Beaumont Carol: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled 
Beaumont Carol: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled 
[Volume:660;Page:9182] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 How very interesting that speech by Michael Woodhouse was. I will just go back to a couple of simple points in relation to holiday pay because I think we should keep to the main point here. The main point in relation to holiday pay in the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill is that it will blatantly unfairly provide that holiday pay accrued before the injury will be counted and abated against weekly compensation. When people have an accident it is a random event. One cannot plan for it. One circumstance might be if a person has had the good fortune to go on a paid holiday with the holiday pay that he or she has accrued for the time worked prior to having an accident. Another circumstance might be that of a person who has accrued holiday pay and could have a paid holiday but unfortunately has an accident prior to taking that paid holiday. It is as simple as that. I will not go into all the technical detail about other points around holiday pay because I want us to focus on the real issue. The real issue is that this bill perpetrates a completely unfair outcome for workers. It is an attack on workers’ rights in fact. 
As other members have said I am very glad that Kate Wilkinson the Minister of Labour who I am sure is listening intently to what I am saying about holiday pay is the Minister in the chair. I ask the Minister to talk about this matter and to explain it. I think it should be explained to the workers of this country why this provision is fair. Even Treasury hardly the place where worker-friendly advice is forthcoming points out that this will save only $1 million but that in principle it is unfair. Let me say that again. Treasury says that in principle this provision is unfair. I would like the Minister to take a call and explain to us how she can justify a provision that saves $1 million—a provision that even Treasury says is unfair—and basically randomly affects workers based on when they have an accident and whether they have previously taken a paid holiday. Two workers in the same workplace could find very different outcomes for themselves because of this provision. 
There can be no justification for treating people differently. It is just a mean-spirited and unfair provision. I know that for some people in this Chamber talking about whether things are fair or unfair is really a bit of a red herring. They do not like it. They think that is not really the point. But New Zealanders do care about fairness. I believe that most New Zealanders do not yet understand this provision. Certainly members on this side of the Chamber will be making it crystal clear to people that this is what this bill does. Once people start to see this bill in action I think the Government will hear significant concern being expressed to it because of the blatant unfairness. 
Submitters on this particular provision certainly recognised that this was an erosion of workers’ rights. A number of unions and the Council of Trade Unions explained pretty much what I have just said—that holiday pay is earned at a time prior to the injury which effectively means that this provision requires a worker to fund his or her own compensation for the period of the abatement. Some of the cost is therefore effectively being shifted to the worker. There are a number of provisions in this bill that do exactly that. It is about cost shifting. It is about cost shifting to workers; it is about cost shifting to families; and it is about cost shifting to the health budget rather than accident compensation. There are a range of cost-shifting provisions in this bill and this is one of them but it is a really mean nasty unfair little provision that shifts the cost back to a worker who unfortunately did not have the opportunity to take the paid holiday that he or she was due. Again I urge the Minister to stand up and tell us how this can be right. 
Last night I made the point that a number of provisions in this bill are unfair. I have taken some considerable time this morning to explain in detail why I believe that one little provision around holiday pay is unfair. But let me say that the combined effect of this bill including that provision is a range of unfairness. It has a disproportionate impact on some groups in our society. Certainly Te Puni Kokiri has made it very clear that this bill has a disproportionate impact on Maori. Certainly it is clear and submitters have acknowledged this that it will have a disproportionate impact on women. Some of my colleagues have talked this morning about seasonal workers. I think they would find that any analysis of seasonal workers in this country will include significant numbers of Maori and significant numbers of women. That is just one particular example where we will see a disproportionate impact on particular groups of New Zealanders. 
The hearing loss threshold as I said previously will have a disproportionate impact on older New Zealanders and on New Zealanders who have worked in our primary industries and in manufacturing where we have had decades of people working in very very noisy workplaces. Fortunately we seem now to have got that one largely sorted out. The hearing loss threshold will impact mainly on older New Zealanders. Those are some reasons why this bill is unfair. 
But not only are the provisions of this bill unfair. Others have gone on to explicitly show that this bill is discriminatory in terms of our Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Commission made a very strong submission to our select committee and I find it deeply troubling that no Government Minister who has been in that chair has taken the time to get up and tell us why we should not be concerned about the areas of discrimination identified by our Human Rights Commission. 
In this bill it talks for example about discrimination against young people. It talks for example about discrimination against older New Zealanders. It talks for example about discrimination against those with mental rather than physical injuries. These are very important points being made by the Human Rights Commission whose job it is among its many jobs to inform us as members of Parliament about the potential disproportionate impacts and the discriminatory impacts of things we are doing here. I would really like somebody on the other side of the Chamber to do the decent thing and take a call on this and explain to us why we should be relaxed about things that the Human Rights Commission are identifying as discriminatory. I do not think those members will be able to do it because I think the Human Rights Commission is absolutely right. 
So we have a bill before this House that is unfair and mean-spirited some of the provisions of which like the hearing loss one are justified only as so-called cost containment. So despite the fact that the provisions are unfair and discriminate against certain New Zealanders this is a $3 million to $4 million saving and the holidays pay one is a $1 million saving. This is mean-spirited unfair discriminatory legislation and it affects workers’ rights. Of course that is something I am sure that the Minister of Labour who is the Minister in the chair will want to talk to us about and I am really looking forward to that. So far under her watch we have already seen the erosion of workers’ rights in this country and I am sure there are many more to come. We have seen the erosion of workers’ rights in relation to the right to take a personal grievance. 
This certainly leads me to be very nervous about the fact that there is more coming in this space and the Minister has not ruled anything in or out according to an interview I heard the other day. I would not be surprised if we found more New Zealanders losing their right to take a personal grievance which I think will be something that hopefully will worry most fair-minded New Zealanders. 
In respect of workers’ rights in this country we have had very little effort by the Government to deal with issues around jobs and that is a pretty important worker’s right—the right to a job. We have certainly seen low-paid workers being hammered including most recently a 25 percent lift to the minimum wage being the response of this Minister to moving the minimum wage which is the social floor if you like—the minimum we believe that people should work for. I urge the Minister to get up and talk to us about on this provision around holiday pay in the bill. Thank you.