Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. It was a little earlier than I expected but I am very pleased to get the chance to speak on this bill. It really does feel as if it has been a long time coming so I would like to add my congratulations to the new Minister Michael Wood for showing that he's getting down to business so quickly in this new parliamentary term. And also Madam Speaker my congratulations to you. It's lovely to see you in the Chair and I look forward to your wise ruling over this term.So there's been some debate about the relevance of COVID across the sides of the House but really for me if COVID has taught us anything—and I've referenced a lot of lessons I've taken from COVID around actually the ability to make change at speed when required and our interconnectedness with each other and our environment. They are very strong lessons. But for me if there is any lesson from COVID it is the danger of when you are sick carrying on as if there is no consequence to that. That behaviour has put our entire country at risk. It's one of the top-line messages from the Government and the public health responses: if you are sick stay home. That's the number one message to the country in response to COVID because that behaviour keeps us safe. And the Government has initiated the COVID leave scheme as an interim measure specifically responding to the failures of our sick-leave scheme at the moment to enable more people to be able to take that advice and not to have to choose between being able to pay their rent and keeping their workmates and their community safe.So at the moment we know that half of the employers in this country provide just the minimum: only five days. What that tells us is that a significant number of small and medium sized businesses provide more despite what the National Party has been suggesting in their speeches. But it tells us as well that a huge number of people in this country right at the moment will be feeling as if they need to go to work even though they are feeling sick because they will have used up their leave or been worried about reaching that point and maybe their kids will get sick and they'll need it for them.The Greens have long called for an extension to sick leave. Our first motivation was recognising the pressure on mostly working mums but mostly parents around the ease of kids getting sick when they're at school or kōhanga or early childhood education—kids get sick right. You need—and we all want I would have thought—their parents to be there with them when they're sick. And for the parents that's part of women being able to stay in work because we haven't managed to share those roles out between men and women equally yet. So that's part of what helps keep women in work.So the discussion that we heard from the National Party earlier is that New Zealanders just want work and the jobs; that's all they care about. They don't care about whether they've got sick leave or not. But actually if that side of the House had listened to half the country at all they would have heard that actually people don't want to have to choose between caring for their families and putting food on the table. Actually they want to contribute they want to be in jobs that enable them to fulfil both functions. We know that people who are only getting that statutory entitlement are more likely to be young they're more likely to be women they are more likely to be Māori and have caring responsibilities. So this is a problem for us as a society. If we're saying we're a caring society then actually our leave provisions are inconsistent with that. And if we care about public health and preventing outbreaks of sickness of communicable diseases then our sick leave provisions are inconsistent with that.I do just want to quote—there was an op-ed in the paper from a woman that sounds like she works in a call centre Halaena Mckeague who I just thought put it kind of nicely that five days goes really really quickly. Especially when the … Prime Minister [is telling you] to play it safe and stay home if we've got any of the many … symptoms of COVID-19. Sore throat? Stay home. Runny nose? Home. Bit of a cough? Don't come in." That is our advice. We need people to follow that advice. Five days as a total? It's not really consistent with that advice.There's academic work and analysis of our behaviour in workplaces that talks about the problem of "presenteeism". We hear from what I would characterise as bad employers who talk about absenteeism as a real problem—as the main problem. But actually we have a bigger problem with people coming to work sick in a compromised state. And we heard the evidence around actually a 20 percent reduction in their effectiveness when they come to work sick. But more than that they're making their colleagues sick and that is reducing productivity in the whole workplace. So the presenteeism is a key problem. Part of the way we change that is by sending a very clear message through our legislation and increasing our provision of sick leave. And that is what we are starting to do today.I also just want to say that while I speak to some of these key points I do want to acknowledge that this legislation from the Greens' perspective isn't perfect and actually doesn't solve all of those problems because there's a lot of people in this country who are either in casual work or—when we have one of the highest rates of turnover in and out of employment in the entire OECD—many people will be at the stage of their employment where they won't have been in the job six months and they won't be entitled in the current provisions to any of these protections. I really want people to think about that and the fact that we also have a gap between our COVID leave scheme at the moment and the protection for those workers. They're not covered by our sick leave entitlements.And with the COVID leave scheme really it's a limited number of people who are able to access it through their employers. So if you're a horticultural worker who's being employed for the season or if you're a retail worker who's been brought in for the Christmas rush or a hospo worker who's only got casual hours and you are feeling sick then at the moment in most workplaces you will have to choose between being paid or looking after your community and protecting us from having to go into a lockdown. And from my perspective and the Greens' perspective as we head into the summer break this is an urgent issue that needs resolution if we are to have security around our response over the summer period as we are all getting out and moving around the country more than we normally would. That is an issue that needs prioritising and we're a little sad to see that that wasn't built into this legislation and that wasn't being solved through urgency.I would just say as well that we're interested to hear from the Minister at some stage around why this framework won't bring in the protections for some workers until mid-2022 when there could have been an option to have made sick leave balances 10 days minus any leave days taken since the work anniversary date from the date of implementation. It would have I think to my mind been a simpler implementation mechanism or framework and would have brought forward access to it. If we're buying the principle that this actually supports good productivity within workplaces which I am 100 percent of that view and that this helps build good public health initiatives and supports family and caring—things that we really believe in—then I think the sooner we do this the better."