Mackey Moana: Holidays Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Holidays Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
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MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am very pleased to take a call on Part 1 and I want to break through some of the ridiculous rhetoric we have been hearing from the other side of the Chamber. This bill is not about choice. 
David Bennett 
: You should listen to Roger Douglas; he got you in here. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That was another stellar interjection from David Bennett the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee! I thank the submitters. I think they are lucky that they made it past David Bennett because he stops people submitting at our select committee. We were lucky that some submitters managed to make it past the guard dog; he does not like people coming along to make submissions against Government legislation. 
The fact is that this bill is not about choice and when ACT and National say it is about choice they are just showing how out of touch they are. There is no choice for a family who are living on the breadline because their wages have stalled because the cost of living has gone up because this Government—which promised when it was asked during the election campaign that it would not increase GST—increased GST in October this year. Those families have found that all their costs have gone up and they are struggling to get by. 
National and ACT members would have us believe that those families have a choice when it comes to whether they trade in a week’s holiday. Do members know what real choice is? Real choice is asking people whether they would rather have a pay increase and be able to live on their salary. I guarantee that every single one of them would say that that is what they would like to do. There is no choice involved when someone is desperate and has to make cut-backs. There is no choice involved when families cannot send their kids on a school trip because there is no money left at the end of the week. It is not a choice when people have to choose between work and spending time with their families regenerating and taking time to make sure they can be more productive workers. That is why we have annual leave. It helps productivity and it helps workers to feel rested. It means they can spend time with their families and do not feel that they are neglecting them. 
It is not a choice to say to them that instead of a pay increase they will be given the option of cashing up a week’s leave even though we know they do not have a choice about it because it is a choice between paying the bills and not paying the bills. Saying it is a choice is like saying that a family who get evicted because they cannot pay the rent chose not to pay the rent. It is like saying that a family who cannot afford to buy their kid new shoes chose not to buy their kid new shoes. It ignores the reality which is the nub of this issue that too many New Zealanders now are struggling and this Government is doing absolutely nothing except passing ridiculous pieces of legislation like this bill. Such legislation does absolutely nothing to address the core problems facing many New Zealand families. 
This Government said it would be family friendly. How is it family friendly to view annual leave only in terms of the dollar cost of it and not in terms of the value that it provides for workers to their families and to the employer when they have a more productive worker? 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: They plunder families. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is right; it is just a commodity to the National Government and it is very telling that it views it only in terms of that dollar value. 
We see that view again when we talk about the changes to sick leave provisions. If an employer has reason to believe that someone is rorting sick leave the employer can demand a medical certificate. But the flipside is they have to have reason to believe that someone is rorting it. How is that unfair? How is it unfair to say that employers should have reason to believe it and be able to show some evidence of it for example someone consistently takes Fridays and Mondays off or the boss sees someone on the television at the rugby? Of course they should be able to demand a medical certificate to prove that. 
But this Government says that anyone can be made to provide a medical certificate if they are sick for 1 day even if it is a cold or flu even though as the Government knows all the research in New Zealand shows that there is no problem. Our workers take less sick leave on average than those of most other countries. The biggest cost to the Government overall is not the cost of sick leave and how much workers are taking. The biggest cost is the loss of productivity that results when workers who are sick go to work. That is the biggest cost to employers in New Zealand. The Government knows that. It has been told time and time again that that is what the studies show. 
Darien Fenton 
: Even Treasury says so. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Yes. Treasury says that the biggest cost is caused by workers going to work when they are sick. If workers are told they have to get a medical certificate if they take a day off sick they will go to work—and they probably would not be able to see a doctor on that day. They probably cannot afford to go to a doctor just to be told that they have a cold or the flu and that they should stay home and rest. Why would they waste money on doctors’ fees—ever-increasing doctor’s fees under this Government—to get a medical certificate from a doctor who will tell them they should not have bothered going to the doctor?