Brash Don: Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Brash Don: Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1847] 
Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I rise to support the Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill because I believe that it is one of the most important pieces of legislation to come before the House this year. Why do I say that? Partly because if the bill becomes law it will do enormously positive things for businesses large and small in this country. The Government’s own Small Business Advisory Group has made that absolutely clear not once but twice. It describes probationary periods as “the single most important changes that could be made to the employment legislation”. The Small Business Advisory Group went on to state that such probationary periods “would lead directly and immediately to employment and business growth.” Essentially that would be sufficient reason to support the bill even if it had no other positive effects but in my view that is not the main reason for supporting the bill. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: What’s the main reason? 
Dr DON BRASH 
: The main reason to support the bill is that it would provide help to the most vulnerable people in our community. Dr Mapp made the point that despite the generally low unemployment rate the unemployment rate for youth—people aged between 15 and 19—is 12 percent. The bill would help immigrants who come into the country with relatively poor English language skills. It would help women who wanted to re-enter the workforce after a period of raising children. It would help people who had served a term in prison and then wanted to re-enter the workforce and it would help those who had been unemployed for a lengthy period. Unemployment rates among all those groups are very high indeed despite the buoyancy of the economy. 
Why is that? Because employers are reluctant—sensibly—to take a risk on those people. If the employment relationship does not work out employers have the very dickens of a job to end it. It is costly in terms of time and money to end the relationship. So employers say: “No thank you very much. We won’t take on the person who has been out of the workforce for some time or who hasn’t had a job before or who had a prison sentence 2 or 3 years ago.” They will not take the risk. 
The National Party does not want to play petty party politics with this issue. 
Hon David Carter 
: It’s too important an issue. 
Dr DON BRASH 
: It is too important an issue as my colleague David Carter says. I want to appeal to every member of the House to recognise that this bill is absolutely crucial to helping the people I have talked about: the people who are young and have not had a job the women who have been out of the workforce the people who have had a prison sentence the immigrants who have come into the country without good English language skills and the long-term unemployed—those are the people whom we are talking about tonight. I ask every member of this House when considering how to vote on this bill to reflect on those people. 
Let me particularly ask the members of the Maori Party to do that because the Maori community has unemployment rates that are unacceptably high. This bill would have a huge benefit to young Maori who have not been in work and who are coming out of provincial New Zealand into urban New Zealand. The bill would have a huge benefit to all those people.