SpeechCHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. Last year MPs started their Christmas holidays and trotted off to spend time with their families. Some even trotted off around the world and were lucky enough to get managed isolation and quarantine spots ahead of thousands of New Zealanders—very lucky!I thought I'd tell you about how some business owners in the hospitality industries spent their holidays. We'll start by with dealing with the COVID rules. Scanning-in checking vaccine passports—all were the responsibility of the business owner. Fewer people coming in the door but they had to employ more staff—despite customers all being over 18 they know the rules and they know when they're breaking the rules there's no personal responsibility involved there at all or expected. Staff are having to wear masks in sweaty uncomfortable environments making it difficult to communicate with these customers. There's been a huge increase in broken glasses tripping on steps and burns due to the decreased and reduced peripheral vision that these masks create. Any health and safety inquiry would recommend the getting rid of masks.Hospitality venues have had to deal with customers who feel the enforcement of the rules aren't tight enough and staff get abused. And then next thing customers that feel there shouldn't be any rules at all and again staff bear the brunt of this customer dissatisfaction.Then there was the brilliant idea of paying unvaxxed staff four weeks' pay to give them time to change their minds—whether they get vaxxed or not. No worries businesses can afford it no problem! One business has two staff left which meant the end to any holiday plans the business owners had. I suppose that's just what you get for owning a business and employing people!Over the last seven weeks there have been six statutory holidays. Christmas was on Saturday and most hospitality businesses are closed on Christmas Day—actually not because staff don't want to work quite the opposite in a lot of cases and not that the public don't want to go out but it's just not affordable: time and a half day in lieu the prep time that is involved and the ridiculously archaic liquor laws just make it unprofitable. And of course Monday and Tuesday after that were holidays. Then New Year's Eve was on a Friday so the following Monday and Tuesday were holidays. We did get a couple of weeks with five days in them. The staff member that left because they weren't vaxxed was actually vaxxed and got another job.What do we do? What does the business owner do about it? We all know that the personal grievance legislation only works one way as all the employment lawyers opposite will agree to I'm sure. Then there was Anniversary Day another statutory holiday and Waitangi Day fell on a Sunday but of course we need another holiday so that was Monday.This Government believes that if you repeat something often enough you actually believe it yourself and sometimes convince others as well. Just a few examples: the red light means back to normal—it's not. People aren't going out; they're being told not to by the Government and the Government's representatives. People are even cancelling their weddings. But the bride and groom will always get their day in the sun and I don't really care much about that as much as I care about the actual business that employs the function staff the food and everything that goes along with it and whose January—a month that's normally busy and the business can put a little bit away to get them through the winter months—has been ruined. The myth that businesses have been looked after with the wage subsidy and the resurgence support payment—it's just nonsense. I haven't got time to explain it now and I shouldn't have to but the fact that businesses are expected to be grateful for the small-business loans—loans that have to be paid back when Government policies make it impossible for the business to make money.The Government must drop these crippling restrictions immediately or offer more realistic targeted support. Only in the Michael Wood school of economics held in the Council of Trade Unions club rooms does anyone believe that the endless minimum wage increases is the way forward. Even the Government's own advisers don't think so. From one business: three out of 26 employees are on the minimum wage. They're students living at home no rent to pay no food to buy being trained and learning skills that will see them right for the rest of their lives. The rest of the employees have earned their higher pay rate through loyalty and hard work—and they're happy. Building a work ethic in this environment of entitlement and mediocrity in all areas of the Government's policies is difficult. The good news is that the hard-working employees ones who understand will get through. So the business owners didn't get a holiday; they didn't get paid either but their staff did. They deserve a lot more respect than what this Government is giving them. Thank you.