Belich Camilla; Kuriger BarbaraCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Wow! Here we are under urgency with another week of this Government taking New Zealand backwards and another bill attacking working people. I note the Minister can't even speak for her full allocated time even though we are in urgency and there's no select committee process and I have sympathy for the Minister because there is absolutely nothing to back up this policy that she is putting though to extend trial periods. Her own officials in the regulatory impact statement (RIS)—and I do commend the officials for actually producing one in relation to this bill—say What shall we do? Should we extend this? No. We should stick with the status quo." That's what it says in the RIS produced by the Minister's own officials. So what could the possible reason be for doing this and for extending this policy? Is there evidence that it actually does increase hiring? Is there evidence that it makes it easier for people to actually get work or hire people? No. The evidence says exactly the opposite and this isn't my evidence. This isn't trade union evidence. This is evidence commissioned by Treasury. Treasury says that it doesn't make a difference so why are we doing this? The only thing I can come up with is that this Government hates working people; you hate working people. This is the second bill in two weeks to go under urgency that makes absolutely no difference in benefits to working people. It may have some benefits in the sense of employers not wanting to go through fair processes to actually dismiss employees which is totally available under New Zealand law. If you have an issue with performance or if you have an issue with conduct you can go through a fair process and that employee can be dismissed in New Zealand. That can already happen. So I was interested to read on the cover of The Post this week that the Minister of Finance said that she believes in leadership and that it's important to take New Zealanders with her and I ask this Government: which New Zealanders are they taking with them? Not working people for sure. The first thing they did through urgency was change the Reserve Bank mandate to take the importance off jobs. The next thing they did was repeal fair pay agreements—attacking wages of working people and conditions. Another thing that they did in their second week in Government: attacking jobs again. This Government is not the Government for working people. It is taking their rights away with every single breath it takes for absolutely no benefit to the economy. If you look at this research conducted and commissioned by the Treasury you will see that there is absolutely no benefit on a macro scale of this policy to the economy. It doesn't increase hiring it doesn't increase the number of people that are taken on and it doesn't make things better for people who are vulnerable. The only thing it does is increase the likelihood of injustice for people who are engaged in work to be dismissed unfairly. It is a shame and a travesty on this Government that they would under urgency decide to bring through a bill to this Parliament that doesn't help employers—it doesn't—and it doesn't help people that are looking for work. It just extends a policy which is shown in evidence not to work. We've heard again and again that this Government for some reason doesn't need to have evidence or arguments to back up this policy and we've seen the Minister not able to articulate that over her full call because there just isn't anything to back that up. I would say to the members opposite that electoral mandates do not excuse bad lawmaking. Electoral mandates do not excuse bad lawmaking and this is bad lawmaking. There is no select committee process. There is no ability for New Zealanders who have strong feelings about trial periods to be able to submit to the select committee process and tell you that impact that it would have on their lives. Actually I won't have time to go through it in the first reading but I have got examples that have been proactively sent to me by members of the public wanting to make a submission on this piece of legislation and not being able to. I've examples of people emailing me and saying "When will the select committee process be Camilla?" and I have had to say to them "Unfortunately the Government that has been elected has decided that they do not want to hear from you. Your views that you would normally be able to expect in a normal select committee process are not valid." I think this Government should be ashamed of that because this is a ridiculous pointless piece of legislation that just makes it more unfair for people. As we have seen and as the Minister went through it was brought in in 2009 when it was 20 employees; in 2011 it was all employees; in 2019 it was back to 20; and in 2023 it is back to all employees. There is no clarity and no purpose for this bad law and I do not commend it to the House. DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House will resume at 2 p.m. Sitting suspended from 12.59 p.m. to 2 p.m."