Henare Tau: Holidays Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Henare Tau: Holidays Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
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Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 I will go through the main provisions of Part 1 of the Holidays Amendment Bill. By agreement—and that is a really interesting starting point—1 week of an employee’s minimum entitlement to annual holidays is to be commuted for a cash payment to the employee. So the first thing we have to look at is that it is by agreement. This is not about forcing anybody to do anything. The employer is not even there because it really is a matter of the employee the worker fronting up and saying “Excuse me I wouldn’t mind getting into a discussion with you— 
Moana Mackey 
: That’s the way it’ll happen! 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Look in most probably 99.9 percent of workplaces it will. The other thing is that it is about amending the calculation and the application of payment for public holidays alternative holidays sick leave and bereavement leave. This bill is about tidying up provisions not taking away provisions not making them harder to get. Part 1 is about making sure that the Act works properly. It allows employers and employees to agree to transfer the observance of public holidays to another working day. Sometimes workers like to work maybe on the public holiday so that they can take another day off somewhere else that suits the family. Maybe there is a school trip coming up. It actually works being flexible. It is again all about being done by agreement. 
This bill allows employers to request proof of sickness or injury within the first 3 consecutive calendar days of an employee taking sick leave without first having reasonable grounds to suspect that the sick leave is not genuine. Who in their right mind would not want to verify— 
Moana Mackey 
: You can do it now. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: If we do it now what is the big problem with it? 
Moana Mackey 
: Because you are making everyone do it even when there’s no problem. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: No no if these things are done now then what is the big opposition to them? 
Moana Mackey 
: Because they have to actually have some evidence— 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: No there is an opposition to them and it is because there is too much power from what I have heard tonight from William Sio the man from South Auckland— 
David Bennett 
: From where? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: From Manurewa most probably. He used to live in the heart of Otara until he decided he wanted to move up in the world and he moved to Manurewa but that is beside the point. 
David Shearer 
: Mangere mate. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: He now lives in Mangere. If in our childhood he had said to the brothers and sisters who lived in Otara that he wanted to live in Mangere he knows what would have happened—but I digress. 
This is clearly about workers’ choice. This is clearly about doing things with the agreement of and initiated by workers. So I do not know how the fantasy can be achieved by Labour that there are thousands of ratbag employers out there who want to say to workers that they must take cash instead of a holiday because they do not want them to have a holiday. Of course there is a bad apple out there and that is what we want to avert in Part 1. I cannot see the argument the Opposition is putting forward to the Committee.