Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. I think the Minister in the chair Michael Wood put it quite succinctly in one of his responses where he said it is about how we treat people. That's exactly what it is. People should be able to take sick leave when they are unwell. They shouldn't have to worry about their jobs or their incomes when it comes to that regard. That is something as has been pointed out a few times now that COVID has taught us—the really quite detrimental potential consequences if people do turn up to work sick and especially during a worldwide pandemic.Now the Minister did mention I think it was called flexible sick leave. At Air New Zealand in fact when I was there we had what was called undefined" sick leave and it was quite interesting to see that despite people having an unlimited number of sick leave days available to use when the need would arise sick leave numbers didn't go up. In that aspect I think it is quite sad to hear from the Opposition a lot of statements on hearsay; in theory when people have more sick leave they are going to take more sick leave. It shows a very dim view of how they view working people and I think that's quite sad to see. I would like to ask the Minister if there's perhaps any data on corroborating those statements from the Opposition. Is there in fact any data available that shows that workers see sick leave as an entitlement and hence take this entitlement in greater numbers if sick leave is increased?Now what we did hear all through our submission process in select committee is that five days of sick leave really isn't sufficient and we have seen that our sick leave in this country is low when you compare it to other countries for example Australia. But the other thing that we really need to point out is the fact that not only will it make people hesitant calling in sick if they may perhaps have detrimental consequences by calling in sick perhaps even losing their jobs but there is a culture in New Zealand where people just toughen it out where they soldier on and we did hear that in particular from some of the submitters during our select committee process. The Public Service Association (PSA) told us that members told them that there is a predominant attitude in New Zealand to "man up" or soldier on especially when it comes to paid work commitments. The PSA did tell us—and this goes back to that productivity argument and what is termed "presenteeism"—that they had research available that showed that healthy employees are nearly three times as productive as people that potentially come to work not feeling quite up to the job and feeling a little bit ill. So it is a logical conclusion to say that people who continue to work whilst they are sick is risking also getting more people sick and then again that that productivity argument just continues on not only for the person themselves but again for their workmates.In general I think fostering a long-term culture of employees using sick leave rather than soldiering on—so using that sick leave when they need it rather than soldiering on—is a good thing and it's something that we should as a Government absolutely enforce and say not only is it about the productivity aspects but it's also about the fact that people shouldn't be able to take their germs and their bugs into the workplace. So I think yeah as the Minister already also said in one of his responses it is really about simple maths—but of course we do know that the Opposition isn't very good at adding up and mathematics so perhaps that's where they got it wrong. But I would like to conclude my contribution with that. Thank you Madam Chair."