Wood MichaelHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you Madam Chair. Look happy to respond to a number of the questions that have been raised over the last 20 minutes or so of the debate noting that some of these have been touched on already. But I'll just go through sequentially the members who have spoken recently. Colleague David Seymour's raised a couple of queries there. The first is around the testing requirement and I do believe that this has been addressed in the debate to date. He gave a number of comments providing his views on the appropriate methodologies around testing. To be very clear the provisions that he's talking about in Part 2 relate through to those people who might have testing requirements put in place via orders that are captured within Part 1 of the piece of legislation. And as has been described in this debate at various points those orders will be made by the relevant Minister. They will receive advice from the Director-General of Health and others. And the reason that testing requirements go in orders rather than in primary legislation actually kind of goes to one of the points that the member raises—that we might actually want to have some flexibility there as new technologies come on stream as our understanding of testing methodologies develops. It might well be the case as in fact it is under the current required testing order that we want to vary up the frequency of testing depending on risk levels the kind of workforce the nature of their work—that kind of thing. So those things are captured in the orders that are issued under Part 1 and that's what he's referring to in respect of the provisions that are in Part 2.The member I think wrongly characterises the right that is provided in this piece of legislation for paid time off to go and receive a vaccination as being rigid in some way. I think that is absolutely wrong. There is no specific requirement here that it's done in a certain way. There is no new entitlement to a kind of leave that is created. We simply lift and use a well-understood provision from the Employment Relations Act that's used in respect of other things at the moment that the employer must provide in a reasonable way the ability for that employee to get vaccinated on paid time so long as it doesn't unreasonably disrupt their business operations. That is a form of wording in a system that employers are very familiar with that exists in the Employment Relations Act at the moment. I think the member's partly right. It won't necessarily have wide application and the vast majority of employers are enabling that to happen which is good. But I'm aware of some who haven't and I think that that is a reasonable requirement of our shared ambition to make it as easy as possible for employees to go and get their vaccination. I would certainly characterise that new provision as being very flexible. It's about reasonableness rather than the Government prescribing exactly how it happens.To Mr Goldsmith's contribution it was a relatively general contribution. He made some points which is fair enough in the course of this debate but I didn't particularly discern any questions that he wanted me to address. Well he made a particular point about him having a view around the select committee process which is a reasonable point for him to make but it doesn't actually go to the substance of this part of the bill. Mr Penk on the other hand did have a number of particular questions that he raised. He raised a number of points and in particular he raised them in respect of how this might apply given the specific nature of employment engagement in the defence sector which for the most part does sit outside of the provisions of the Employment Relations Act. So I mean to some extent he answers his own question there in that the provisions of this part of the bill are about the Employment Relations Act. Ipso facto they don't apply to people who are not covered by the Employment Relations Act and some people in defence therefore will not be covered by these provisions. I do understand however that vaccination is already a requirement for baseline service requirements across defence. So their normal processes including discharges will continue to apply there.In respect to the second part of his question it was effectively the question about what is Defence's ability to make decisions about contractors who might be coming on to their bases or sites who are unvaccinated. The answer there is no different to any other employer that where there is a commercial arrangement that an employer in fact any other private individual has they're able to make reasonable rules about who might come on to their property including bases. It's not an issue that goes to Part 2 and the Employment Relations Act reforms here but they are able to make reasonable decisions there and I understand the Chief of Defence Force in fact already has done that—Hon Peeni Henare: That's right.Hon MICHAEL WOOD: —in defence areas. And I'm just hearing that affirmed from the Minister of Defence. So good to have the clarity there.Erica Stanford asked a number of questions as well. She inquired about what is reasonable written notice. This is another one of those areas where we think it is important to have a requirement that is about the employer behaving in a reasonable way rather than to be completely prescriptive about what applies there. But I think we would all understand in a common-sense term what it means to be reasonable. It's about making sure that someone is able to get that information that this process is under way that they have sufficient time to read that to understand it to seek advice and to provide a reasonable response. These are well-understood concepts within the broader field of employment law and I don't think that any reasonable employers will have any particular problems adhering to them.To the question about whether employers can put people on paid leave sort of separate to the specific provisions around the four-week notice period the answer is that if an employer wishes to do that they can of course do that. In fact I'm sure that some already are doing that out there and that's entirely at their discretion. The member also asked what the scenario is if an employee says they've just got no willingness to get vaccinated at all. Effectively can that four-week period be shortened I think was the thrust of the question there. The answer is no that that is a four-week period that is defined in the legislation. It's a four-week period. It's very clearly set out in the legislation. It's not shortened under the provisions of this bill. But the more detailed answer I would give there and it goes back to a comment I made in my previous contribution is that the purpose of the operation of this facility is that there is a chance for this employee to have a really good think about this issue and about whether it is really worth the candle to lose their job and their livelihoods because of an unwillingness to get vaccinated. We have some form to draw on here. We have had a number of mandates which have been introduced by the Government through the process of orders and what we have found in those cases is that actually it's that period of a final few weeks which is often the period—I think about for example the orders that were made in respect of the maritime border which mainly applied to port workers and we had quite a large group of port workers at the beginning of that process who were hesitant around getting vaccinated. But we found in that period of the last few weeks when it was becoming more imminent it became real that Boy by this date potentially my job goes." And in addition to that the employer unions involved got active provided support advice dealt with concerns helped that person to make a good decision around vaccination. We actually found that period of the last few weeks got a lot of those people across the line and in those sectors we actually had relatively small pockets of people who then fell foul of the requirements and that's certainly how we see that four-week period playing out. I'll pick up on Mr Seymour's point here. He makes the point quite reasonably that in a tight labour market we don't want to be losing people. So if we can employ a facility like this that with a little bit of work all round helps people to get to the right decision and maintain their employment that's good for that employee and it's actually good for the employer as well. The final point I'll make comes back to quite a lengthy discussion that we've had over the course of debate on this part. It's the balance in terms of legal certainty. Erica Stanford raised this point and effectively what she and her colleagues on her side of the House are arguing—and let's just be really clear about this—is the ouster of all rights that employees might have to contest whether they have been treated reasonably over the very serious matter of whether they lose their employment. We do think that that goes a step far and I think it contradicts many of the other arguments that we've heard from that side of the House in the course of debate on this bill as well. But what I will say is that the tool that has been created and has been socialised quite widely is very simple. It has subjective measures in place. The decision to actually use the tool is legally protected and employers who use it in a reasonable way have a very high degree of legal certainty. That's been affirmed by a number of legal commentators. We've had good commentary from Business New Zealand about how much easier it's going to be to use and we think that strikes the right balance. But to remove every single right that an employee might have if they were treated unreasonably if they didn't get reasonable notice of what was happening if they didn't get a chance to respond to it if there was not a reasonable process to consider redeployment and they lose their jobs that side of the House is saying that that person should have no recourse at all. And on this side of the House we just do not think that that is a reasonable position or a reasonable balance to strike.So with that some of this debate has come up previously—I think I've covered off most of the key points that have been raised so far. Thank you."