Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill

I present to the House a legislative statement for the second reading of the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

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

I’m very happy to be back in the House for the second reading of this important piece of legislation. It’s an important part of the Government’s programme of delivery to ensure fairness for working people and to deal with an important public health issue. It sits with a range of other initiatives that the Government has progressed in its first six months in office this term to ensure that working people do have a fair go. We’ve increased the minimum wage to $20 per hour, brought security guards into the protections of Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act, ensured that seafarer welfare centres are properly funded, and we’ve taken action on longstanding problems with the Holidays Act by accepting the recommendations of the independent task force. And this piece of legislation, which increases the statutory minimum for sick leave from five days per annum to 10 days per annum, is an important part of that programme of delivery, and I’m pleased that we’ve been able to move on it so early on in the term.

This bill is an important part of our response to COVID-19. Having gone through the year of COVID, I think that we have learnt that it is time for New Zealand to move past that dangerous culture of just toughing it out when people are sick and continuing to come into work. I’ve done it, and I suspect that many others in this Chamber have done it from time to time. We feel the pressure, we feel the sense of obligation, we think it’s no big deal, but after a year of dealing with a global pandemic, we have had to learn and relearn that the best thing for Kiwi workers to do for their own health, for the health of their co-workers, and for the public health interest is to stay at home and get well. We know that, for many people, that statutory minimum of five days per year is simply not enough to cater for that, particularly if we think about some groups of workers who might have dependants who are reliant on that sick leave to cover the illness of their children or other dependants as well.

As I said, this is important both for the worker themselves; we want to make sure that they don’t have to come into work when they’re unwell, because of a lack of adequate sick leave. It is important for the co-workers, for everyone else in the workplace. We’ve learnt through the course of COVID-19 that bugs do spread, and, of course, if someone comes into work when they are sick, those bugs spread to other people and potentially have a bigger impact on that workplace than had the person taken a couple of days to get over it. A study in the United States in 2015 revealed that workers coming into a workplace when they were sick decreased productivity in that workplace by 20 percent in the period concerned.

Thirdly, this is an important public health measure. COVID-19 for most of us in our lifetimes has been the first kind of pandemic that we have to deal with at a scale like we have had to deal with, but it is potentially not the last one that we will have to deal with, and we just have to make sure that—whether it’s in a pandemic like COVID-19, whether it’s during seasonal influenza, or it’s one of those other bugs that people pick up—we don’t spread it around our workplaces and around our communities.

The select committee has reported the bill back and recommended no changes. I want to thank the select committee for their work. They were very ably chaired by chair Marja Lubeck, and they received around 400 submissions and had a large number of oral submissions as a part of that. There were varied submissions in support and in opposition to the bill, and many raised very valid issues that the select committee has carefully considered, and I just want to touch on a few of those in the time that I have remaining.

One of the issues that was raised with the select committee was the question of the qualifying criteria before people are able to access paid sick leave. At the moment, someone needs to have been employed by their employer for six months before they are entitled to the statutory minimum for sick leave—currently five days, to transition to 10 days under this bill. There were some very reasonable and well-considered representations which argued that, in reality, a person can get sick on day 100 of their employment or on day one of their employment; so it doesn’t necessarily make sense to have that entitlement kicking in after six months and can lead to perverse consequences with people, before that six-month criteria, coming into work when they are unwell, with all of the fallout that I’ve previously discussed.

I think this is a very valid point, but it was ruled to be out of scope of this bill by the clerks. But the good news on this front is it is part of the Government’s work picking up the recommendations of the Holidays Act task force. This is one of the recommendations that we have accepted. So officials are right now working on the broader programme of changes that will come into effect through the task force recommendations, and bringing in a staggered entitlement to sick leave from day one of employment is one of those recommendations. So, while that will not be progressed through this piece of legislation, it is on the Government’s work programme, along with a range of other very, very positive changes to simplify and improve the Holidays Act as part of that task force process.

Secondly, there were submissions around the possibility of prorating the entitlement of sick leave for part-time employees, and a number of employers raised this and it was given consideration by the select committee. The contention put forward as part of those arguments is that an entitlement of 10 days’ sick leave is more than what might be required by part-time employees who might be working a couple of days per week. The committee and I have received advice from officials on this issue, and, of course, when you think about it, the reality of sick leave for a part-timer is that a part-timer has fewer days on which they are going to be employed and going into work.

So, on average, the call on paid sick leave that a part-time employee will be making will be less than the call being made by a full-time employee just by dint of the fact that there are going to be fewer days at which that person is at work on which they might be sick. So the concern that this might result in part-time employees maxing out their sick leave entitlement is one that we do not think is borne out, and I do think some of the arguments that were raised around possible abuse of the system are somewhat overblown. I think we do have to operate under a high-trust model, and most employees and employers do. And, of course, there are provisions in employment legislation to deal with any abuses that come into effect.

There were also representations, primarily from unions, about the question of when the increased entitlement to 10 days’ sick leave will take effect and the commencement of the bill as well. So the provisions of the bill will come into effect two months after the bill receives Royal assent, and employees will then be entitled to the increased allocation of sick leave at their next anniversary date for their sick leave anniversary, which is generally the date that is six months after their starting date with the employer. Effectively, representations—mainly from unions but from some others—were to bring both of those forward; could we have the increased entitlement applying closer to the date of Royal assent and could we bring the increased entitlement forward from an employee’s anniversary date to some earlier point in time?

Again, those arguments do have some utility about them; they would give the benefit of this legislation to employees more quickly. But we have been conscious of bringing this bill forward in a balanced way that is manageable for employers, who will have to make changes to their payroll systems and other systems in their workplaces. So, taking that all into account, we have retained those provisions, which mean that the bill kicks in two months after Royal assent and that the increased provisions will kick into place on the employee’s anniversary date.

Finally, I do want to address some of the core arguments that I have heard from some people who have been opposed to this bill, including the Opposition. Fundamentally, I think this does come back to the kind of model that we want to have for employment relations in our country. Do we want that low road, low trust, low pay, low entitlement model or do we actually work together and really partner to make sure that we have workplaces that are fair, safe, and productive? As Minister, my view is that for too long we have seen those things as being in conflict with one another. Yet, the very best workplaces and employers that I deal with in my role are employers who recognise that those things go together—that when you treat your workers well, when there are adequate entitlements, when people are able to take time off when they’re unwell, you build up trust with your workforce, you increase productivity, you keep your people for longer. And that actually is the high-road path that this Government is taking with this bill and as part of our broader vision for employment relationships, and I think that is a very important thing that needs to be heard in our communities, and many, many people, I think, get this, particularly after the year of COVID, when we have seen the damage that can be done if people don’t have adequate entitlements.

I do note that, at the moment, around about 50 percent of people through their agreements do have 10 days or more. So the impact of people relying only on the statutory minimum falls disproportionately at the moment on women, on Māori, on Pasifika, and more vulnerable workforces. So this is an important bill in terms of the health and wellbeing of individuals, of workforces, for the public health interest, and it’s about making sure that we do have a fair, a safe, and a productive employment relations system that is equitable for all workers in New Zealand. Again, I thank the select committee for their work, I thank submitters, I look forward to the further speeches in this debate, and I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. On a day when I thought the Minister would come to this House humbly apologising for the way that his Government has treated and thrown under the bus the Public Service and told them that there will be no pay rises for those hard-working civil servants, I’m surprised that he should be here arrogantly professing to understand how business works and how it operates and what motivates and what goes for a high-trust model. What does need to be learnt within the Government, within the Labour Party, and within the trade union movement is what trust means and what a high-trust model could look like, because, on that side of the House, most of them come from a trade union background and they know that in the Finance and Information Workers Union, which the Minister used to be an employee of, they had very little trust, and that was reflected in the way that they engaged with their employers and the way they conducted themselves as union officials.

So this bill, members will remember, was introduced under urgency very early on after last year’s election, under urgency, and then sent to a select committee for a truncated hearing period of time in which submissions were to be received during the Christmas holiday period. And I think that that was callously designed so that there would be not many submissions. Well, in fact, there were lots of submissions; I think the Minister said there were over 400. And apart from the pro forma trade union submissions that all sounded exactly the same and were probably generated from the same word processor, there were a large number from small businesses and from business organisations who clearly understood that the good intentions of this piece of legislation would have significant negative, unintended consequences on not only the businesses but also the people who work so diligently and hard in those businesses.

It was during the select committee hearings process that we heard about some of those unintended consequences. The primary one, of course, was that this measure of itself, according to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment regulatory impact statement, will cost New Zealand employers something close to a billion dollars a year, near enough to 1 percent of the country’s total payroll, without a single ounce of extra productivity being generated as a result of it, no extra productivity.

So, for those on the other side of the House, what happens when you get extra costs added into your business and you get no productivity added into your business, that’s just a cost that the business has to absorb. And when businesses have to continually absorb extra costs, as they have done under this Government’s administration and look likely to continue to have to absorb, they do one of two or three things. First of all, they will do whatever they have to do to remain competitive and profitable, because if those businesses don’t remain competitive and profitable, then there are no jobs, there is no business, and those employees who work in those businesses end up having no sick leave because they are no longer employed!

What happens is that businesses will then adjust and modify and reconfigure their businesses to accommodate those increased costs. So what they might do, for instance, is put up their prices and it will be consumers, end users, who end up paying the price for this well-intentioned but costly, feel-good piece of legislation. Then what they might also do is they might reconfigure their business into a way that means that their costs of employing people are actually less. And by that I mean they will employ fewer people.

We heard from a number of submitters at select committee who said that they would do exactly that, that the unintended consequence of this piece of legislation and a raft of other pieces of legislation that this Government has pushed through means that businesses will be actually employing fewer people. Because guess what? They’ll be automating. They’ll be changing the way they operate their business. And one only has to look at retail, supermarkets, and all sorts of places like that to see how it is changing, and it’s changing dramatically.

I talked to a large employer, a supermarket operator, who told me that, yes, of course, they are putting the minimum wage up. Yes, they’re going to give people an extra week’s sick leave, and yes, there’ll be an extra public holiday and all those sorts of costs. But what will happen is, because of automation, he’s actually going to be employing his people for fewer hours. Now, that surely can’t be the intent or the objective of this Labour Government’s grand plan, to punish business and actually, by unintended consequence, punish employees. So that’s the kind of thing that will be happening up and down the countryside.

I wanted to just talk a little bit about something that came as a bit of a surprise to me, and it was the submission from the Children’s Commissioner, Judge Becroft, who actually, when we started questioning him, started to understand the implications for people who may be employees with children. And where we got to, and the judge was very clear on it, was that effectively what this legislation means is that the employer will be, effectively, underwriting the healthcare of his employee’s or her employee’s children.

So let me put it to you this way, Madam Speaker—well, not you personally, but let me put it to the House this way. So if an employer is hiring new staff and there are two candidates, both with equally comprehensive and good backgrounds, CVs, experience, and talent, but one of the candidates has no children and one of the candidates has say, I don’t know, four, five, or six children, guess which one the employer is going to employ? It will be, as Judge Becroft succinctly and clearly understood, a negative impact on employees with children, because employers simply don’t want to take the risk of underwriting the good health or otherwise of those children.

Now, the Minister spoke—the Minister spoke—[Interruption] Now, I know on the Government side, the trade unions, they forget that they’re now in the Parliament. [Interruption] They’re not in the Trades Hall now. They’re in the Parliament of New Zealand, and they have to actually get beyond the trade union rhetoric and start thinking positively and concisely about the impacts of their legislation. This is not the Trades Hall; this is the Parliament of New Zealand. And what it means, for instance, when the Minister talks about his reluctance to pro rata, is that part-time employees will be disadvantaged as well.

Here’s why. If you don’t pro rata—and this legislation, effectively, gives a part-time employee 10 days’ sick leave a year. So let’s think about an employee who works one day a week for an employer. They get 10 days’ annual sick leave. That’s potentially about 20 percent of their working year on sick leave, but it gets worse than that. So if that one employee then works for a separate business, another entity, another day of the week, they get another 10 days’ annual sick leave. So it’s not 10 days per employee; it’s 10 days per employment. And that is, I think, a matter that this Government has clearly not understood. The potential there for part-time workers to be disadvantaged will simply mean that businesses will structure their businesses in a way that means that they won’t put themselves at that kind of risk. I don’t think that was what was intended.

I want to just refer to one submission, and it was just one that I picked at random from a small-business person, Deirdre Morgan, who came to the select committee and said, and I quote, “On a practical level if an employee is earning $20 per hour and working 40 hours per week, the potential additional cost to employ that person is $800 per annum in sick leave. In addition to that, the company may need to employ a temp worker to cover that period, and that could cost another, say, $1,400 for the same period. Therefore, the total cost is $2,200 per year in extra sick leave. But if there are 10 employees in that business, then the potential added cost is some $22,000.” So one gets an idea how quickly this escalates and snowballs in terms of the cost to small business. Why is this a problem, particularly for small business? Because small businesses don’t have the capacity to cover in the way that large businesses do.

And so here we have, I think, a probably well-intentioned piece of legislation straight out of the Trades Hall, straight out of the union playbook, using the cover of COVID as an excuse to bring it to the Parliament and using that as a rationale, as an excuse, for actually bringing forward their agenda, but with unintended consequences that will actually lead to significantly less productivity in the country, significantly fewer people actually employed, and businesses not wanting to take the risk.

The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. Now, the previous speaker talked to us about urgency, and the callously carried-out process of urgency, when this bill actually came to the select committee that I chair on 1 December, which was five months ago. Now, that’s not the kind of urgency that the National Government used many, many times when they were in Government, many times on all sorts of occasions, and, notably, when they were riding roughshod over employment rights, like, for example, internationally recognised workers’ rights, taking away collective bargaining from workers under the “Hobbit bill”, overnight without any select committee process at all, without any opportunity for public input at all. The same with 90-day trials—so that full outrage about this urgency is a little bit misplaced.

But let me talk about the nearly 400 submissions that we received from businesses, NGOs, not-for-profits, individuals all across the country, and, as well as that, we had time to do the 34 oral submissions that were requested. Of course, it won’t be lost on anyone in the House here how important it is to look at workers’ rights for our New Zealand workers and especially on the back of what has been a very unprecedented COVID period, where people had to be very careful in how they were treating their sick leave and making sure they didn’t bring that to their workplaces and spread any of their germs.

A little word on unintended consequences that the previous speaker was talking so much about. Now, that must be like the unintended consequences that we hear about every time we put the minimum wage up. Apparently, it would result in massive job losses, every time we put this up. But what happened? What did we hear today? Unemployment, in fact, is down to 4.7 percent. I think it’s the lowest that it was since September 2019. So, so much for those unintended consequences.

Now, I also picked a couple of submissions at random, like the previous speaker did. I picked one from Together, and the one I want to talk about is a hairdresser who came to us and talked about the times that she said she would just make do if she wasn’t 100 percent. Of course, you know, you can imagine in that kind of a job, that definitely has a flow-on effect. But that particular person said to us that she had learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic and that she actually realised that she needed to be more aware of—and I quote—“taking care of her own health and thereby of everyone around her”. That same organisation, Together, also conducted a survey of working people, and they had about 700, or 711, something like that, people get back to them about their current entitlements to sick leave and their experience with the five-day sick leave and also what they felt they needed to, in fact, have a safer use of sick leave for themselves. It basically reinforced what we already know: that, as we have at the moment, the minimum of five days is absolutely inadequate.

That brings me to one of the overarching themes that our select committee really saw through all of those submissions, and that’s that there’s a stark choice that workers face when they get sick. That is either they need to choose between taking unpaid leave and perhaps not being able to pay the bills, or they have to choose to come to work sick, not look after their own health, not look after the health of the people around them, and potentially spread their germs in the workplace. That, of course, has a flow-on effect, resulting in perhaps many more people being sick.

But, anyway, for many workers, taking unpaid sick leave isn’t even an option. We heard from one of our E tū members, Marina—she is a cleaner. She talked to us about how she had to take unpaid sick leave and was worried about how to put bread on the table for her children. That’s how dire it gets for some of those workers out there. And the pressure of a toughing-it-out culture and risking infecting others, E tū mentioned, has created a culture of heroism. That really isn’t on in these days.

Workers and families need flexibility to make sure that people take sick leave when they need it, have a proper opportunity to rest and recover, and, as a result, being happier and healthier in the workplace will also mean that they are more productive. So that’s exactly what this bill does. It supports workers to take the sick leave when they need it, look after themselves, look after the people around them, look after their families, and produce a happier and healthier New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker, thank you very much. In the second reading of this bill, the Labour Party is now one step closer to delivering on an election promise, which is to increase costs upon business by $2.8 billion a year. We’ve heard other speakers in the debate so far from the other side—indeed the Minister—talk about productivity gains, but you don’t increase productivity in an economy or in a business by imposing costs upon that business. You do so by reducing red tape and regulation and allowing those businesses to get on with what it is the economy needs them to do—run their businesses well, create profits through productivity and competitiveness, and, of course, look after their employees and pay them more.

This is a piece of legislation that is very blunt in what it is trying to achieve, as we have seen so very often from the Labour Party. Indeed, we hear often from them, “Unintended consequences are not important.” But if we look at everything that’s happened during the previous three years in Government and since they have come to Government just six months ago, there are unintended consequences that have a direct impact upon the very workers they say they are trying to help. I’m going to set that out in a way that pulls this together, because the cost of this legislation upon businesses—not the taxpayer through the taxes they pay to the Government, not on the Government itself, but the businesses that will meet the cost of this—is $1 billion.

When the Minister has said there will be greater productivity, he is yet to show the House, or any large or small business—and particularly small business—how extra productivity will be driven through this legislation, or any anything else the Government has done around workplace relations, to make up for the cost of that extra billion dollars. Because it has to be paid for and it will be paid for by businesses in New Zealand. The ones that will be most hard hit in paying this are the small businesses, the mums and dads who work so very, very hard to provide for themselves and their families and a few employees. They’ll bear the cost of this, not the Government, but them.

See, the problem you have is if you keep imposing these costs upon businesses, they actually have to do one of three things: they absorb them—well, that doesn’t work anymore, because during COVID last year, and lockdown, businesses in New Zealand, small businesses, did what was asked of them by this Government, they absorbed costs when they weren’t able to open and they took on debt. Few, if any, of them have seen their turnover, their income, return to those levels, sustainably, that they were before COVID. So they’ve taken on that debt and, in this case, they can’t absorb that cost.

Secondly, the thing that they do is they have to look to reduce their workforce. And yes, the Government has said the unemployment rate that has come out today has fallen again, but behind that is masked, ongoing, significant taxpayer and Government contribution to help and keep people in jobs, and at some point—the Government can’t keep borrowing and spending—that has to stop. So, largely, what a business does is it has to look at how it can economise and it reduces its workforce. It may not do it on day one, but when it comes time when they lose a staff member who may leave or do something else, they hesitate and they wonder whether they will replace—in many cases if the Government imposes extra cost, they don’t replace that person. They have to try and do more with the employees they have left, or they must pass the cost on.

So the $1 billion that this bill will impose upon businesses in New Zealand—as part of the $2.8 billion of a range of things the Labour Party promised to do before the last election, that mean Kiwi businesses pay $2.8 billion extra every year—will have to be passed on. Who is it that pays this $2.8 billion when it’s passed on? It is the consumer and it’s the very people the Government is saying they’re trying to help the most through the very fast increases to the minimum wage and these extra costs, including looking at a doubling of sick leave.

So I say to the Minister, why did he go from five days to 10 days? Where was the maths or the science or the evidence behind that, other than it was a good election slogan? Why did he decide to impose only $1 billion of extra cost? And, actually, where will the productivity gains be for the economy that pay that back? Because he’s quick off the tongue, but slow off the hip. He hasn’t been able to demonstrate that.

Finally, when it comes to sick leave entitlement, actually there is a disincentive here because what the Government has done is said that, “Actually, you can only carry over one year.” Well, currently, an employee in New Zealand can carry over three years—not year upon year upon year—but there are many employees who don’t use their full entitlement and they will grow them and they will carry that over in case it is needed at some stage. Because it’s not a holiday, it’s not an entitlement for a payment, it’s in the case they are unwell, so that they are provided for. What this legislation does is, instead of carrying over three years, or 15 days, it doubles sick leave, but can only carry over one year or 10 days. That is likely to have one of two consequences: that, actually, those who need sick leave that may have 15 days there—plus their five-year entitlement a year; so would have 20—actually wouldn’t have that in the same way. Or there may well be employees that say, “If I’m going to lose this because I can’t carry it over any more, I wonder if there is a way to use that.”

Now, I actually believe it’s better to find ways to encourage employers and employees to work well together, because I’m yet to meet a good employer—and this country is full of business people who are good employers, who care about their businesses and actually want to retain good staff; because it is much easier, much easier to keep good staff members than it is, as this Government thinks, for good employers to get rid of them to then go and hire someone else because it may be easier or cheaper. I think we should find a system that trusts and encourages them to work it out for themselves rather than the blunt instrument of the Government, of just saying, “We made an election promise that we’re going to double sick leave. We have not put any thought into it other than it sounded good at the time. There are consequences to this, but don’t worry, it’s good for productivity.” Forget the $1 billion extra cost that is imposed upon these businesses, because the Labour Government sees businesses as an ATM for paying the bills they want to run up.

This is a country that has more small businesses per capita than any other country in the world. There is a reason for that, because Kiwis are hardworking, they’re ingenuous, and they want to do well. For so very many of them, they are wonderful employers and they have amazing employees that turn up to work every single day. For the Government to come in and say, “We have a suite of changes we want to sweep through without genuine consultation with the people that will be most affected, because we made a promise before the election that will cost $2.8 billion.”—and, by golly, the Government says they’re going to keep this promise of an extra $2.8 billion of cost upon Kiwi businesses, and therefore consumers, the people they say they’re trying to help, that actually they do them a great disservice. The ultimate outcome of that will be higher costs passed on, businesses that struggle more, and employees that won’t be better off because the employers will have fewer choices rather than more. We should be backing hardworking Kiwi businesses, not putting costs on them; finding ways to reduce the costs upon them so they can employ more people and pay them more, because almost every small-business person I’ve met wants to do that.

But what they want the Government to do is get off their backs, stop imposing costs upon them that make it harder for them. In fact, the Government should be finding ways to reduce red tape, to reduce burden, to make it easier for them to support the good employers and the good employees—focus only on those who are not meeting their obligation, and those that are, actually encourage them to do more.

This is not a positive piece of legislation for the economy, and the day the Minister turns up and gives absolute evidence that there will be productivity gains, not just a $1 billion cost on businesses, particularly small businesses, will be a day this House will wait a long time for.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this, yet another important bill, that might look unnecessary to the Opposition, but it’s very important for thousands of workers, who, many of them, are front-line workers. Before I kick off my speech, I’d like to start with sharing a story, a story of a working woman, a cleaner and a mother, Malia Motusaga. Malia lately said, commenting on the increase of this 10-day sick leave, “I was grateful to hear that the Government will increase the minimum sick leave from five days to 10 days. This is very important to me and to my family, as well as to other workers. This is the reality of living on the minimum wage and working two jobs: sometimes you need to make sacrifices. If my children are sick—and usually someone gets sick from my family—I would have to take time off of work unpaid. The extra five days will benefit me and my kids. Now I know that if I get sick, I can stay home, and if any of my kids or my husband gets sick, I can stay home to look after them. I feel really good about that.” That statement speaks volumes about the importance of increasing sick leave from five days to 10 days.

Now, last year in 2020, when the pandemic hit, we all of us went into lockdown. I remember there was an outpouring of support and love and solidarity towards front-line workers. Every 7 p.m., we would go out in our driveway and we would clap. We would clap in a spectacular show of solidarity towards these hard-working people who played an important role in getting us through the lockdown times. That was a beautiful display of solidarity, but that was not going to pay their bills. It was not going to put three meals on their table. But increasing sick leave, allowing them to stay home when they are sick, is going to make a difference in their lives. I am very proud of the record of this Government supporting working people. This Government pumped up the minimum wage to $20 and started implementing the living wage in core Government sectors. Now increasing sick leave is also another milestone that’s going to support this vulnerable workforce.

Now, some of the submitters, we must admit, expressed some concerns around this bill, and we acknowledge that. Some of their concern is that this increase in sick leave will hurt small and medium sized businesses or that some of the employees will take advantage of this goodwill. Those assumptions are just unfounded and misplaced. I was a cleaner. I have worked with hundreds of cleaners, and as a union organiser I looked after cleaners, security guards—I have never seen anyone taking advantage of sick leave that’s available to them. Ethical employers already are doing this, and we haven’t seen any business running out of business because of increasing sick leave from five days to 10 days. In fact, they are doing a good job. Their productivity has increased and they are grateful, and their employees are grateful and they are working harder than ever because they feel valued.

This is just a part of the scaremongering that we heard about when the minimum wage increased: unemployment is going to increase. In fact, the finance Minister today said that unemployment has decreased to 4.7 percent despite the minimum wage going up to $20. This is another sign that things are not always the way that the Opposition seem to make them out.

Lastly, as we live and we continue to fight the pandemic, we must value and respect our hard-working front-line workers, because that is part of our health response as well. A happy and valued workforce is always going to get us through the tough times. At least, people like Malia deserve this. With that, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m really pleased to get to rise and take a call on this piece of legislation, which I know from the number of conversations I’ve been having in the community is a law change that a huge number of people are desperately waiting for. The Green Party are incredibly pleased to support the extension of the minimum paid sick leave entitlement from five to 10 days for full-time and part-time workers.

We heard through the select committee process a good number of submissions and some really compelling submissions from working people, who told us, unfortunately, that life happens. People have experienced unexpected illness. They’ve experienced mental health problems while they’ve been employed, and they’ve had sick family members that they’ve had a duty to care for. Not everybody is in the lucky position to have enough sick leave to be able to stay at home and get well, to be able to actually look after their mental health in this mental health crisis that we have, because they know their mental health will get worse if they can’t afford to pay the rent. So they go to work and just stay on eggshells for an extended period of time and are unable to truly get well.

We hear from people who are—like, their kids are sick, and they don’t have paid leave. They have to be at home to be with their kids or we can be pretty sure everybody in this House would be judging them for not being there. But they know that, when they choose to go there and be with their kids, they are forgoing that income until they can get back to work, and that means they do not know how to pay their rent. They do not know how they are going to be able to afford the kai to be able to feed their kids to get them back to health. That is the stress that people are under at the moment because of the extremely limited provision of the minimum sick leave entitlements. We heard from people that they were making that choice.

We heard from the Opposition today the really very clear consequences for employers of this—and I’ll get to that if I get time, unpicking some of their perceptions of that—but what they didn’t mention was the consequence for the working people of not having enough sick leave. It’s either you go to work sick and work ineffectively, because you’re either working through that fog or not able to concentrate properly—potentially putting yourself or others at risk from injury or sickness through spreading the disease—or you stay home, don’t have the income, and struggle to pay your bills. Or, as we heard from some people of what they’ve had to do, particularly if their children had repeated illness, you leave that job to put your children first. We all end up paying for that, but most of all that family ends up paying. I would also argue the employer loses out.

There’s a real problem, because this is some of what we heard from the submitters supporting the legislation. What we heard from employers, not all of them but a large number who presented, was that they opposed it because they saw it as a cost. They didn’t recognise the fact that, if people are sick, they’re sick; they’re either coming to work and not doing a great job, because they’re sick, or they’re not turning up to work and you’re just not paying them. But you’re not getting the job done, because that person is actually sick, or you’re losing great staff because they can’t sustain their health or their kids’ health and your limited provision of sick leave. That is an increased cost.

So we heard from members on this side that this has nothing to do with productivity and that there are no productivity returns around that. Well, the evidence says otherwise. The evidence says that, as a country, we have a problem with what is called presenteeism. It’s the opposite of absenteeism. It’s people compulsively turning up to work when they are sick and underperforming and making others sick. That has a really significant impact on productivity, and employers lose. Families lose. We all lose from this obsessive culture of seeing human beings as a cost as opposed to the people that actually do the work that create the value in our society.

So we’re very pleased finally to see these provisions in terms of the extension of the leave. I would say, however, though, that the Greens are disappointed with some aspects of the bill. I acknowledge the point that this was brought in under urgency as one of the very first pieces of legislation that the Government brought in, on 1 December, and I know from conversations with people that they are really—they’ve been asking me “So, when am I going to get my 10 days?”, because they are in that situation at the moment of not knowing, if their kid gets sick, how they’re going to be able to look after them, because they don’t have enough sick leave at the moment. So they are desperate for this support, and this is particularly people in care industries and in early childhood education, and we heard a lot from people in industries where they can’t come back to work until they’ve been well for, like, two days. So it’s not just the sick day. There’s expectations in terms of health and safety that people stay away from their workplace, and yet the leave doesn’t always match that expectation.

So it is disappointing that, with this legislation, there will be some people that won’t get their 10 days until mid next year because of the provisions in terms of phasing this in, and I think that is disappointing and unnecessary. From the Green Party’s perspective, we believe that this is right to do in principle and it can be done straight away. We were also disappointed to see the reduction in carry-over leave entitlement from 15 days to just 10 days and that, actually, there is—you know, and clearly people who are carrying over their leave are not exploiting their leave. It is really just in those cases, if somebody gets very sick, that they have that and they haven’t used it, and we don’t want to see any reduction in entitlement, and it doesn’t seem to us that we’re in a situation in terms of employment relations in this country where there should be the need for that. I think it’s for the benefit of all of us to actually build up that store of sick leave for times people may need it.

I also just want to acknowledge that we would have preferred to see the 10 days come in from day one of employment but acknowledge that the holidays working group has come to a consensus on that and that there will be an accrual that will start from the first day of employment. We look forward to that legislation coming in.

One of the other points I wanted to mention—and I do believe it will help deliver on the intent of this legislation and the content of it—is the provisions of proof and employers’ ability to require people to get medical certificates, which is clogging up our healthcare system, a completely unnecessary cost. In lots of areas, it takes weeks to get in to see a GP. We do not need to see people with colds going into their health clinics, putting potentially other people at risk, just because their employer has an automatic distrust of everybody in their workplace.

If we are going to have that culture that I think it was Todd McClay spoke about, where there is a higher-trust model, actually we should revert to the pre-2014 requirement, where employers can ask for proof and medical certificate if they have reasonable grounds to believe that somebody is not sick. So if they see something on Facebook that somebody has been out partying, then, actually, they can require it, or if somebody’s got a pattern of taking every Monday off, then they require it, but not this automatic assumption that people are ripping off the system, because that creates workplaces of suspicion and undermines the wellbeing and participation of everybody in the workplace. Progress, but not quite good enough.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill for a number of reasons. Mainly, the ACT Party believes employers aren’t bad and they deserve a break. This new legislation comes on top of a hugely difficult year for business, where employers feel set upon by this Government: minimum wage increase at the start of the lockdown, a new stat holiday. Next we’ll be giving people time off to attend Peachy—oh, we’re already doing that! Employers just don’t know what’s coming next, but they know it will keep on coming, as we have a Minister who just doesn’t get business, a Minister who said in 2017 that minimum wage increases will only happen if conditions permitted—a one-in-100-year pandemic is obviously not enough!—and the same Minister who said the increased sick leave would “add a little bit of cost” to business. Sick leave in 2018 cost businesses $1.7 billion. Just a little bit of cost!

Submitters were divided into two camps: business owners and the employees. The business owners are the ones who put themselves on the line. They’ve taken the risk and employed people. They understand where money comes from. Employees, as human nature dictates, will often take what they can get, and a number of submitters thought that they deserved not two but four weeks’ sick pay. They are currently being enabled by a Government who has a very skewed position on what makes the world go round. ACT opposes this extra burden for employers, especially in today’s environment. Employees are currently entitled to four weeks’ annual leave, 12 stat holidays—that’s over six weeks. They’ve got five days’ sick pay. They’ve got family violence leave, and whatever comes next. Employers are up against it constantly. To suggest that sick leave is not abused and used as annual leave, like some have suggested, by many employees shows a great ignorance and a lack of understanding of what goes on in the actual workforce—unless, of course, you’re looking at it through the union eyes.

Those countries that we aspire to be like, on average, are twice as sickly as us. We can expect New Zealand’s sick leave to double. It’s almost $4 billion for employers. We must treat apples with apples if we’re going to compare ourselves with other countries and not just take the good bits. With any pay rise or leave entitlement or other changes in employee conditions, we must look at productivity to make sure that we can pay for it, and unfortunately New Zealand just doesn’t cut it at the moment. We constantly compare ourselves with other countries when it comes to the minimum wage, work conditions, leave provisions but constantly ignore the most important factor that enables these countries to provide different conditions to their employees: much, much higher productivity. Ireland, around No. 4 in the world; Australia, around No. 17; Norway, around No. 6—we’re constantly comparing ourselves with those countries. New Zealand, consistently around No. 28 or 29. To think that paying people more or giving people more holidays and increasing sick leave will increase productivity, which it must do so it can be paid for, shows a very poor understanding of business—and, unfortunately, especially business in New Zealand. This bill could well hurt the very people it intends to help, as has been mentioned before. Employers will look very hard before employing people with health issues, mothers with kids, and those who they would previously have given a go.

This Government constantly trumpets on about how much help and support they gave businesses during COVID. I just don’t get it. Employees were looked after—effectively, put on a benefit—during lockdown, with a guarantee of employment when it was over. Businesses were assisted in getting a loan if they needed it. The thing about loans is that you have to pay them back. They still had the same rates, power, insurance—in many cases, rent—and all the other fixed costs in running a business. Businesses had to go into debt in order for employees to have a job. If that’s looking after business, I’d hate to think what they get their friends for Christmas. ACT believes employers are good, hard-working people. A number of submitters, while supporting the increase, also stated that their employers looked after them when they needed it. They admitted that the employers were good people and they looked after them, but they still were keen on the extra leave.

Employers are good people. They’re prepared to take the risk to make this economy work. If a business is doing well, employees will do well, despite what you may hear from those who have never owned a business. Unfortunately, in the last four years, businesses have been under attack. This latest unnecessary luxury, coming at a time when most are hurting and trying to recover from COVID, is just another example, and we just wonder what’s next. For these reasons, ACT opposes this bill. Thank you.

Kia ora. Thank you. I’m really pleased to be taking a call on this Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. Despite everybody declaring that the sky is falling, it is not. We did have time in the select committee to consider the consequences of this bill, and tonight I want to remind you of some of the gains. People keep talking about cost; I want to tell you about some of the gains that businesses as well as workers told us would come with increasing sick leave to 10 days, the reasons why five days are simply not enough.

We heard some really intensely personal stories from workers who are really vulnerable, who themselves have ongoing health or disability issues, or are caregivers either of their own children or of their parents or of their brother or sister, and they use up their sick leave really quickly. It can be something as simple as a child with conjunctivitis—can’t go to school. You get it; you can’t go to work. It doesn’t take long for five days to disappear. We heard some really powerful stories from some really articulate people—some of our poorest paid, most vulnerable precariat, mainly women. The decisions that they need to make—they’re not decisions being made in the best interests of public health; rather they’re deciding whether to stay home with a toddler or by themselves to get well and not share their infections, their germs, with others, or whether to pay the rent, or whether to quit their job, or whether to take unpaid leave or personal debt.

We heard from an amazing young woman who is a home care worker, and she talked about the incredible guilt and tension of knowing she shouldn’t go to work, because she was unwell and she was putting her clients at risk, her colleagues at risk. But she couldn’t afford to do it or she would be sleeping in her car, which is certainly not the best way to get over the flu. It was a powerful testimony, and it is one that we must ensure has an impact on this legislation.

Some have signalled or indicated—suggested—that COVID isn’t an excuse to have something that should just be temporary; the extra five days should be temporary because it’s just about COVID. But we did have temporary responses put into place. We’ve got the short-term absence payment and the leave support scheme. Rather, what COVID has done is it’s highlighted a couple of things. The Minister spoke earlier about our “tough it out” culture and how that is not good for anyone. Staying at home keeps others safe: you don’t catch a bus to work; you don’t cough on your clients or on your co-workers.

I need to talk about this being good business sense. We’ve heard from people on the other side of the House talk about the cost when I know, from having grown up in an entrepreneurial household, that the biggest investment an employer can make is in their workers. I know that. And so this is about improving productivity. When you work while you are sick, the evidence is quite clear: your productivity drops by about 20 percent. This is understood elsewhere on the planet. Australia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, etc., have at least 10 days. We heard evidence from Frog Recruitment—a woman who said that she has given her workers unlimited sick leave. Oh, no, the sky’s going to fall in! They’re going to be taking leave willy-nilly! But the element of trust actually meant that her workers knew that she believed in them and that they were going to look after themselves and take themselves and their job seriously and they would stay home and get well. And she found that they took fewer sick days. Maybe it had something to do with that they weren’t coming into work and getting their co-workers sick. And, very simply, it allows us to meet the societal expectations for reasonable conditions for all workers in New Zealand.

The last thing I’d like to talk about is actually the impact on our children. We did hear from the Privacy Commissioner, and we heard from mothers, we heard from teachers, we heard from unions about the incredibly difficult decision of sending kids to school when they are sick because you cannot afford to not be at work. That child does not have an opportunity to get well. They get long-term implications, illness, things like glue ear, because they do not have an opportunity to stay home and keep well. If parents can take time off and look after them without those financial burdens, without the cost, being able to pay the rent and put the kai on the table, it has an impact on the wellbeing of children’s lives. I know, from being a secondary school teacher, the impact on our young adults when they have to stay home from school and look after their youngest siblings or their nana because mum has to go to work and do a shift.

So, because it is best for productivity, it is best for our workers, it is best for our tamariki, it is best for our society, I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill, second reading. I was a member of the committee that heard submissions on this bill.

I just want to start by delving just very briefly into this whole “element of trust” malarkey that’s coming from the other side of the House. It’s all very interesting that, when it comes to workers, there is a huge element of trust and they can be trusted not to take advantage of the extra days that they’re given, but every single possible opportunity this Government has to tie up employers in regulations and costs and more red tape, they will take that opportunity every single chance they get because they don’t trust employers—but, of course, we can trust employees; they won’t take advantage of the situation!

For goodness’ sake, we’re passing a bill at the moment, from the other side of the House, that’s going to give parents an hour off every term to go to a parent-teacher interview, because we can’t trust employers and employees to work it out amongst themselves to go to a 10-minute interview. So this whole element of trust and “It’s all going to be wonderful.” is all very well and good but, when it actually comes down to it, this Government doesn’t trust employers. But here we are trusting employees not to take advantage.

Can I just say that, actually, when it comes down to it, this isn’t a free lunch. This will be paid for somewhere. This billion dollars of cost on the economy isn’t going to be made up for in some magical increase in productivity. And, by the way, the regulatory impact statement, and many of the submitters, said, “Actually, there’s no evidence to back up this claim of increased productivity.” It’s anecdotal, it’s from some stories, it’s from some thoughts and feelings from the other side of the House, but the reality is there’s actually no evidence to back this up. From a Government who loves to base everything they do on evidence and facts and science, well, in this case, that was never presented, because it doesn’t exist. It’s just an anecdotal sort of thought and warm fuzzy feeling that productivity will be increased so much that the billion dollars will magically disappear. Well, anyone with any brains knows that that’s not actually the case. Those costs will be passed on somewhere down the chain.

We heard from many, many employers who talked about the fact that they will have to pass this cost on through their goods and services, increasing the cost of living for the people who can least afford it. They will cut hours, they will cut shifts, they will hire fewer staff, they will rearrange things so that they’re not employing so many people on a part-time basis, which often goes to those people who need that the most; they will delay wage increases. There will be potential discrimination against the types of people who may be using more sick leave.

Now, the other side scoffed at that in select committee and again today, because “That can’t possibly happen.” But in reality we know that it does. There is that unconscious bias when it comes to companies who are facing huge costs. And let’s remember that not that long ago, last year, we were begging businesses—this Government, this Prime Minister, was begging businesses, “Please keep hold of your employees. Take on some extra debt. Pivot. Do everything that you can to try and stay afloat. We’re not going to give you any support other than the wage subsidy”—but that went straight to the employees, not to the employer. So the employers got very, very little apart from huge debts, massive stress, a whole lot of loans that they didn’t have before, and, now, on top of that, they’ve got two lots of minimum wage increases—

💬 Anna Lorck: Businesses were thrilled with the wage subsidy.

—have another Berocca!—they’ve got a Matariki holiday, they’ve got increased cost of their migrant workforce as well, because those hourly rates have all gone up. On top of that, debts and loans. These guys are under extreme pressure.

💬 Anna Lorck: Kept our businesses going, workers in employment.

Keep yelling, love. Listen, the point of the matter is that these costs aren’t going to disappear somewhere into some magically increased productivity. They are going to be borne by the businesses, who will pass this on—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: To the consumer.

—and then to the consumer, who can least afford it. And they’re going to be passed on in the form of people who will not be employed or who will have their hours reduced, and that is the unintended consequences of something like this. These things don’t just magically disappear; they have to go somewhere.

💬 Anna Lorck: Healthier workplace, better productivity, businesses and workers working together.

I’m going to take a stake in the Berocca business because, clearly, business is booming for them! Good Lord.

I just want to finish by saying that the people who came to our select committee, who are the people who are employing the people of New Zealand, told us that the reality of this bill is that their costs will increase and that will have to go somewhere. The productivity gains, which, by the way, can’t be measured and there’s no evidence to show they will actually materialise, will be borne by those who can least afford it, and the other side of the House just refuses to understand that. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I rise to take a short call on this matter. I’m absolutely delighted to do so. I spent 27 years as an employment lawyer, and this is not a change that is one that I look at in terms of COVID. I think COVID is the lesson about how valuable people are in our society and we should have learnt it a long time ago.

When I was an employment lawyer I had one big employer, who at that point in my career distressed me because they actually started to performance manage their staff because they were taking the minimum entitlement in sick leave. Now, that was one of our bigger, richer employers, and it was one that actually employed a lot of men, and I wondered how much it actually encouraged a mentality in that workplace that was machismo, that treated people like they were machines. They’re not machines; they’re human beings, and when we employ human beings, we need to accept that they have families, that they get sick, and that they’re valuable in themselves, and that they shouldn’t be at work when they’re sick and they shouldn’t be at work when they need to stay home and look after their children.

I remind the last speaker that, in COVID, we actually had a situation where most workers in this country whose employers took the wage subsidy from the Government also took a reduction in wages of 20 percent. They were in there, boots and all, helping. Actually, this is another form of partnership that perhaps the National Party might get its head around. This is actually about us all working together, us all having a stake in things, and us all producing in this country, including the workers of this country. So I am absolutely thrilled at this legislation.

I also wanted to point out that it’s probably worth a thought that there are employers out there, many employers out there, who pay 10 days’ sick leave—lots of them. They are actually not in an even playing field, when they are competing with people who are cutting back entitlement to such unrealistic levels. I want to see a place in New Zealand for employers to be actually patted on the back and encouraged and supported when they do the right thing, and that means that all the employers who are already paying 10 days’ sick leave are actually going to feel supported when this legislation comes through.

I’m absolutely thrilled to see a change in mentality in this country. It’s been a long time coming, and a lot of people have suffered while we waited for this kind of legislation to recognise that workers are human beings. And that is the end of my call. Thank you. I commend this bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to take a call on this bill tonight, and I want to begin by thanking the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety for bringing this bill to the House early in this term of our Government. This piece of legislation was an important part of Labour’s 2020 election manifesto, and I just want to acknowledge the work of our members in bringing this forward. Many would say that this change is overdue. A lot of people across many parts of our country have worked incredibly hard to bring forward 10 days’ sick leave. This, as the Minister has said, is part of our delivery for working people as we recover from COVID, and as previous speakers have said, we learnt the lessons from COVID about just how important it is to have adequate sick leave so that we can ensure our communities stay healthy. I want to thank the select committee and all of the submitters and officials for all of the hard work they’ve done over the last few months to hear submissions on this bill.

I spent many years before coming to this House as an organiser with FIRST Union, and I want to acknowledge their submission. FIRST Union is a private sector union that represents a significant number of people in supermarkets, in banks, in retail, manufacturing, transport industries—many industries where, if people do become unwell, it’s very easy for them to pass their bugs around to co-workers and each other and also people going into their supermarkets, getting on their buses, getting on their trains. So, having spent many years in this industry, I’ve seen and have many, many firsthand examples of what it’s like for workers who actually don’t have access to enough sick leave.

I want to respond to a previous speaker, Scott Simpson, who made some comments around supermarkets. I’m actually going to set the record straight around supermarkets. We have two large supermarket chains in this country, one of which is Countdown, and to the best of my knowledge, they still pay eight days of sick leave a year. The previous speaker made some very good points about an even playing field, because the other large chain, Foodstuffs, who own Pak ’N Save and New World supermarkets through individual owners, they don’t—most of them, unless they have a collective agreement—pay more than five days’ sick leave. I’ve spent many, many hours attempting to negotiate for more sick leave at Pak ’N Save in Richmond, in my electorate of Nelson. What I can say is the owners of those supermarkets are incredibly wealthy multimillionaires, and what I can say on that is that Countdown supermarkets have come to us on many, many occasions asking us to even that playing field, because, actually, supermarkets should be competing on quality of product, on customer service, not on a race to the bottom over wages and conditions that actually lead to poorer outcomes for workers.

In my experience, there are three reasons why our workers don’t take sick leave. The first, which we’re talking about tonight, is that they don’t have adequate sick leave. It’s very common for people to use up their sick leave on one incident of either themselves or a family member being sick. We have situations now when it’s not just women looking after children; you often have both parents working, and in my experience, it was actually often male-dominated industries, particularly in sawmills, that were arguing really hard to have increased amounts of sick leave, because those whānau were finding that, whether it was the mum or the dad who was looking after the child, actually they needed sick leave, both of them, in order to be able to look after their tamariki. But, look, that’s what we’re addressing tonight.

But there’s other things that happen, and one of the things I’ve seen is a significant amount of pressure from employers for people to go in when they’re sick. The classic case which used to come up all the time was workers ringing in sick and being told by the employer, “You don’t sound sick.” Now, it’s such an old-school way of thinking. There are many times when people are sick and they don’t sound sick but they certainly are sick, and they’re having to prove to that employer that they were genuinely sick and having to have an argument about why they needed to stay home. That’s partly because of our culture.

This is the third reason, and a few speakers have picked up on that tonight: in the supermarket industry, one of the things I used to find was workers who didn’t want to stay home because they were letting the team down. We’ve had this culture in New Zealand of taking a concrete pill, sucking it up. The “she’ll be right” attitude, the “you don’t want to show weakness” kind of attitude. Actually, what happened during COVID: we finally had that change, we finally addressed this as a nation and actually said it is important for ourselves, for our whānau, for our co-workers, for our communities to stay home when we’re sick. So part of that self-imposed pressure, that culture, is changing, and it’s a good thing.

Many speakers have talked tonight about what is a good employer. In my view, a good employer—and I come from a family of employers as well and have employed people—is one that actually looks at how they can support their workers to be the best that they can be, to be well and to be productive. We know that workers who are treated well, who are respected, will treat their employers well in return. It’s a fallacy to talk about cost, because, actually, if people stay home when they’re sick, they are less likely to spread that sickness to others, actually leading to lower amounts of sick leave.

Now, I signed up to a little tool last year called Flu Tracker, and if others in this House haven’t signed up to Flu Tracker, I encourage you to do so. One of the things we saw last year was that as well as having people staying home to protect themselves from COVID19, we actually had lower levels of flu circulating through our community. So what I say and what I propose is that, if people are able to and our culture changes to where they do stay home when they’re sick, those contagious types of bugs are less likely to be passed around.

We’ve had people talk tonight around people misusing sick leave, and I do acknowledge there are times when people do that, but I also say there are management tools in existence that should be used to manage when people are misusing sick leave. There’s fantastic case law out there where people who perhaps applied for annual leave, had it declined, had gone on a little jaunt, photo on Facebook, and, look, in those situations, employers have found to be justified in dismissing someone under those circumstances. So, actually, part of this is about employers also using the tools available to them properly to discourage that. But, as I said, we do know that employees who are treated well treat their employers well in return.

So, to sum up, we need to change our culture around sick leave. Look across at Australia, where they have 10 days a year. For too long in Aotearoa we’ve been struggling away on only five days a year, and most workers are using that up every year for good reason. So this change, it’s overdue. It’s necessary to continue protecting our communities, and on that note, I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to stand against this bill. People tuning in might say, “Well, how can you be against extra holidays? Extra holidays are a good thing.”

💬 Hon Members: Holidays?

Not holidays; sick leave. We’ve had kind of a strange debate. People from the opposite side of the House, Labour members, saying such profound observations like “Workers are human beings.” Well, I don’t dispute that. I don’t think there’s anybody in the House that would dispute the point that workers are human beings, and I don’t think anybody would suggest that anybody would argue the point. I think all people in this House—and that was a very fine observation; I don’t like to be unkind to the member who made it. But the point is that we here all want the best interests of New Zealand workers and New Zealanders generally, and if we lived in a perfect world, there would be no limits on sick leave and there would be very high minimum wages and everything would be great. The only issue is that ultimately what we have to try and navigate our way through is how businesses can stay profitable and continue to employ people. Now, in a free situation, there is nothing stopping any business giving any workers as long a leave as they would like, but what we’re talking about here is legislation ruling a minimum level where they must provide five days at the moment and the proposal in the bill is to double that to 10 days.

The concern that we have on this side of the House is that while that may be a very welcome thing—and we can all think of many, many instances and many individuals where extra sick leave would be very welcome. The only question is right here right now, at a time when New Zealand businesses are struggling—some are; some aren’t—and that’s been one of the extraordinary elements of this whole COVID saga, that many businesses have continued to prosper and some have really struggled, and those that really struggle, particularly in the hospitality and any tourism-related businesses, are finding it very difficult. What this Government has done is add not just one area of cost to businesses, not two areas of cost, but many, many areas of extra costs to businesses. And those costs don’t just go to business owners; they filter through to customers, because a lot of those costs are passed on, but some can’t be. And some make it very difficult for people to continue successfully in business. That’s why there needs to be care and moderation taken by any Government so as to not make it too difficult for businesses to grow and provide new opportunities for New Zealanders to get work and create their own careers.

What I think the mistake that is often made on the other side of the House is to assume that business is all big, hugely profitable, powerful businesses with very large employees, like big supermarket chains, and that this is just something that they can absorb and nobody will notice. But, of course, the reality of New Zealand is that most businesses in New Zealand are small and they have five or 10 employees, they’re mum or dad operators, and they go from GST payment to GST payment. Staying afloat in business can be very, very difficult, and if you’re a tiny little business with three or four employees, employees being sick and on sick leave is not an immaterial issue. It can be very difficult for businesses; so this is meaningful in its impact on those businesses.

Like I said at the start of this, everybody would like to see all New Zealanders have access to as much sick leave as they require. But here in this House, legislating at a time such as this, just to double sick leave entitlements at the same time as very significantly increasing minimum wages and at the same time as increasing energy costs and increasing petrol levies, and a whole lot of other things that the Government is doing is very much taking for granted the ability of those businesses, large and small in this country, to continue to pay those costs and survive and provide the jobs in order to survive—and also, beyond that, in order to make the investments in their businesses in order to grow this economy and make us more productive.

I suppose the broader theme that we hear from this Government, and no doubt we’ll hear some more of it in the Budget in the weeks to come, is an attitude which says that the role of Government is just to spend more money and pass laws that force private sector employers to spend more money, and that is the purpose of it all, and isn’t it wonderful! But what we don’t hear anything about is: how do we grow the broader economy and how do we provide a more productive economy so that we as New Zealanders can generate higher incomes and sustain the living standards that we want to sustain over the long period? I don’t hear too much about that at all from any of the legislation coming through.

I see a whole lot of legislation providing more, insisting that employers do more for employees, and I see a whole lot of new spending from this Government. I see a few more taxes coming through, higher taxes for individuals, and in the petrol sense, and I see a whole lot of stuff, but the question I ask is: well, where is the growth plan and how are we going to actually get this economy back on track and pay the enormous amount of debt that we’ve taken on over the last year? But perhaps that will be for another day and perhaps we’ll hear about that in the Budget—who knows?

And, on that basis, I say: wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was a simple matter and a painless matter of doubling sick leave entitlements? If that was the case, we’d happily vote for it, but we live in a world where there are many businesses, large and small across this country, that we want to succeed and continue to grow and invest. And if this, along with many, many other costs that this Government has added to the business sector, is all taken into account, rather than making it easier for those businesses to thrive and grow and employ—this Government time and time again is making it more difficult for them. And, on that basis, I oppose this bill.

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a call, after the Hon Paul Goldsmith did paint a rather bleak picture of how businesses are doing in New Zealand. Look, we certainly acknowledge that many businesses have found it difficult during COVID, but the reality is most of the businesses I talk to at the moment are actually doing fairly well. Yes, there are some challenges around accessing labour at times, but most of the businesses have got high levels of demand and they’re doing pretty well, and they’re certainly very grateful to the Government, particularly around the wage subsidy.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this bill at the second reading. This bill increases sick leave to 10 days and, by doing that, supports workers and gives more flexibility to working families, and I’d like to start on that point there. I know we have heard from a few speakers the aspect around the flexibility for families, but just to share my personal story, my wife and I have four children. We didn’t get the memo to stop at two; we sort of carried on. But the memo didn’t—

💬 Nicola Willis: Four’s best—four’s best.

I acknowledge a few others here who missed that memo, but back to the bill. So we have four beautiful children. We actually had four under five, and there was a period in our life when things were fairly intense. We, however, were fortunate enough that I was able to work and my wife was able to stay home for around about 10 years and look after the children. So the reality is, when the children were sick—which the reality is, you know; they often are—my wife was able to look after them. But that is not the case for many, many families in New Zealand.

Now, for many families in New Zealand, when the children are sick, they’ve got a very difficult choice to make. The reality is that they can stay home and look after the children, but they can only do that for five days per year, and after that, there are a whole range of contorted outcomes that take place, and they have impact across a wide range of our society.

When the children are over the age of five, it’s the same sort of situation. If the children are sick, one of the parents needs to stay home because the children can’t go to school. But often what is happening is the children are going to school sick, and, as a former schoolteacher, I’ve seen many children in my class coughing all over kids and I know that it’s just going to spread throughout the classroom. So this is a practical piece of legislation and it has a wider impact, rather than just on the person who is sick themselves.

I’d also like to touch on the aspect around businesses, because we have heard from the Opposition that the employers—the Opposition have basically been saying that they think the employees will take advantage of this; so the employees will look to just ramp it right up to 10 days and just try and abuse the system. That is not the example that we’ve seen in other countries who have raised their sick leave up to 10 days, and I don’t believe that this will be the example that we will see here. The reality is most people are good, honest people, and they only take a sick day if they are sick.

For me, myself, I take very few sick days, but I do know that at any point in my life I might come across a situation where I fall upon challenging times and I do need to take sick days. I probably have taken those “concrete pills” that we’ve heard about from previous speakers, and I have gone to work sick most times, and if I tease out why that is, it probably comes from my childhood and it probably comes from, as well—as we’ve heard from previous speakers—not letting the employer down. But when going to work sick, you are not supporting your employer—you are not helping your employer—and that argument has certainly been made.

So we’ve heard some very strong arguments from this side of the House across a range of areas, but I’d particularly like to just highlight those two aspects around the children and around the fact that if you do go to work sick, you’re actually hurting your business and your employer. This side of the House certainly commends this bill to the House. Thank you.