Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill

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

Legislative statement published under the authority of the House

I move, That the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 6 April 2021.

At the end of what some of us termed “the year of COVID”, we have learnt many things, and one of the things that we have learnt is the importance of people who are sick staying at home to look after themselves and to not spread infection to others. COVID has been a reminder to us, in terms of dealing with a pandemic, but more generally looking after the health and wellbeing of our people, that people need time off work when they are unwell. It is important for their own health and their own wellbeing. It’s important for the health and wellbeing of their colleagues, who we do not want to become sick through the risk of infection. It is important for businesses, who want to have healthy and well-engaged and productive workforces, and it’s important in a broader sense, in terms of managing the increased risk in our country and around the world of infections such as COVID-19, which can have system-wide impacts on our economy. And what has become clear to the Government and to many people across New Zealand this year is that our current statutory minimum entitlement of five days sick leave per year does not satisfy those requirements and does not satisfy our ambition to ensure that the health and wellbeing of people and the risk of spreading infection is managed well.

I note that this is a realisation that many others have come to. Many businesses in New Zealand currently provide more than the statutory minimum for sick leave in recognition of these factors. Many of the countries with whom we compare ourselves currently provide a higher statutory minimum for sick leave. Australia, for example, provides 10 days’ sick leave per year for workers, which is what has been proposed by the Government in this bill. I was very pleased that the Labour Party manifesto that was taken to the New Zealand electorate this year made a very clear commitment to address this issue with some urgency, and that is what we are doing in the first sitting week of the House this year.

As I said, many businesses in New Zealand do currently provide 10 days’ sick leave or more per year. One of the things that I think is a relevant factor for the House to consider, as this bill goes through, is the equity impacts of our current system, because workers who are most reliant on the statutory minimums tend to be workers in the most vulnerable sectors, tend to be workers with less agency and bargaining power in their workplaces, and tend to be workers who are going to be less able to negotiate to have additional sick leave if that is needed. So we have a situation in New Zealand where many workers—the estimate is around about half of all workers—do have 10 days of sick leave or more per year. But the workers who potentially need it the most—workers who particularly are liable to have children and other dependents for whom they may need to access that sick leave, as well—are the workers who tend to rely on the statutory minimum of five days per year. If we think about the people in our lives who might have children, who might have dependents, who might be more vulnerable in various ways, pretty quickly you can see how that statutory minimum of five days per year may be used up. And that’s just in ordinary times, let alone those periods of time when we are strongly advising people, from a public health perspective, to be cautious and to stay at home if they are unwell with symptoms that may be related to COVID.

I think one thing that this bill and this issue have brought out is a need for the cultural mind-set in New Zealand workplaces to change. Indeed, I think it is changing. I think for a long time we’ve sort of had this attitude—and I’ve been as guilty as many other people—of toughing it out, of saying, “Oh, well, it’s just a bit of a cold. I’m not feeling all that well, but I’ll go in anyway.” We do need to move past that. We’ve learnt this year that there can be serious public health impacts if we don’t move past that. We’ve learnt this year that there can be productivity impacts if we don’t move past that. We’ve learnt that there are serious public health risks for the whole country if we don’t move past that attitude.

More broadly, my vision as Minister in this portfolio and the vision of the Government is that we move past that view of workplace relations where we say the best thing and the only thing we should be doing is to be minimising upfront costs. Actually, we’ve got a much higher level of ambition for workplaces in New Zealand. It’s about building workplaces that are fair, that are safe, and that are productive, and moving on from that 1990s mind-set which says that you trade those things off against each other, that the only way to be productive is to reduce the costs and reduce the investment in your workers down to the minimum possible level. Actually, I believe that those attributes of workplaces that are fair, safe, and productive are mutually reinforcing, that if we invest in workers, if we treat them well, if we ensure that through measures like this—for example, they have adequate sick leave, they have adequate annual leave, they have a voice in the workplace—that is going to lead to more productive workplaces.

A survey undertaken by Business New Zealand and Southern Cross Healthcare in 2018 found that a significant number of employers do already provide more than five days of sick leave per year in recognition of this. The same survey found that from 2012 to 2018 the proportion of enterprises with a clear policy stating that staff should not come into work when sick also increased significantly. Other research reveals that when workers are asked the question, “Would you come into work if you are sick?” in 2012, 49 percent of workers said yes, they would. That reduced to 35 percent by 2018, and, I dare say, that at the end of 2020 more workers also recognise the need to stay at home when they are unwell.

So I think there is a journey that is taking place across New Zealand workplaces that is reflected in the views of both employers and employees that it is incredibly important to ensure that there is adequate sick leave in place. And I’ve been very pleased this week to see a range of leaders from unions and business organisations also recognising this in their public comments about this issue.

I referenced, before, the fact that this doesn’t need to be a trade-off—that, actually, decent sick leave, supporting employees to stay at home when they’re not well, actually can be a boon to productivity. It’s a pretty simple equation, really. If people are coming into work sick with illnesses that are easily spread—of course, we think of COVID-19 this year, but those other bugs that are always around: the common cold, influenza, and other easily transmissible conditions. If more people pick up those conditions because workers come into work when they are unwell, that is a significant drag on the productivity of businesses in New Zealand, and we do not want to see that happening.

There’s good evidence on this as well. Respondents to the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey who reported working while sick, estimated that this reduced their productivity by around about 20 percent on average, and that’s not taking into account the other people for whom illnesses may have been passed on. The same study found that providing paid sick leave in the United States by employers could have saved between $630 million to $1.88 billion per year in absenteeism costs, by preventing the spread of illnesses.

This is a Government which has a balanced approach. We are committed to increasing sick leave to deal with the issues that I’ve covered. We’re also committed to continuing to support businesses in what has been a difficult period due to the impacts of COVID19. The COVID-19 Leave Support Scheme has been an important component of this work and I’m currently having a good look at that scheme to make sure that it’s providing the support to employers that they need during this period. And we have a range of other policies to support businesses as we navigate this period, including interest-free small-business loans; obviously we’ve had the wage subsidy scheme; and the Government’s ongoing programme to provide free business advice, support to get online, and tackling that issue of expensive merchant service fees. So this policy fits within a broader framework of making sure that we’re providing good rights to employees, we’re improving productivity, and we’re supporting businesses through a challenging process.

As part of that balanced approach, we’re also asking the select committee to have a good look at this bill, to consider a range of other issues that have been raised by stakeholders in the consultation. We will be running a full select committee process, and we’ve heard from businesses that a little bit of lead-in time for the implementation of this is important. So the implementation is proposed to take place two months after the legislation takes effect.

This is a bill which responds to some of the challenges that have arisen in 2020, but addresses a more fundamental issue about making sure that we have workplaces that are fair, safe, and productive through the provision of decent sick leave for workers who need to stay at home when they are unwell. I commend it to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to commence my contribution in this first reading debate by congratulating the Minister on his appointment to the portfolio of workplace relations and safety. He’s a new Minister in this Labour Government, and he comes to his role, and, indeed, to this Parliament, through the well-trodden and well-traversed pathway that is the traditional pathway to Parliament for Labour MPs, through the trade union movement. In his time as a senior negotiator for Finsec, the Finance and Information Workers Union, which has now merged into part of FIRST Union, he was a staunch and very, very effective, I understand, advocate for his union members. But that’s nothing new for those of us who have watched Labour Party Governments come and go over the years. The traditional pathway is well known, it’s well-trodden, and those links and associations between the trade union movement and the Labour Party are historic and go back many, many years.

So it came as no surprise that virtually straight after this year’s general election, in a publication called Trans Tasman, the Council of Trade Unions president, one Richard Wagstaff, presented his wish list of things that he wanted from the current new Labour Government. He says, “Working people and their unions have expectations”—working people and their unions have expectations—of this Government and they are looking for some kind of implementation very quickly. And guess what was top of Richard Wagstaff’s list of expectations from this Government? Well, number one was safer sick leave: “as per their election promise, we look forward to the increase to 10 days sick leave being put into law in their first 100 days in office”. Well, the union’s wish list is being utterly complied with, sycophantically complied with, and the rest of the detail on the list, I’m sure, won’t be far behind as this Government unfolds its agenda. The mirroring of the Government’s agenda, we saw in the Speech from the Throne, mirrors almost exactly the wish list from the Council of Trade Unions, and that comes as no surprise.

This is a small bill—it literally is just a page and a bit. It seeks to amend the already complex and difficult to negotiate Holidays Act, and it extends the minimum provisions of sick leave from five days a year to 10. That comes as no surprise because, as the Minister said, that was the Labour Party’s slogan campaign during the election. But when they were campaigning on the election, they really didn’t pay much attention to the detail, to the unintended consequences, to the costs. I listened very carefully to the former senior adviser to the Finsec union, the Minister say—I heard him say almost nothing. In fact, the only time, I think, in his 10 minutes he referred to the employers was one when he referred to how some employers already give 10 days, and some do, because they understand that the relationships with staff are warranting that. There was no mention, effectively, of the impact on employers.

But in the regulatory impact statement, there are some frightening insights into the lack of detail and the lack of preparation that is going to impact on businesses, particularly small businesses, as a result of this legislation. Frighteningly, the reviewer of this impact statement says—and I quote—“The Impact Statement has been produced under tight time constraints which has led to limitations in the policy process … A lack of consultation with affected stakeholders, particularly small businesses and businesses in the sectors that are most likely affected by the change.” and “A limited range of options has been considered, particularly alternative sick leave duration periods and funding approaches (as [have been] adopted [in] other countries.” That should be enough to make most members of this Parliament sit up and take notice, because there hasn’t been the work and detail done.

The report goes further into looking at some of the likely risks and impacts, and, unsurprisingly, the risks and impacts fall disproportionately upon small to medium sized enterprises, those enterprises that are least able to absorb and least able to make arrangements for sick leave provisions when somebody doesn’t turn up. I’ve been in the situation where I’ve run and operated both large and small businesses, and I can assure you that big businesses actually do have capacity to cover when someone is away because they’re sick; small businesses don’t have that.

What is also said in the impact statement—and this is not covered at all by the Minister in his introductory comments—is the cost. The cost is estimated by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to be close to $1 billion a year, added to the costs already being foisted upon New Zealand businesses by a Government that actually thinks businesses have an infinite capacity to absorb cost. Well, businesses don’t have an infinite capacity to absorb cost. Businesses want to stay profitable, and, ultimately, they want to stay in business, so that they can employ people. That’s the ultimate game, that’s the ultimate objective of all commercial enterprises, to stay in business, make a profit, employ people, and return, sometimes, a very modest return to the investors and shareholders who have put their faith into that business.

So a billion dollars, which actually represents close to 1 percent of the nation’s total payroll, is going to have to be absorbed somehow by businesses already under pressure. Those costs, the report says, will be borne—and I quote—“mostly by employers who currently provide between five and 10 days of sick leave. Employers in the manufacturing, construction and accommodation and food services sectors are more likely to only provide the minimum entitlement, [and] so [therefore] are most likely to be impacted.”

So if we go back to the manufacturing, construction, accommodation, and food services sectors, those are some of the most impacted services and sectors that have been impacted by this year of COVID. This brings me to the point about the rationale for bringing this in now. I’m sorry to say that I think this Government is using the cover of COVID to implement a policy that has long been wanted by the trade union movement, long been wanted but never actually previously been able to be got through in a way that is remotely acceptable to the wider New Zealand public and business sector. Yet now we have the cover of COVID being used as an excuse, as a rationale, for bringing this extra impost and cost upon businesses, particularly small businesses, in. If that was the case, surely—surely—there is then an argument for limiting this result and making it COVID- related so that, eventually, one day, and who knows when that might be, when we return to a situation of relative normality, the status quo could be returned to. But, no, this Government has no intention of time-limiting or impact-limiting this piece of legislation. It’s designed to be permanent for ever, for keeps, and ongoing, and that is a difficult challenge for all employers.

I’m delighted, however, that the Minister has at least foreseen to send this piece of legislation to select committee. That’s a positive, and I thank the Minister for that. But he’s given a report-back date that is 6 April. This Parliament rises next week and we go into the great Kiwi Christmas summer closedown. Many New Zealanders will be wanting to beat a retreat to the beautiful Coromandel electorate, where they’ll want to be spending time and money in my very nice electorate. They won’t want to be focused on preparing submissions for a select committee hearing on an extra week’s sick leave for their employees. What we will have, however, is probably, at select committee, a very long list of trade union representatives and members parading through the select committee, giving examples of what the Minister has referred to as enlightened employment arrangements. What we won’t have is the hard-working representatives from small businesses, many of whom will actually be working over the summer period.

So my concern is that although we’re going to have a select committee process, I’m not sure that it’s going to get to the bottom of the real issues, and I don’t think the time frame is particularly appropriate. In fact, I would call upon the Minister to reconsider the earlier report-back date, because I don’t think that’s going to allow a time for adequate and sensible submissions to be prepared and presented over the summer break, when many people are either on holiday themselves or, indeed, working. National will oppose this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and also congratulations on your appointment as Assistant Speaker.

First of all, I think, I would like to thank the member Scott Simpson for recalling the proud work history of our new Minister. We’re absolutely proud of that. He referred to the well-trodden path via the union movement. I guess that is in stark contrast to the well-trodden path of the National Party, where $100,000 will do the job.

Now, the member talked about the fact that there was no consideration for employers in the ministerial speech, when the Minister very clearly referred to the COVID-19 Leave Support Scheme. That was a scheme that was put in place very quickly by our Government to ensure that employers did have the support and the help immediately to work through the options that they needed to have and work through all of the different matters they needed to take to remain viable. Now, I am very saddened to see that someone can stand up and do a speech when they actually haven’t even listened to what the Minister was stating in his speech.

The Minister talked about how productivity doesn’t have to be one size fits all, “just working harder will do the job”, and this is how we see that the National Party is so stuck in the mind-set of just looking at what employers might like, in their view, and their absolute hate for employees. This doesn’t need to be a trade-off, as the Minister very clearly said.

Now, the study in the US that the Minister mentioned showed that there was actually a lot of cost associated with people taking their germs into the workplace, and consequently other co-workers get sick, and that has a huge cost on their productivity. The member also made an incorrect statement with regards to the cost in the regulatory impact statement. The cost that the member mentioned is a gross cost, and that cost does not take into account the fact that when someone gets sick in a workplace and goes to the workplace to spread their germs, other workers will go sick as well. So that cost needs to be taken into consideration, too.

Now, I would like to applaud the Minister for bringing this bill to the House. COVID, more than anything else, has shown us that it’s so important that we look after our workers. It’s so important that we make sure that people don’t go to work sick and don’t feel the pressure of having to go to work sick, because that is what we see. I see Christopher Luxon on the other side of the room, and I’m hoping that he will have a different story to tell and take a call on this bill, perhaps—not prior to the maiden speech. We worked at Air New Zealand under a high performance, high engagement workplace, and perhaps the member Scott Simpson can take some lessons from one of his new colleagues, because in that environment, we weren’t hating on employees; we were actually working with unions and we were working with employees. So perhaps that hatred of the union might get a little bit dissolved once there is a new member and perhaps a new leader in the National Party.

Now, with regards to businesses being aware of this productivity, there are already plenty of businesses out there that have implemented sick leave policies that give workers paid time off to address their basic health needs. In Air New Zealand, for example, and in many of the aviation collective contracts, there was, in fact, for a while, undefined sick leave. I don’t like to say “unlimited”, because that would sort of imply that people just took leave whenever they wanted, but “undefined” meant that the workers would make an assessment on when they needed to have that sick leave and would look after their health before anything else.

These businesses, they realise that what is good for their employees is actually good for the business, because it’s not only the employees that benefit from better sick leave provisions; it is actually the businesses. When businesses provide sick leave so that their workers can take the paid sick leave when they need, they will recover properly, they will not spread any illnesses into the workplace, but they will also come to work healthy, refreshed, on top of their game, and in that sense they are productive—and more productive than if they were to slog themselves into the workplace, be half fit, make everyone else sick, and make mistakes, because you make errors when you’re sick.

So the very short-sighted and narrow view from the National Party—you know, five days’ sick leave and for the rest you just have to make do with being sick in the workplace—is absolutely the wrong thing to take. It saddens me to see that they’re stuck in the same rut, like with everything else, throwing out the same old narrative, hating on employees.

But I think this is a great bill. It shows its importance that our Minister, Michael Wood, brought this bill to the House as the first item of business, and it shows the importance that our Government puts on keeping people and keeping New Zealand safe. I commend it to the House.

The word “productivity” has been used a lot in the House today. And if increasing productivity in the economy in New Zealand is as easy as they say, which is just spending more money, then New Zealand will be the most productive country in the world because this Government is borrowing $200 billion to spend when others are also having to borrow money in their businesses and in their homes to spend and nobody is actually earning more. The way we become more productive is to produce more for the average amount of work that is done. Now, the last speaker, Marja Lubeck, and the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety purposefully oversimplify what this legislation is about because it will not increase productivity.

It doesn’t mean that on this side of the House, we don’t believe that when people are ill or they’re sick they should be forced to work. Indeed, they’re not—in New Zealand at the moment. But to come to the House and say to all businesses in New Zealand, “But you already know about this because we talked about it in the campaign and you’ve got a year or so probably to get used to it. And don’t worry, by increasing the cost upon businesses in New Zealand with this measure alone by $1 billion”—that they will have to find somehow—“you will be more productive.” suggests to me that actually the definition of “productivity” in the Labour Party is one that no business person in New Zealand shares.

For that last member and the Minister to come here and lecture about looking after employees versus employers, and who’s better at that and who’s not, misses the point that when you impose cost upon business and those businesses can’t absorb it any more because the Government continues to put cost on them—when employees leave, they can’t afford to re-employ again; jobs are not created. Here’s the thing. The way to make somebody better off is through work, not through not having a job, and before COVID we saw job growth in our economy slow significantly to some months when it was negative. The Government hasn’t got a plan to create jobs, because they’re not looking to work with businesses who help grow the economy and they’re also looking to pile cost on that, in the end, won’t be good for employees who haven’t got jobs.

So here’s an international organisation that studies this stuff around the world. The IMF has just produced a report that projects that on present economic settings in New Zealand, New Zealand incomes by 2025 will be lower than they are today. Yet in the House today, there is an announcement of doubling sick leave to increase productivity. Last week, we heard that actually the Minister, the new Minister, is not ruling out accepting the Helen Clark’s Foundation’s proposal to increase the minimum wage to the living wage next year with the concept of “predistribution”. But nobody knows what the predistribution is except a small-business man that is not making money this year that had to borrow during the lockdown through no fault of their own that’s seeing cost upon cost imposed on them by the Government. They’re not sure how they’re going to survive. They’re actually probably eventually going to have to reduce their workforce because they can’t keep increasing their costs because consumers can’t afford that. And the predistribution model that the Minister’s signing up to, because he said he’s going to look next year at moving the minimum wage to the living wage, is that you tax somebody and redistribute it before it has been earned, and that won’t do anything for productivity at all. Five years of no income growth in New Zealand is what the IMF is predicting based on current economic settings in New Zealand, and that means those that have the least will be able to afford even less come 2025.

There are 200,000 New Zealanders out of work. Those New Zealanders are more interested in how they’re going to get a job and how their job will be created than in a year’s time having an extra five days’ sick leave if they need it. They’re much more interested in how they’re going to get a job to provide for their families, those 200,000 people, than an extra public holiday in a couple of years’ time. They’re much more interested in how a small business in their community will be able to create a job to afford to pay them so they can provide for their families than a sharp increase in the minimum wage—and let’s not start on the 1970s style, union-friendly workplace relations proposals the Government has been talking about that actually will not drive productivity.

So here’s an opportunity for the Minister to answer a couple of questions on this. If increasing productivity in the economy is as simple as increasing the minimum wage without consequence, why stop where you have? Why not go to $50 an hour because all of a sudden poverty will be gone? But what will be the cost in the supermarkets and elsewhere of those costs being passed on? And if actually the way to increase productivity is through greater sick leave, why are you only doing five days? Why are you limiting it to 20 days over a period of time? The reason for that is it feels good and it sounds good but it’s not an economic plan to grow the economy. It’s not an economic plan to work and support small business people to be able to create jobs. It’s not going to do anything at all to help them get out from the debt that has been imposed on them because of the lockdown. And it will mean that job creation slows as we saw in the last term, before COVID, and when job creation slows it’s a leading indicator of an unemployment rate that will increase.

Actually, we started to see that before COVID, then COVID hit the economy and the unemployment rate went so very high. And this isn’t a plan to fix that. It’s not an economic plan. The IMF is correct that actually on present economic settings, New Zealanders’ incomes by 2025 will be lower than they are today. That’s an appalling record that the Government has set up. They say they care—and they do—but in five years from now there’ll be no income growth in New Zealand, which means those that have the least will have even less. They will be able to afford even less. And those that are middle-income New Zealanders who are sort of trying to do OK at the moment will have found that actually costs have gone up, including housing and rents and food and other things. And there will be fewer businesses because we will be less productive; we will not be more productive.

This isn’t a debate about whether or not people should have to work when they’re ill; of course, they should not. But the Government has dressed this up as a response to COVID, but is not a response to COVID because already if somebody thinks they might have COVID and they have to go and have a test and they have to self-isolate until then, the Government has a scheme of $50 million to help them already. So if they have thought or they think they have COVID or they could have and they want to go and get a test, they do not have to work today, except the Government scheme doesn’t work well enough. They are using COVID as a cover to extend this out. And if that’s their policy, which it was before the election, then they should own that aspect to it. But they shouldn’t say it’s going to increase productivity, because COVID didn’t increase productivity in the country, and actually piling cost upon business at a time when we should be finding ways for businesses to be able to grow so they are more productive and they can pay more—actually, that plan is something that’s needed much more than this.

The five days’ sick leave and the extra day’s holiday the Government has proposed to fix the problem of the tourism industry, but you’re not going to get it for two years, doesn’t do anything for the businesses that are struggling and are likely to close this year waiting for a public holiday with its extra cost. With the increase of the minimum wage and the Minister’s suggestion that he’s looking at whether he brings it up to the living wage or not will be a cost of more than $3 billion on businesses. Now, the Government gets to borrow that money and one day taxpayers have to pay it back through the tax system. But when a business has to pay extra costs imposed on it by the Government, it has to borrow that or it has to increase its costs—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: What’s this got to do with the bill?

—or it has to reduce costs, and they don’t get to do all of those things. In fact, they’ve already had to do most of them. And largely what it means is they’re going to have to reduce costs, which means fewer people in the workforce, fewer jobs, not job creation. “And what’s this got to do with sick leave?” a member on the opposite side of the House says. At a time when businesses in New Zealand need the Government to understand how hard it’s been to work with them with a plan to grow the economy and create jobs, they’re merely piling cost on them without talking to them, without understanding them.

Now if the Minister stands up and says, actually, this is a select committee process, we’re going through it. If we see from businesses a better way or it’s going to be too harmful, or it’s not going to create jobs at the moment or for a period of time, and he’s willing to then look at that and change some of the timing that employers of small businesses around the country, hard-working chippies and others have asked for already since the announcement, so be it. But I guarantee you, he won’t do that, because this is ideology at its worst. Everybody wants somebody when they’re unwell to be treated properly. If you believe you’re at harm of COVID, then the Government will provide an income for you as you self-isolate. To dress this up as something because we need it—because it’s COVID it’s there for a long time—will impose cost upon business at a time that it’s not needed, and it’s going to mean fewer jobs, not more jobs. And in five years’ time, these guys will turn around and say it’s not our fault that incomes haven’t grown because we care.

Point of order. I move an extension of time for Todd McClay. That was a brilliant speech. We need another five minutes.

That is not a point of order.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s with absolute pleasure, as a small-business owner, that I rise in support of this bill.

I think it’s time that members opposite hear a real-life experience from a business owner rather than the uninformed opinions that they seem to think are what every business and business owner agrees with, while those members of the National Party are wrong. I would like to talk about my experience as a small-business owner, in so far as that I would rather that my staff, if they were unwell, stay at home. I am one of those business owners that provides more than five days’ sick leave for my staff currently. I am looking forward to increasing it to 10 days for my staff, because there is nothing worse than having sick staff members come in to work because they feel that they have to because they’ve got no sick days left. They’ve been at home looking after their children during the year, because they’re sick, and they are desperately in need of those wages, that they’d come along, sick as a dog, and get on with it. However, then they pass on those germs to the other staff members. Then those staff members have to go away sick, and you are losing productivity. So I already do it as a business owner, and I am proud of the fact that I do it. I am proud of the fact that I am a good business owner and a good employer of my staff, and care enough about them.

It’s not all about this pie in the sky idea that because of this piece of legislation all of a sudden every staff member in every business is going to take 10 days’ sick leave automatically, straight away, and no one’s going to be working anywhere. That is what that party opposite, the National Party opposite, seems to think. It’s always a glass half empty rather than a glass half full with them. I am so proud to support this piece of legislation.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It was a little earlier than I expected, but I am very pleased to get the chance to speak on this bill. It really does feel as if it has been a long time coming, so I would like to add my congratulations to the new Minister, Michael Wood, for showing that he’s getting down to business so quickly in this new parliamentary term. And also, Madam Speaker, my congratulations to you. It’s lovely to see you in the Chair, and I look forward to your wise ruling over this term.

So there’s been some debate about the relevance of COVID across the sides of the House, but really, for me, if COVID has taught us anything—and I’ve referenced a lot of lessons I’ve taken from COVID around, actually, the ability to make change at speed when required, and our interconnectedness with each other and our environment. They are very strong lessons. But, for me, if there is any lesson from COVID, it is the danger of, when you are sick, carrying on as if there is no consequence to that. That behaviour has put our entire country at risk. It’s one of the top-line messages from the Government and the public health responses: if you are sick, stay home. That’s the number one message to the country in response to COVID, because that behaviour keeps us safe. And the Government has initiated the COVID leave scheme as an interim measure, specifically responding to the failures of our sick-leave scheme at the moment, to enable more people to be able to take that advice and not to have to choose between being able to pay their rent and keeping their workmates and their community safe.

So at the moment we know that half of the employers in this country provide just the minimum: only five days. What that tells us is that a significant number of small and medium sized businesses provide more, despite what the National Party has been suggesting in their speeches. But it tells us as well that a huge number of people in this country right at the moment will be feeling as if they need to go to work, even though they are feeling sick, because they will have used up their leave or been worried about reaching that point and maybe their kids will get sick and they’ll need it for them.

The Greens have long called for an extension to sick leave. Our first motivation was recognising the pressure on, mostly, working mums, but mostly parents, around the ease of kids getting sick when they’re at school or kōhanga or early childhood education—kids get sick, right. You need—and we all want, I would have thought—their parents to be there with them when they’re sick. And for the parents, that’s part of women being able to stay in work, because we haven’t managed to share those roles out between men and women equally yet. So that’s part of what helps keep women in work.

So the discussion that we heard from the National Party earlier is that New Zealanders just want work and the jobs; that’s all they care about. They don’t care about whether they’ve got sick leave or not. But, actually, if that side of the House had listened to half the country at all, they would have heard that, actually, people don’t want to have to choose between caring for their families and putting food on the table. Actually, they want to contribute, they want to be in jobs that enable them to fulfil both functions. We know that people who are only getting that statutory entitlement are more likely to be young, they’re more likely to be women, they are more likely to be Māori, and have caring responsibilities. So this is a problem for us as a society. If we’re saying we’re a caring society, then, actually, our leave provisions are inconsistent with that. And if we care about public health and preventing outbreaks of sickness, of communicable diseases, then our sick leave provisions are inconsistent with that.

I do just want to quote—there was an op-ed in the paper from a woman that sounds like she works in a call centre, Halaena Mckeague, who I just thought put it kind of nicely that “five days goes really, really quickly. Especially when the … Prime Minister [is telling you] to play it safe and stay home if we’ve got any of the many … symptoms of COVID-19. Sore throat? Stay home. Runny nose? Home. Bit of a cough? Don’t come in.” That is our advice. We need people to follow that advice. Five days as a total? It’s not really consistent with that advice.

There’s academic work and analysis of our behaviour in workplaces that talks about the problem of “presenteeism”. We hear from what I would characterise as bad employers who talk about absenteeism as a real problem—as the main problem. But, actually, we have a bigger problem with people coming to work sick, in a compromised state. And we heard the evidence around actually a 20 percent reduction in their effectiveness when they come to work sick. But more than that, they’re making their colleagues sick, and that is reducing productivity in the whole workplace. So the presenteeism is a key problem. Part of the way we change that is by sending a very clear message through our legislation and increasing our provision of sick leave. And that is what we are starting to do today.

I also just want to say that while I speak to some of these key points, I do want to acknowledge that this legislation, from the Greens’ perspective, isn’t perfect, and actually doesn’t solve all of those problems, because there’s a lot of people in this country who are either in casual work or—when we have one of the highest rates of turnover in and out of employment in the entire OECD—many people will be at the stage of their employment where they won’t have been in the job six months, and they won’t be entitled in the current provisions to any of these protections. I really want people to think about that, and the fact that we also have a gap between our COVID leave scheme at the moment and the protection for those workers. They’re not covered by our sick leave entitlements.

And with the COVID leave scheme, really, it’s a limited number of people who are able to access it through their employers. So if you’re a horticultural worker who’s being employed for the season, or if you’re a retail worker who’s been brought in for the Christmas rush, or a hospo worker who’s only got casual hours and you are feeling sick, then at the moment in most workplaces, you will have to choose between being paid or looking after your community and protecting us from having to go into a lockdown. And from my perspective and the Greens’ perspective, as we head into the summer break, this is an urgent issue that needs resolution if we are to have security around our response over the summer period as we are all getting out and moving around the country more than we normally would. That is an issue that needs prioritising, and we’re a little sad to see that that wasn’t built into this legislation and that wasn’t being solved through urgency.

I would just say as well that we’re interested to hear from the Minister at some stage around why this framework won’t bring in the protections for some workers until mid-2022, when there could have been an option to have made sick leave balances 10 days minus any leave days taken since the work anniversary date from the date of implementation. It would have, I think to my mind, been a simpler implementation mechanism or framework, and would have brought forward access to it. If we’re buying the principle that this actually supports good productivity within workplaces, which I am 100 percent of that view, and that this helps build good public health initiatives and supports family and caring—things that we really believe in—then I think the sooner we do this the better.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. This piece of legislation, more than anything else, shows the priorities of this Government. We’ve just rushed through a bill under urgency to deregulate pill testing—and a fine initiative it is—now, when it comes to employment, and business, and jobs, and growth, the Government is rushing through legislation to increase the regulation and costs put on people who choose to employ. That is the priority of this Government in a nutshell, here under urgency, plain for the people of New Zealand to see. It also shows the way this Government approaches problems. This Government is not interested in growing the pie, it’s not interested in productivity growth; its solution to every problem is redistribution. They never see the opportunity for New Zealanders to do more stuff smarter, with more investment capital and better technology. All they see is the opportunity to take what exists and give it to people who they think are more likely to vote for them. It is a sad and sorry way to lead a country.

It’s worth revising what people who seek to be employers have gone through over the past sad 13 years, because employers are not some sort of cash cow for the policies that the Labour Party front bench used to fantasise about as they ran student unions in their youth. They are actually people who assemble investment capital and an idea for a product, or a service, and customers, and if they do that successfully, they can make payroll every second Thursday and make sure that jobs actually exist. That’s what employers are. But employers have a big numerical problem in this country. There are only 154,000 of them, five percent, versus employees of which there’s 50 percent—interestingly, the same percentage that voted for the Labour Party.

This excellent opinion piece by Geoff Neal says here’s why it’s getting harder to employ New Zealanders. He says take the last 13 unlucky years that employers have faced, in 2007, the Labour-led Government lands a triple blow to business. Number one, an extra week’s annual leave puts up employers’ staff costs 2 percent in an instant. Then it says KiwiSaver, employers have to pay 2 percent of someone else’s retirement, later increased by a National Government to 3 percent. Then, in 2007, the adult minimum wage goes up a dollar an hour, actually a 10 percent increase in one go. How many businesses can do a 10 percent increase in productivity to pay for that? The fact is, they can’t.

All the way through, from 2009 to 2017, minimum wage increases were at least somewhat achievable through productivity growth, at 25c to 50c per year. But it didn’t mean that the National Party wasn’t prepared to Mondayise Waitangi Day and Anzac Day. That’s just another 0.2 percent on the costs of employing people in this country, just another little smidgen that gets added on to the cost of people who assemble capital, and products, and services, and customers to provide jobs. But hey, it all adds up.

In 2018, with a new Labour-led Government, the minimum wage goes up again, by 5 percent in one go. Then, in 2019, it gets worse again, a 7 percent increase in the minimum wage by $1.20; new domestic violence leave policies which say that employers—not ACC, not the taxpayer—are somehow responsible for paying, for the public benefit, for those who are harmed by those close to them to be able to have respite. Why anyone would put that narrow tax on to employers to achieve a wider public good is a question anybody who knows anything about public policy will never be able to answer sensibly.

They weren’t finished in 2019. Then they went and got rid of the 90-day trial for people who had the temerity to employ more than 20 other New Zealanders. These are the kinds of costs that have been put on to the Government, on to employers by this Government, and the last one, and the one before it. This bill comes at the end of 13 years of people who seek to employ their fellow New Zealanders having additional costs loaded on to them for purely political purposes. And here we are in 2020, looking into 2021: what does this Government have in store for people who have the temerity to give other New Zealanders a job? Well, we’re going to see another 6 percent increase to minimum wage. How many employers can get a 6 percent increase in productivity every year to pay that? I wish there were more, but sadly, there isn’t. It’s simply unsustainable.

Another week’s sick leave, another public holiday. These are the things that are going on to the costs faced by employers. And people wonder why we’re not getting productivity growth when it’s all been sucked up in redistribution for political purposes by a Labour Party that just doesn’t get what it takes to create investment, jobs, and growth. What about this bill before us? Well, I looked earnestly at the regulatory impact statement that was put on the table with a minute’s notice by the Minister, because it couldn’t be here because this Government is so—how do they say?—ass about face, they’re running to stand still and keep up.

Does it say anything about a problem to be solved that New Zealanders don’t have enough sick leave? Well, we look at the summary of the problem and proposed approach, does it mention anything? The closest it gets is—if you go through to, I think, page 3, it says if you look at the statistics, the Wellness in the Workplace Survey, actually 35 percent of workers surveyed said they’d gone to work sick, down from 49 percent seven years earlier. A problem that is solving itself, but no analysis of what the costs and benefits of the policy are. No justification, except for this—here’s the justification we’ve heard from the Minister, here’s what we see on the regulatory impact statement—it’s all about COVID.

Well, well, haven’t this Government heard the advice “Never waste a good crisis.”? What Government would possibly want to use an excuse of COVID that requires people, if they tested positive, to take off 14 days, a few thousand people potentially, if things get really bad. A few people might need to take 14 days off while they recover from COVID and prove they have no symptoms or infection from COVID. Instead of helping those small number of people get through COVID, this Government is giving five extra days’ sick pay to 2.7 million workers. Now, unlike Paul Goldsmith, my dad wasn’t a maths teacher, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. But I think I can do enough maths to understand that giving 2.7 million workers—at an estimated cost of a billion bucks a year to employers—five extra days off is not a solution to a problem that may see a few thousand workers requiring 14 days off.

So there you have it, we live in a country where we need an economic recovery that will depend on one Kiwi offering another Kiwi a job hundreds of thousands of times in the weeks and months and years to come as we come out of COVID. We have a Government whose priorities are to deregulate pill testing and then increase the regulation on employment, putting a billion bucks of costs, ostensibly because of COVID-19, in a way that won’t actually help people who need 14 days off for COVID-19. It comes after a 13-year litany of additional costs by the blue team and the red team put on to the cost of people who actually take the effort to assemble the capital, the products, the services, and the customer base to provide other New Zealanders a job. People wonder why it is that the IMF says this country will be poorer in 2025 than it was in 2019. Anybody seeking the answer to that question? I present to you the Labour Government and this myopic, stupid, disgraceful legislation that the ACT party proudly opposes.

I can say very confidently to the Opposition that as an employment lawyer who has worked for employers and who has worked for employees and who has worked for unions, this legislation is something we should be very proud of. You have been burying your heads in the sand.

I have been working in this field for so long that I have seen—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order!

—the terrible things that have been done to people under—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member—

—the old regime, and thank goodness—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order!

Sorry, ma’am.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member will resume her seat. The member does not bring the Speaker into the debate by saying “you” to a member.

Sorry, ma’am.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Just say “the member who’s sitting there”.

💬 Hon Member: Like “The member’s wrong.”

The member is wrong—the member is certainly wrong.

In the time that I have been an employment lawyer, I have seen large employers, who could certainly pay, actually performance-manage staff for taking under the minimum entitlement, because they saw it as a performance issue. It is an extremely unsustainable position, given what we have seen in COVID, that we are actually encouraging people to be in a workplace when they are sick. It is bad for our economy and it is bad for our humanity. I commend this bill.

Madam Speaker, I too would like to join some of my other colleagues in this House in congratulating you on your ascendency to—I was going to say, “throne”—the Chair and wish you all the very best.

It is at times like these that I always like to remind myself of that now infamous quote by the honourable Deborah Russell, who said, “We are seeing a number of small businesses really struggling after only a few weeks in a pretty bad situation, which must speak to the strength of those businesses going into this lockdown.” That was the honourable Deborah Russell—oh, she’s not “Hon”; hopes and prayers.

💬 David Seymour: Why isn’t she?

Who knows. The reason I like to think about that quote is that it so perfectly encapsulates and sums up the view of the Government of business—that they are a pit of money that can continually afford more and more and more costs placed upon them. It’s really interesting actually, because we’re at a time when this Government, on the one hand, is doling out cash in terms of extending business loans and wage subsidies because they’re acknowledging that businesses are doing it tough, that they’re needing to borrow money just to get by, and in the very same breath they’re standing up here today and, on the other hand, piling on more and more and more costs on these businesses that cannot afford it.

We are seeing businesses who are laying off staff, reducing hours, not hiring when people leave, and taking on these massive loans and not paying themselves, especially the small to medium sized enterprises in this country. They are doing it really tough, and the Government acknowledges that. It acknowledges that, on the one hand, by offering subsidies if they employ more people, and by giving loans and extending loan schemes. And yet, as I said, in the very same breath they are, on the other hand, taking that away by imposing more and more cost. It doesn’t make sense.

And the Government has the audacity to lecture businesses today. They’re up here lecturing businesses, saying to them, “Well, it just makes sense. If you give more sick leave, it magically leads to more productivity, and some businesses understand that and they do it, and the rest, obviously, are just stupid. They don’t understand productivity. Clearly, they don’t know business. They perhaps even shouldn’t even be in business if they don’t understand productivity and how to increase productivity by simply giving some more sick leave.”

The fact is that even the regulatory impact statement (RIS) points out that there is limited evidence on this. There are some overseas studies. They talk about anecdotes and assumptions, and the reason, Marja Lubeck, that they are not able to say that the billion dollars in costs is offset by a certain figure is because they can’t. There’s nothing in the RIS that says that the billion dollars in costs will be offset by X amount of increased productivity, because they can’t. And further to that, there’s a whole lot of unintended consequences that are brought up in the RIS which the Minister didn’t talk about—things like what are these companies going to do in terms of making up that cost. Are they going to pass that cost on in their prices, therefore increasing the cost of living to New Zealanders, which is what’s been happening for the last three years of this Government in all the taxes and increased costs it’s been piling on people? Will they reduce hours? Will they not take on part-time employees? Will they not take on women? Actually, they talk about that in the RIS—will there be certain groups of people that they won’t take on because they have traditionally more childcare responsibilities and usually take more leave? Those are things that are brought up in the regulatory impact statement.

A catchy election slogan does not make good policy, and we’re seeing that in the RIS. “Oh, double sick leave; it’ll all be fine.”, and then we get to the RIS which points out that actually there are a lot of considerations, a lot of issues, that this legislation brings up that are actually just being shunted down the line to the very hard-working Education and Workforce Committee, which I sit on, which will be looking at it. There are all kinds of consequences around entitlements for people who are working part time and whether or not you should bring this leave in straight away. There’s a whole pile of work we have to now do because the work wasn’t put into this piece of legislation. They didn’t consult with business. They’ve talked about that in the RIS. They went out and had a catchy election slogan because they knew it would win votes, but they didn’t spend any time talking to business or actually developing good policy.

The problem is there—yes, there is a problem—but they automatically go to piling costs on businesses rather than looking at other mechanisms of delivering the policy outcome. They already have the COVID-19 support leave scheme, but they didn’t consider whether or not they could extend that or tweak that—they went straight to rich businesses, apparently, who can just afford it.

Madam Speaker, thank you, and congratulations to you for your election to the position of Assistant Speaker. I find myself comically over-prepared for this first contribution that I make to the debate. I find myself also comically prepared in the face of an Opposition who would have us socialise the costs to all New Zealanders of the spread of the flu and colds and summer bugs, for the benefit of a minority of employers who do not already allow their workers to take the sick leave that they need simply to keep the germs to themselves.

I wanted to talk about a couple of the reasons why I think this bill, which was introduced very ably by the new Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, will be met with applause by my constituents in Manurewa, both workers and employers. By increasing sick leave, we’re supporting workers, and giving people who care for their kids and dependents more flexibility to be part of paid work. It’s important for people who I met on the campaign, like Flor. She’s a cleaner in the Manukau Westfield in the Manurewa electorate, and she’s a mum of two wee girls, a step-mum to another with complex health needs, and a carer for the elderly people in her family. As an employer myself, I know how much people like Flor contribute to their workplace. You give a busy mum a task and she’ll get it done by five, and the members on the other side of the House who are employers will know that well. Flor wouldn’t be able to contribute to the workplace safely and reliably without these 10 days’ sick leave in the current environment. Why? Because, like many working mums, she’s the pillar of her home, and her employers know that, too. But the reality in the workplace currently is without that statutory minimum, she’s not realistically able to take those extra days’ leave when she needs them.

It’s also an important part of the package to support what the Government is already providing to businesses and workers as we accelerate the economy—things like the free apprenticeships programme, which has doubled the number of female apprentices starting from 845 last year to 1,786 this year. They are themselves likely to be workers who are most reliant on the statutory minimums. It’s important to expand the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme so businesses can invest more in technology which allows people to work more flexibly in their house. Those are some of the reasons why I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker—very good to have you back in the Chair. I suppose the number one, sort of, issue that has arisen by this bill is just a question of timing, because I don’t think there’s anybody who thinks this isn’t a nice idea for New Zealanders to have access to more sick leave. Isn’t that nice? I think everybody would agree that it would be nice if New Zealanders could have access to higher incomes and higher minimum wages. The whole purpose of good Government policy is to increase wages and to make it easier for New Zealanders to live their lives and look after themselves when they’re sick and when their family are sick. So it’s a nice thing to have.

The question is: is this the moment in time when it makes sense to extend those rights and expectations of workers and burdens on employers? I think most people making a rational assessment of where we are as a country right now would have to say, well, hang on, maybe not. [Interruption]

💬 SPEAKER: Order! That’s not that much decorum, Mr Hipkins.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. So what we’re facing right now is that the 500,000 small businesses in this country are facing very, very difficult times, particularly as a reflection of COVID, when they are struggling to keep their businesses afloat and employ New Zealanders. The economy is shrinking. This year it has fallen in economic growth at the fastest level, the biggest drop in the size of our economy in recent history—in fact, in any history that you can go back to. So we’re under incredible economic pressure.

Now, the Government has responded to this by borrowing a billion dollars a week and splurging money out across the economy. Now, that’s fine. You know, that may have been required during the COVID lockdown, but it’s not a real situation. You can’t keep on doing that for ever.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! I’m now going to ask the member to speak to the bill. Sorry, I was slightly distracted and I came back and I thought he was talking about the next piece of legislation, the COVID matter. Let’s talk to the bill.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. I am providing the basic context to this bill, and this bill is, as I say, another example of this Government adding costs and regulations to employers at a time, as I was trying to explain, when they are under intense pressure. They are under intense pressure as it is at the moment; they will be under more intense pressure when the inevitable happens and this Government stops borrowing and at the rate that it is at the moment, because we can’t keep on doing that for ever.

So what puzzles many New Zealanders right now is that given the pressures that we’re facing, is it really the time to be continuing every week, it seems, to extend the burdens upon employers? It’s very easy for a politician, the Prime Minister, to stand up during an election campaign and promise to give some New Zealanders the money that is owned by other New Zealanders—to say, “OK, vote for us and we will make them give you more money.” Well, it’s very easy to do, but it’s not very easy for those businesses to stay in business if they can’t afford to pay the extra costs that are being imposed on them. It’s not immaterial. We get the impression from some speakers on the other side that doubling the sick leave is not a matter of any consequence; it’s just something that happens and it’s no big deal.

Well, the estimates from the officials, the best that they can come up with—and they’re probably not very detailed, and that’s what we’ll need to be investigating when we have a look at the select committee—is that it could be around a billion dollars. Now, that comes on top of additional costs in terms of the minimum wage increases, which have been very substantial, again, at a time when businesses are struggling, and a number of other regulatory impositions.

So the only question that I have, and I’d be very interested to explore this as the bill goes through, is how we expect that we will be able to grow the economy and create sustainable, higher living standards without businesses investing and growing. Right now it seems the Government is prepared to make it more difficult for that private sector to invest and grow. Look, it’s all right for, you know, the city councils and the Government departments and all that to keep on providing more and more generous payments and salary arrangements, but, ultimately, it needs to be paid for by the private sector and that private sector needs to be based on competitiveness. Ultimately, the export sector needs to be internationally competitive and our domestic sector needs to be able to provide goods that people can afford.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member is now getting a second warning, and his last warning, to come back to the bill. This is not a general economic debate; it’s a debate on a specific piece of legislation, and I’ll remind the member that there’s no obligation to fill a full 10 minutes.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. So I think I’ve made my point, and the simple point is that this piece of legislation, the doubling of sick leave requirements, is something that is nice to have for a country, and the question is: is this the right moment to be extending that thing, which is nice to have, given the incredible pressures that we have at the moment?

💬 Hon Michael Wood: A nice to have—stay at home when you’re sick.

Well, if it’s nice to have, why don’t you just double it again, make it four weeks? We have to have some sort of arbitrary limit. So the question is: why is it right, right now, to double those requirements and put those, because it’s not a free thing that you’re offering? It needs to be paid for by somebody. If you’re saying that now is the moment to do it, well, OK, please provide us the evidence as to why now is the time to do it, at a time when businesses are struggling more than ever. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Right throughout the National Party’s time in this House we’ve heard the same old arguments that we’re hearing in response to this bill. They opposed Working for Families, and yet they didn’t repeal it. They opposed increasing annual leave, and yet they didn’t repeal it. And today we hear them oppose the proposal to extend sick leave, and not once did we hear them say that they would repeal it. Why? Because when they’re in Opposition they make a lot of noise, but, actually, when they’re in Government, they realise in order to get there they had to give people what they want. And we’ve heard talk of a lot of costs, scaremongering of costs—the same arguments we heard around the minimum wage. “If we increase the minimum wage, businesses will fail!”—no evidence, of course, and despite the fact that every single year when the National Party were in Government they increased the minimum wage. Yet when this Government does it, they oppose it. Why? Because when it’s their idea it’s good—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat when I’m on my feet. The member’s had a good minute for his introduction; he will now get on to the bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. There is a simple principle at play here: if someone is crook, they shouldn’t have to go to work. And what we find with five days, particularly with workers that have child dependents and have to look after their children when they’re crook, is they are forced to go to work when they’re ill. That makes other people ill. We learnt that from COVID. The question was posed: why are we doing it now? Well, I would say that we’ve certainly learnt a lot over the last few months, and productivity is affected when people go to work crook, and other people are crook, and therefore they have to take sick leave. But if the provisions are there to allow people to take the time they need to get better, less people get crook, less businesses are impacted, and we can all be more productive. It’s not very—

💬 SPEAKER: Fewer. Fewer, not less.

Right. Well, thanks for that, Mr Speaker. I appreciate that. I’ll remember that next time you ask me not to involve you in the debate. So, Mr Speaker, thank you very much. I’ve said all I need to say. This is a good bill.

The question is, That the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Instruction to the Education and Workforce Committee