleging sexual harassment can be taken, from 90 days to one year. This will create an amendment to the Employment Relations Act 2000.

National is supportive of this bill because none of us feel that sexual harassment is acceptable in any context, and, of course, in the employment context particularly so. In the first reading, my colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith spoke about sexual harassment not being a new thing, that it had been around since the dawn of time. And I actually wanted to speak about an experience my mother had in her first job. This is my late mother; we are talking 75 years ago. Her first job was in the telephone exchange, and for those young people around, you might not realise that back then you actually rang and the connections to another line were made by a person in the telephone exchange. She was the first woman in Southland to hold that job, and she struck a situation where her supervisor—her boss—was a male who pestered her to go out with him. She didn’t take kindly to the pestering and refused to go out with him and found herself working mostly night shifts and weekend shifts after that. So indeed, sexual harassment in one form or another has been there for many, many years. Unfortunately, my mother didn’t have access to a personal grievance with 90 days—or a year— but she did the next best thing and got a job elsewhere for more pay. So I guess there were ways around it.

I was somewhat alarmed to hear Dr Russell talk about how prevalent sexual harassment was amongst the legal fraternity. In the 23 years that I was an employer in the tertiary education sector, I’m pleased to say that sexual harassment cases were very few and far between. Where there were cases—there are, of course, many ways in which it can be dealt with before getting to a personal grievance stage. We would all hope that any employer that finds an instance of, or is informed of, a sexual harassment incident in their workplace would move quickly long before it got to the stage of a personal grievance. But we know that that isn’t always the case, and the imbalance of power—often a supervisor has considerable power over a worker, and that sexual harassment in those situations, particularly, is very, very damaging.

So we fully support that this bill will provide for those that consider they have been subjected to sexual harassment and may not be able to bring themselves to take the personal grievance within those 90 days. With this legislation passing, they would now be able to have up to a year to prepare and get themselves into a space where they were comfortable and prepared to raise a personal grievance.

We want victims of sexual harassment to be in that space where they feel safe to speak up, and sometimes it isn’t until they have got a new manager or have perhaps got themselves a new position, a new role, that they feel that they are in a safe enough space to be able to bring that action. So we are very pleased to support this and to show that the select committee process did have some input to this. We perhaps made more clear, more explicit, the retrospectivity clause—clause 17—where we were a little concerned that perhaps it wasn’t entirely clear and so we sought to get an amendment which has come into the legislation saying, “in respect of a personal grievance if the action alleged to amount to the personal grievance occurred or came to the notice of the employee on or after the date of commencement of the… amendment Act.” So it’s important, of course, that anything that might have occurred prior will be dealt with under the legislation as it was at that time.

So as I said, I am pleased to endorse the fact that National supports this bill, and we commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my great pleasure to rise to take a call on this member’s bill, the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill, brought in the name of Dr Deborah Russell, one of my Labour Party colleagues. It’s especially pleasing to be able to take a call on this today, having just left an event celebrating the fact that we now have 60, or half—50 percent—of the Parliament being women for the first time in New Zealand’s history. I think that the fact that we do have support across the aisle for this change and, hopefully, support from the other parties yet to speak on this too, and I think the fact that we do have that gender diversity within Parliament has allowed bills like this to proceed without too much difficulty, because I think there’s a shared recognition within the House of the importance of addressing sexual harassment, the prevalence of sexual harassment, and that we need to do more as a society to address sexual harassment. Many members of the House would’ve been aware of the Me Too movement, and the Me Too movement in New Zealand submitted on this bill and was fundamental in advocating for this change. So I think it does this House and this Parliament a great service, the fact that we’ve recognised this important matter and that we are acting on it.

Now, I was part of the select committee that considered this bill, the Education and Workforce Committee, and I do think it was a very useful process to go through, and I think that was due to the goodwill generally across the committee to get this bill to a place where there could be cross-party support for it. But I also think it was to do with the way that Dr Deborah Russell shepherded this bill through the House. You would’ve heard from previous speakers, and in reflecting on the content of the submissions, that there were 26 out of 43 of the submissions that asked us to go further. They would’ve liked to see a longer period to bring claims in relation to other types of serious discrimination claims, like racial discrimination. I want to acknowledge those submitters and also the serious issues that they brought to us. Those are important issues. There are additional challenges within our employment relations system in relation to other forms of discrimination. But Dr Russell was very clear that this bill addresses one thing and that is sexual harassment, and so that is why we have kept this bill limited to claims of sexual harassment. I know that might be disappointing to some people, some submitters, but I would encourage them to think about how beneficial this change will be and the fact that we are able to have this cross-party support to get this through the House.

I wanted to touch, if I may, just on the fundamental issue of this bill, which is time limits in employment disputes. I, prior to my coming into this House as an MP, worked in employment law and took a great many claims for people both here and when I worked in England and Wales as an employment and discrimination lawyer on lots of different matters, including sexual harassment. I think that if we look internationally, we can see that our period of 90 days, which applies to all claims that you need to raise as a personal grievance in order to protect your limitation rights, is quite similar to some other jurisdictions. For example, in England and Wales, it’s three months less one day—which is, effectively, the same thing but, actually, you have to file something in the Employment Tribunal in order to maintain that. So we do see that there are similar limitations that apply across different jurisdictions.

I think there is an argument to say that sexual harassment—and I think this is what Dr Deborah Russell said in her speech, which I listened to earlier in the debate—should be treated exceptionally. There are reasons for that in terms of how the victim or survivor of a sexual harassment experience—and these will be workplace experiences in relation to the content and the matter that we’re discussing today—that harassment and how that will come to crystallise in their mind as an actionable act.

It may not be for all people who experience sexual harassment that that is an immediate realisation. With some sexual harassment, people aren’t even aware that it’s occurring until perhaps they explain annoying behaviour to someone else, and there’s a reflection that, actually, that’s not appropriate within a workplace. Often it’s not reported to people’s employers, and often it’s just brushed away, but I think that the great thing about this bill is it will—and I’m sure of this—allow more people who have experienced sexual harassment to obtain justice, because it will remove the barrier of 90 days, or three months, and allow that period of time to be there.

Now, that is not an indefinite period of time, as you will know—it’s limited to that 12-month period—but I think it reflects better the real nature of experience of [Audio missing] particularly with workplace sexual harassment, which comes with power dynamics between the employer and the employee. It comes with power dynamics even within different colleagues. So I think that that’s especially important.

We did hear some submitters who said that there should be no time period. I am not entirely convinced by that idea, and one of the reasons for that is that we know from evidence that things become quite difficult, and that’s especially so in a workplace, where people move on. Employers have a civil responsibility, and it’s very different from a criminal case in relation to the evidential burden—it’s a much lower level—so I’m not 100 percent convinced by the argument that did come through in the submissions of not having any limitation period times at all. We obviously didn’t accept that in relation to this particular bill.

But one thing that we did do is really clarify that—and I say this. This hasn’t come up in the debate so far, but pre-emptively, if other speakers are to address it, nothing in this bill fundamentally changes anything else in employment law, apart from the time period. So everything else in the Employment Relations Act and in all of the other different sections that we changed or recommended should be changed as a result of the select committee and the position put forward by Dr Russell—it was to only change the time period for claims of sexual harassment, obviously, within a workplace context. So everything else is the same. All of the other potential issues that people may have with the bill—well, you probably will have those with the Employment Relations Act as well, because it’s the same wording throughout, and I do commend the member Deborah Russell for that approach. I think it made it really straightforward, and it meant that when we were looking at it, we were really looking at the one fundamental change that she wanted to happen.

We did look at the retrospectivity aspect of it, and—to be clear—this bill is not retrospective. It won’t affect anything that happens prior to it coming into law, and that was an important clarification that was made with Dr Deborah Russell and the select committee. I think it strengthens the natural justice element of this bill, and also unnecessary litigation in relation to serious and sensitive matters that may have impacted on people if the clarity was not there. I personally believe that we do owe it to try and make the legislation clear and accessible and easily understandable in order to allow people to utilise that legislation but also to not clog up our employment tribunals and our other courts and other jurisdictions with arguments that could have been made clearer, had we as legislators turned our minds to it. So I do think that that was a helpful aspect.

Another aspect which I think is in favour of this bill is its consistency with the Human Rights Act. In New Zealand, if you experience some form of discrimination in the workplace, you can choose whether to bring that claim through the Human Rights Act or the Employment Relations Act—you have to make a choice at some point. Under the Human Rights Act jurisdiction, you have 12 months, and under the Employment Relations Act you have 90 days. So there is, in a way, an incentive to utilise the human rights avenue, which is under strain and I think—I haven’t checked this before speaking to this point, but my perception is that it does not have the same resources as the Employment Relations Authority. So we wouldn’t want to create an incentive where people would prefer to use one jurisdiction, but they’re unable to due to the limitations. I think that that is a factor in the favour of this bill.

So, just to conclude, I think that this bill will help survivors and it will help good employers, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Greens are very pleased to rise in support of this bill.

I would like to also echo what others have said around the House about commemorating 50 percent of wahine representation in this House. My maths isn’t good, but I think with the vacancy in Hamilton West, that means we’re over, right? There’s probably better mathematicians around the House. So more than 50 percent representation in the House and that’s a good thing. We’re used to that in the Greens—being wahine-led, where 70 percent of our MPs are wahine. Perhaps just a thought: maybe the world wouldn’t be in such a shambles if all of the Parliaments were like this.

I would like to thank the member Deborah Russell for bringing this bill to the House. The purpose of the bill is to extend the time available to raise a personal grievance that involves allegations of sexual harassment, from 90 days to 12 months. It’s the perfect example of an effective member’s bill that is very simple and addresses a very specific problem.

I would also like to thank the submitters, especially those who gave oral submissions. It’s been a very valuable examination of one small aspect of our response to sexual harassment and our personal grievance system. And Jan Logie, our spokesperson for these issues—in amongst a number of these issues—was our person who sat on the select committee.

The submissions were very thoughtful and overwhelmingly supportive. Though the majority would have liked to see it go further, with the time frame extended even further and the inclusion of racial harassment. Particularly, we want to thank the submitters, women leaders who shared their own stories of sexual harassment, helping to break the silence. So important. Sexual harassment is a high-prevalence offence with low reporting rates.

The 2022 Kantar Public survey, commissioned by the Human Rights Commission, found that 30 percent of workers have experienced sexual harassment—30 percent—and 39 percent racial harassment, in the last five years; and 20 percent have been bullied in the last 12 months. Young people, bisexual, and disabled workers are the most likely to have experienced sexual harassment, yet only 5 to 20 percent of people are estimated to file formal complaints—5 to 20 percent.

Unite Union, in their submission, referenced research that showed 80 percent of workers were not sure what to do, and 45 percent didn’t know what a personal grievance is. Not one person under 20 knew what a personal grievance was when they were sexually harassed. Some did try to raise with management, and 50 percent said if there was more time they would raise a personal grievance. The others were not sure of outcomes, concerns about workplace culture, and didn’t understand the process and they felt like it was too much.

Unite noted it was critical to have more time to disclose and learn about personal grievances. Young people googling rights at work need to have time frames clear and upfront for sexual harassment and other forms of bullying and harassment.

As the #MeToo Collective pointed out in their submission, the Employment Relations Act’s using a finding process of the balance of probabilities, not reasonable doubt. So while there are limitations to the process, it was generally less harrowing than the criminal justice system and offers opportunities to hold employers to account for their decisions and actions not otherwise available.

The law does currently allow for personal grievances to be taken over 90 days in two situations—one of those, with the agreement of the employer. So you can see how many times that’s going to happen—very rarely, obviously. And also in exceptional cases. Trauma is not considered exceptional; it must be circumstances outside of the ordinary.

So this bill does go some way in addressing those concerns. I’m mindful of many of our young people out there in the workforce, and having that clarity for them about their rights and having that extension of time will make it so much easier for them to access justice.

The definition of sexual harassment, I’m noting, is quite limiting, particularly given the 90-day constraints. Amongst many other points, the New Zealand Law Journal article by Simon Schofield from the University of Waikato on the 90-day time frame in personal grievances found the current legal settings do not recognise the delayed reality and delayed realities of sexual harassment.

There were calls also, including from the Public Service Association and the New Zealand Educational Institute—and, of course, Unite—to extend the time frame to 24 months to match the findings of an Australian Parliament investigation. New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union and Aotearoa McDonald’s Workers Council called for a six-year limitation to lodge personal grievances in the authority after it is raised with the employer, and 50 years to lodge a personal grievance proceedings relating to racial or sexual harassment. One of the submitters, Zoë Lawton, suggested that the bill remove the time frame to match and provide consistency with the Criminal Procedure Act.

So we would like to thank the committee and all the submitters, who have put a lot of thought and time into this, and, again, to the member who brought this bill to the House. The Greens, we’re very open—still open—to extending the bill to lengthen the time frame and include racial harassment as well. But because the bill was so tightly and cleverly drafted, it would have required approval of the Business Committee to extend the scope, and sadly, the National Party were not open to that. We are pleased to support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to stand and take a call on the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill. As a new kid on the block, it’s always a real privilege to watch great work being done in this House, and to watch and to be taught by the honourable Dr Deborah Russell and the work that she’s done to make this bill come through so cleanly and swiftly and effectively. It is a mighty thing to watch. The bill is disciplined. It is clear. It is concise. We’ve had members across the House already talk this evening about how submitters saw an opportunity to take this issue more broadly, but I think that precision has been very, very helpful, because clarity helps. No one can hide. It’s very simple. Anyone who is behaving badly can clearly understand the process, but, more importantly, for victims, it helps to clarify what they have access to when they are having to make the decisions in really complex and stressful times.

I want to acknowledge the submitters. It’s such an important part of our process. With a bill like this, they brought powerful truth to the process, and it has helped us to clarify pieces of the bill with amendments and also remind us why we are in this House tonight and ensuring that this bill continues on its progress to being passed. We heard from unions, and we heard from individuals, and we’ve already heard tonight about the work that Unite Union have done in doing some research and talking to their members. We heard a description from one of their advocates, about workers in very high-stress situations, as most Unite workers are. It’s fast-food, it’s hospo, it’s casinos—they’re very vulnerable. They are often on very precarious contracts, on minimum pay and conditions, and they’re often young and very inexperienced. When they’re dealing with sexual harassment, they also have to overcome often a significant workplace culture and pressure from employers about how to respond to that harassment. And more time, as we’ve already heard, is all that is being ask from this bill, and it will have a significant impact, to help workers through this additional challenge of culture and pressure from employers.

We’ve heard about the recent survey, and what that did was give us a shocking reality-check about the context within which workers are processing their sexual harassment experiences and getting to grips with what their options are. We’ve heard how most didn’t know, at the time of the harassment, what a personal grievance was—45 percent still don’t know what a personal grievance is. And the thing that really got me, as someone who has spent much of my life working with young people, is that no one under the age of 20 that they surveyed knew what a personal grievance was at the time they were harassed. They didn’t know, and most of them still don’t know. Those who said that they had experienced sexual harassment—all of them were under 40, and 26 percent of them were under 20. These are the kids who would finish school at the end of the day, or maybe they finished a history exam this afternoon and they’ve gone to work—to support their families, to save so that they can travel or so they can continue their education—and they are vulnerable. They are under 20, and that they are being exposed to such behaviour is appalling to hear about—a shock—and it’s something that we need to do something about.

It isn’t just about pushing back against the culture that is around these young workers and that makes them vulnerable to such behaviour, but it is also about education. They didn’t know what was possible until they had support. These victims need time to process, to connect with people, to get support, and to work out what their options are. In this survey, when they were asked about the response from their employers, one person out of everybody surveyed reported that the issue was adequately investigated. So it isn’t just that they’re not using the current avenue—we’re hearing that there are so few cases that get progressed—but they’re simply not acceptable.

We heard from a worker and advocate who talked about—she described herself as being the representative of so many untold stories. She described the topic of sexual harassment as being so taboo and hard for everyone involved. She said it’s hard to confront the issue, because of, you know, the mind-set that it’s just too hard, it’s too much. It’s too much trouble. Now, for a victim to have that added to what they’re going through—that it’s too much trouble—is unacceptable and is why we need to support this bill. She said it’s an uncomfortable topic, and the additional time that would be afforded by this bill will ensure the clarity and the support needed to make a choice. She said it will be massive, the impact.

We heard from a young worker who said despite being harassed and despite attempting to go to management, and the way it was poorly handled—brushed under the table—the culture of silence in this massive fast-food company that he worked in—he said he’s still there. They’re still there, because of financial necessity and because of the support of their union. So a little shout-out to the union movement there—you know, for taking a chance to do that.

We heard from a Pasifika worker about how subtle it can be, and so subtle it can take time to process what’s actually happened. She described the suggestive teasing about how friendly and respectful Pasifika people should be, and it becomes a familiar introduction to often a long, drawn-out process. We heard about how this culture is exacerbated in places where women are in a minority, such as in the trades or where you’re an immigrant and so you’re vulnerable. So we heard about the difficulties there.

This bill is about time: time to realise, to process, what has happened. You know, we hear employees often sort of minimise and joke about things as a way of coping, all because that is the cultural norm and expectation of their workplace—or, actually, wider society, to be fair. This bill is about time: a chance for people to think about what is happening and what is going to happen; to think about their choices and the implications of the decisions that they may make. It gives them time to realise and process. It also gives them time to seek advice and help and to really understand their options and to get support to help them to progress the personal grievance.

It provides time for unions to provide support. We heard from a union delegate who said she’s a civics educator, a lawyer, a therapist, and an organiser. I think it must be really hard for a union to hear from their workers that they didn’t even know what a personal grievance was, and I think there’s a significant challenge there. I guess—again, as a former educator—that we have got so much to do. We have to support our employers to really challenge the culture that is in their workplaces and support them to make the change in that culture. We need to educate our young people. There is no way a young person should leave school in this country and not know their rights and responsibilities as workers. To not know what a personal grievances is is shocking. And we need to take up that challenge and ensure that those conversations are happening in schools and in workplaces. I’ll give a little shout-out to the Young Workers Resource Centre in Hamilton. They do significant work across schools and the wider community about that education responsibility that we have towards our young workers.

This bill gives us hope that things will change, but we have to do more. Like I say, we need to support our employers. So many want to do the right thing, but we have to help them to shift the culture in their organisations. And we have to support our workers to be able to navigate this terribly complex place. It is for this reason that I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT for the second reading of the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill, and it is great to see a sensible bill coming from the Labour Party; and, actually, it’s the second one in a row. The last one—the child exploitation one—was great, and it’s certainly one that we will support.

This bill extends the time period that a grievance related to sexual harassment can be brought, from three months to 12 months, reflecting a view that, due to the nature of sexual harassment, victims often take longer to come forward, and the 90-day deadline is a relatively short time frame to advance a grievance, despite that grievance being serious in nature and likely to continue long past that 90-day period.

New Zealand does have a poor record around this issue, and it certainly needs to be taken seriously. There is enough evidence, and we’ve heard enough examples today, to show that a change is justified and certainly necessary. But, while extending the time to raise a grievance involving sexual harassment, the bill will leave other allegations of grievances at 90 days, and we think this is the right thing to do. Sexual harassment is different to other workplace issues, and it should be looked upon and treated that way.

Some submitters wanted a longer reporting time, and some thought that there shouldn’t be a reporting time limit and that all grievances should be extended—that this bill should include all grievances—but we believe that this is a good compromise for the nature of this offending.

There are always going to be concerns and, despite the many people in this House that won’t believe it, the grievance process is sometimes abused, and false and vexatious complaints need to be treated very seriously. Lives can be turned upside down through false accusations, and these need to be actively discouraged. However, this is a good bill, and one that will ensure specific incidents of sexual harassment can be dealt with appropriately within a fair and reasonable time frame. ACT supports this bill, and I commend it to the House. Thanks.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wanted to join my colleagues in congratulating Dr Deborah Russell for bringing this piece of legislation to this House. Madam Speaker, today, while we celebrated a milestone of our Parliament reaching 50/50, and myself and you were part of the delegation that participated in the 145th Inter-Parliamentary Union conference, where gender equality was part of the main topic, there are also women out there who are being targeted just for being women. Iran is a good example, and my heart goes out to them.

Prior to coming to Parliament, I was a union organiser, and every day, every week, every month we dealt with issues such as sexual harassment. One of the biggest barriers for victims was the time frame that they are allowed to raise their grievance in. Because of that, there were a lot of missed opportunities for justice, and I do remember a lot of stories of the people affected. Victims are often quite slow to come forward. That could be due to lack of understanding of what happened to them. For many people, it could be hard to grasp what really happened to them. But, also, the power dynamics play a role as well, and the fear for their employment and the loss of income, etc., etc. And there are also cultural norms and shame that deter people from coming forward.

This bill is all about extending the time allowed for people to make their personal grievance from 90 days to 12 months in the cases related to sexual harassment explicitly. As my good friend Camilla has mentioned, it’s not going to be retrospective, and the Education and Workforce Committee has done a good job making sure that it won’t be retrospective. There are, however, some conflicting views and opinions that it should be more than 12 months and it should also include other aspects. For example, some submitters wanted the deadline to be pushed beyond two years or more, and others wanted the legislation to include bullying and racial discrimination and other forms of disadvantage. The member in charge, Dr Deborah Russell, however, made it clear that this bill only deals with sexual harassment. If needed, other work could be done in other areas.

The select committee has scrutinised the bill. It discussed it thoroughly and it made some good recommendations, such as the definition of “relevant periods” of personal grievance versus personal grievance for sexual harassment, for example, and inserting “applicable employee notification period” and defining the true difference as well.

This bill is very, very important. It’s common, as we all know, for victims of sexual harassment to wait a long time to come forward, if at all. This bill allows employees to have time to consider and process their decision and make sure that their families understand what’s happening to them—and their families probably even come on board with them. In general, they have to feel safe to take a step. There are many reasons, obviously, for this, and there are stories and evidence that back this. For example, according to Zoё Lawton from MeToo—her quote—“It’s really hard to speak out when the person who is bullying or sexually harassing you is paying your salary and controlling the type of work you do or you’re getting and have the potential to ruin your career.” There is a lot of evidence for this as well.

That’s why the Labour Government is taking a lot of steps to make sure that we deal with the violence and sexual harassment against women. For example, Labour aim to end the violence against women. Women are not the only people, obviously. I think the Hon Paul Goldsmith alluded to it before. He said that women are not the only ones. Yes, that’s the case, but also women are the majority of the victims. In 2018, the Labour Government announced a joint venture on family violence and sexual violence, a whole-of-Government response made up of 10 agencies. In Budget 2020, an additional $131.9 million was allocated to support a number of successful prevention programmes running in our communities. In December 2021, the Government announced Te Aorerekura: the National Strategy to Eliminate Family Violence and Sexual Violence. The strategy will span over 25 years, tackling the cause of violence against women in New Zealand. This joint venture will utilise the cross-agency approach to ensure collective responsibility is taken for violence against women.

Eliminating family violence is a long game. It’s one of the greatest opportunities for improving the wellbeing of our society. But it is complex and doesn’t fit neatly into individual agency boundaries. We need a spectrum of interventions that range across preventions, recovery, and healing. This needs to be delivered through a sustained collaborative approach across the Government where tangata whenua and the communities are engaged in decision making.

The submitters were a big part of the select committee’s process, and they have done a good job bringing some real stories to the attention of the committee. But, also, a big part of the submitters were the unions. The first union conducted a survey on sexual harassment. They found approximately about 13 percent of those surveyed reported experiencing sexual harassment of some sort at work; 26 percent reported either witnessing or being reliably informed of someone being sexually harassed at work. In the final comments, however, many said that they all felt unsure that they had experienced sexual harassment, where the other details provided did indicate that they had been sexually harassed. All of the 13 percent were under 40, with most being between 20 and 30. Of those that had experienced sexual harassment themselves, about 17 percent reported having still not processed or understood at all what happened to them to this day.

Most of the workers, or 80 percent, do not or did not know what a personal grievance is. This comes down to, as my colleague Angela Roberts said, education. It’s very important that we educate our kids, our tamariki, starting from schools. At least 21 percent of the workers say that if given more time, they would have definitely raised a personal grievance, and another 17 percent believe they most likely would have.

So this bill, we know, is going to be a game-changer. It’s going to help a lot of people to have enough time to make up their minds, to feel safe, to consult with their families. And education is key. The workers most in need of protection in this format are not currently using this, because, simply, they don’t know. With most sexual harassment being committed against younger female workers, enabling them time to process, seek help, and learn that the personal grievance is an option available to them is critical. It would also give us more time as a union on the other end to reach other people. So the longer the time given, the better.

Finally, I wanted to touch—while this affects a lot of people, it’s also even harder for minorities who come from either migrant or refugee backgrounds. That’s because, simply, they come from places where raising a voice against your employer is not an option. Because of that, they tend to live with the same mentality here, and we have to make sure that people know that this country is not what they come from. They have rights. There are a lot of laws that can step up and protect them. So, with that, this is a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

Melissa Lee—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill. I’d like, first of all, to acknowledge and commend the work of the select committee, the Education and Workforce Committee, who have actually done a very good job. I can’t imagine the select committee process where lots of victims might have actually come and spoken about their personal experiences. And often, I know, when members actually hear their stories, it can be quite an emotional time, so well done to all of the members who were in that select committee.

Although I’m not part of the select committee, it is an absolute pleasure to actually rise to support this, because I think 90 days is probably not a long enough time, in my opinion, to deal with a situation when someone—whether actually male or female—has been sexually harassed. I think it’s not just the domain of the woman. The majority of the harassed people tends to be women, but men also get sexually harassed in a workplace.

And I think the member who just took his seat, Ibrahim Omer, actually makes a very relevant point in terms of people who come from different cultures. They process information differently because they’re coming from a culture that is very different—often not just talking back to elders, talking back to people who are in a higher status, perhaps bosses, or even a male-gendered person who may be doing these kinds of acts to both males and females. The cultural context actually means that they may not be able to speak up or they’re disempowered from speaking up. And their understanding, in the New Zealand context, of their ability to make a complaint or that there are in fact rules in New Zealand to actually help them is actually not properly educated. I think we probably need to do more education in this space so that people feel empowered to make that kind of complaint. I think extending that period of time to a year at least is a way forward so people can actually process that information.

I think when victims first experience sexual harassment, often it comes as a bit of a shock. I think understanding that they’ve just been harassed is also a realisation or a shock, and I think coming to terms with that is actually something that takes a bit of time, because often some victims do not even recognise the fact that that’s harassment because, in their culture, often it’s the norm. It’s the norm, so they don’t actually see it as harassment, and then when they realise that it’s actually harassment and something that they need to bring to the authorities or even complain about, it does actually take time.

It also comes with the whole thing of shame—“Did I or did they, in fact, cause the problem in the first place?”, because often victims are made to feel ashamed when they get victimised, and they don’t feel empowered because of that shame—the guilt that it has actually happened to them. They have no one to talk to, and the whole trauma of that experience can be quite a huge thing for them to deal with. I’m not a psychologist, nor am I an expert in these fields, but I think often there’s the denial involved as well; they want to pretend that it never happened because they need to get on with work and they have to go to work every day to make ends meet for their family. They have to earn a living for their family, and complaining about a person who is actually an employer or who is actually higher status and may have actually created the situation may not be tenable.

I think this is a good bill, and I commend the work of Dr Deborah Russell, who has brought this bill to the House, and the work that the select committee has produced so that all of us can actually participate in the process in this House. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. Along with Melissa Lee, I too congratulate Deborah Russell for the hard work she’s done on this bill. It’s interesting, isn’t it—when we talk about limitation, we are arguing strenuously that we should push out the ability to make a claim for sexual harassment to a year. If you flip the question on its head, you can actually ask an interesting question: why do we have a limitation period at all? Because 90 days—in any employment situation—is a relatively short period of time. And I can’t imagine that there are many employment situations where, after three months after the termination of employment, the employee in particular is in a great space to embark upon some kind of complaint or litigation. So it is just worth asking that question, which is “Why do we have limitation?” and, against that question, to measure whether it should be the very short period of three months, or perhaps the period of one year, which is the amendment set out in this legislation, or the three-year period, which is the longstop period under the Employment Relations Act, or a longer period such as the six-year period in the more general Limitation Act, or longer again.

Now, I can absolutely understand the need for both employers and employees to have finality—that they don’t want to part ways, perhaps in somewhat fractious terms, and be wondering about whether some claim is going to be hanging over them. But against that, it’s got to be recognised that limitation, by definition, is an absolute defence to any claim—even the most deserving claim. And at the moment we’ve got a framework which, at least on its face, says that the most egregious sexual harassment would have an absolute defence if the matter was raised 91 days after the employment relationship was terminated, and that can’t be right.

Now, there is a saving provision in section 115 of exceptional circumstances, and it in fact recognises that in cases where there has been trauma—and this might be one of them—the court can give special leave for a matter to be raised. But that is yet another hurdle for the raising of a grievance, a complaint, because you have to apply to the court for leave. And so it’s a barrier in the face of a legitimate claim.

So we need to think very carefully about this, and this is absolutely a good bill that does the right thing in this case, which is where there is a claim for sexual harassment—which, almost by definition, is traumatic—then it should be pushed out, that additional period. Because we do know that in situations like that—and the Act itself, it is worth noting that “sexual harassment” is not some vague term; sexual harassment is actually defined at length in the Employment Relations Act. I think that’s an important point to make, that it’s not just some offhand comment or something like that; it’s a course of conduct that is clearly inappropriate and might be verbal, can be physical, and I think you can probably understand what that definition clause in the Act does.

So this is a very good piece of legislation. It, again, shifts the needle to say to disgruntled and disaffected employees who have been wronged that the door won’t be shut on you to make your claim, to be heard, and your wrong to be properly redressed, simply because the clock has been ticking.

But I do think it’s important to note that this one year is not actually the final length of time. It is, in fact, possible to raise a claim up to three years later, where you can show that there were exceptional circumstances. And I do want to put it on record that in many cases, situations of sexual harassment will fall into that category notwithstanding this amendment. That category still exists and parties should be aware of it, because limitation raises odd issues of being shut out of a deserving claim simply because the clock has ticked past a particular time. A good bill—well done, Deborah Russell—I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Very happy to take a call on the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill. Other speakers before me have mentioned that today is the day we celebrated the 50:50 gender split in Parliament, and a great day for celebration. I’d just like to take that a bit further and say isn’t it a great day that that happened as well as a really good woman in Dr Deborah Russell—and I’ve had quite a lot to do with her in previous select committees; she was a great chair of the Environment Committee that I sat on—a great woman, brought a really, really good bill, and it’s worthy of thinking about not only Deborah Russell but other great women in this Parliament who have fought for women’s rights and for the rights of women.

I got to talking to Dame Jenny Shipley, who was around today for the celebrations of the 50:50 split in Parliament. We got to chatting about her time in Parliament, when she was, in fact, the Minister of Health and she passed through the national breast screening service for women in 1995, and then she did it again for cervical screening. So great women in this Parliament, on both sides of the House, doing great things for women, and I have to commend Dr Deborah Russell tonight for bringing what is a great bill.

I’m not going to take a long call, because I actually think we should just get this bill passed. It’s a great bill; we don’t need to spend our whole speeches pontificating. I think we just need to say we commend the bill and sit down. But I just want to make a couple of comments. Firstly, one of the submitters to this bill—and it was passed through my select committee, the Education and Workforce Committee—was Mika Hurbuns, and I want to acknowledge her because she is a student of my local high school, Rangitoto College, a year 13 student, and she took the time to submit on this bill. So I just wanted to mention her name, and to say to her we looked at your submission and I note that she, like many other submitters, wanted the time frame of 12 months pushed out indefinitely. We did consider that but decided, on balance, that 12 months was the right time frame. We did so in acknowledgment that sexual harassment in the workplace is different than other types of harassment in the workplace, in the fact that it can bring with it some shame and difficulty for women to understand necessarily what’s happened to them and to come to the realisation of what has happened, and then take action and look at all of the potential outcomes. So we decided that, on balance, 12 months was a good time for that. So what I say to Mika: thank you very much for your submission, we considered it, and I thank you for being a brave year 13 Rangitoto College student in submitting to our select committee.

We did make some tidy-ups in the bill, in clause 6, where we weren’t sure whether or not Dr Deborah Russell was intending on allowing the employer to—if the employer agreed to—extend the time past 12 months. That wasn’t in her original draft. We clarified that with her, and then added it back in. There were a couple of other minor amendments just to make things more clear and use better language, especially when it came to individual employment contracts, making sure that it was spelt out—the two different time frames: the 90 days for other personal grievances, and the 12 months for sexual harassment—and that’s reflected elsewhere in the bill as well.

So, with that, I don’t think I need to say much more. It’s a great bill. I want to thank all the submitters because overwhelmingly they were in support of the bill. Like I say, we did have a number of them who wanted it extended, and also wanted some of the other personal grievances extended to 12 months as well, but we did consider that sexual harassment is very different and, with that, we decided that 12 months just for sexual harassment was, on balance, the best thing to do. And we also did clarify with Dr Deborah Russell that this bill wasn’t going to be retrospective, and indeed it wasn’t.

So, with that, again Dr Deborah Russell, well done. You are standing with many other great women in this House, for bringing great bills that will affect the lives of many women, as I say, alongside people like Dame Jenny Shipley, who should be acknowledged as well for her great work in women’s health especially. So, with that Madam Speaker, I commend the bill to the House.

It’s a pleasure to take a call on something like this because I was an employment lawyer. I have seen a change in the attitude in this area over my practice, and it gives me a chance to really look at that.

That change in attitude to sexual harassment directly relates to the nature of a rethink about the limitation period, because we’ve started to understand the real harm that can be done by this kind of behaviour, but we’ve also understood that part of that trauma is that people take a while to process these particular things because of the nature of them, and so they actually do need more time.

I would like to start by just talking about a woman called Mary Koss, who did some studies in 1987. She’s an American academic, and she did these studies into sexual assault. It’s a really interesting story as to how that happened. She was coming into a new university, and she got approached by one of the male academics. He wanted to do a study on bra size and how it affected the reaction that men had to women. He wanted her to put her name on the study so that he could do that study. She took the study and changed it into the first survey of sexual assault that really had taken place.

Originally, she had very direct questions, I think, but she ended up changing the way that she asked the questions, and she got a really different response because most of the women answering the survey didn’t understand that what was happening to them was sexual assault. They could describe what happened—and that included things like date rape—but they just couldn’t actually name it as such.

I think that I reflect on that as an experience that has actually ramifications for this area too. I don’t think that for a long time we understood what was going on in these circumstances in the workplace. Obviously, we’ve come to terms much more with the power dynamic in an employment relationship. I think that all of us on every side of the House, we now understand that.

When I was practising law, I had a friend who was practising at a big firm—and I’m not going to name anybody in the speech—but actually it was a well-known person to probably everybody in the situation. It was a partner in the firm, and he invited her to lunch with what she thought was the team. When she got there, she was alone. It was one of those things that meant that—she was in her first job. Can you imagine what that does to your confidence when what you think you’ve been employed for is actually your desirability sexually, which is clearly what she thought and what he thought at that point. So it totally undermined her first experience as an employee.

Many years later, we had a very interesting situation where she was practising as a lawyer and she was very good at her job, and she had a confrontation with another lawyer. He was a rather unusual person who started to do things that were less and less acceptable, one of which was to get her to bend down, to sign a piece of wood in a short skirt. She made a complaint and it went through a complaints process. I ended up with her, supporting her through that process.

At first, we put that process through as a professional conduct process. When we were doing the evidence, at some point my friend said in her evidence, “This wouldn’t have happened to me if I wasn’t a woman.” I’ve got to say, my reaction to that, because I was trained and I was generationally challenged on this, was actually my heart sank that she had said that it was about being a woman because that was going to be so much harder to fight than just simply calling it professional misconduct. I’m ashamed of it. That’s what I felt.

In fact, we found really good evidence, email evidence that there were lots of comments that were directed at her as a woman and actually compared her car to the wife’s car in the situation, etc. It was very much laid on and in the information. There was a finding in that situation and it went through a process and actually it all became disclosed—actually quite a lot later in the Me Too movement, as these things move through our profession.

There was a situation where the Law Society said that there were no complaints of this nature. This became a complaint that was thought about and was talked about, because, in fact, at that point, the lawyer’s code of conduct didn’t really have a category for sexual assault and sexual harassment. Everything went through a very much sanitised channel—and it’s changed. The Law Society’s changed, and so has our approach to this kind of behaviour in every workplace in New Zealand.

It is no longer acceptable, but we also need to give people time because these are extremely traumatic events and actually they need time to process it. They need time to articulate it. They need somebody to be able to say, “Well, that’s just not acceptable.” They probably need to get into their next job and realise that the behaviour wasn’t normal, wasn’t acceptable, and wasn’t their fault. So that’s how it relates.

Now, I’ve got to say that Mary Koss has got some really interesting views, and one of them is actually that she doesn’t think things have got much better. She, at this point, doesn’t think that she actually achieved her ends in the change in behaviour in the United States. I actually don’t agree with her. I think I’ve seen a change in myself. I now look at those things quite differently. It wasn’t that I didn’t see them. It was that I suppressed them and found other ways of trying to deal with them. In the case that I’ve described, I did see them, but I didn’t feel that they were par for the main course of society. Now, I’d be much more straightforward about that. I’d simply see it as a case of sexual harassment.

I just want to tell you one final thing about that story, because it broke in the newsletters that go to lawyers. When the story broke, the article went up on the website and it had a cartoon of a woman bending down with a short skirt. That was what the journalist thought it should do with that story. They put up that cartoon, which was a cartoon of my friend in that situation. Now, that’s part of the journey through. I appreciate it, but I would urge people to reflect on that kind of response to the situation, because it certainly did harm.

What did good was actually being able to win in that situation, being able to hold that man to account. It actually took several years because he asked for name suppression. It was possible to go through that process because my friend is like a terrier, she is tenacious, but not everybody in the situation is a terrier. It really isn’t a case of actually having to be the most aggressive person or the most confident person, because the victims in this situation are often the opposite of that. They are often the gentler people, the ones that won’t necessarily take their cases on. I take the point that has been made by my friend Melissa Lee and about this: that this is a problem that we get in different cultures and we have to really make sure that we’re very straightforward in our rules.

Now, there are, of course, options under the Human Rights Act to take these cases, and there have been, and it’s been the preferred method. That’s because it has a longer time that you can take the cases. So this brings us much more into line between the two places to go. I think it’s very important that the Employment Relations Authority does its job in these cases extremely sensitively. I think it’s really important that people are handled with care in these situations. That would be my only other reflection from practice. I saw far too many harsh dealings with these cases and a tendency to settle at mediation for fear of the trauma that would be caused by the case itself and the way it was conducted. So it’s incredibly important that this sends a signal to the Employment Relations Authority that it must absolutely treat people with respect—which I’m sure it intends to do.

I would just finally like to congratulate my friend Dr Deborah Russell for having brought this to this Parliament and for the Parliament for actually, I think, universally accepting that this is a good idea. Thank you. I commend this to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.