Key John: Holidays Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Key John: Holidays Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:16061] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 Now I know why the party of those members is called United Future. If some members are for something and some members are against something—and some of those members are neither for nor against something—then they have to be united because there is nobody else to disagree with them. That is why it is the United Future party! 
Here is a little tip for United Future members: they will know they are in trouble if they are in there supporting the Government on industrial relations policy when not even the Greens are voting with the Government. They know they are in trouble now because this is very sloppy legislation. 
That is why we are here. We are here because despite the fact that it took about a dozen years to have the Holidays Act rewritten the Government has made a complete botch-up of it. Those members made a botch-up because they would not listen to the people who came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. They would not listen to the employers who came and they would not even listen to some of the employees who made valid submissions so they made a botch-up of it. 
When the winter of discontent came around when Labour focus groups went out there and pulled out a picture of Margaret Wilson and when the worm went into free fall—it thought it was on a bungy-jump but with no bungy attached—Labour members said: “We have to find somebody else.” and they rolled out the friendly face of Paul Swain. United Future said it was neither for him nor against him—it was sort of for and against him—but it would vote with the Government. 
And lo and behold here we are tonight ramming through something that is frankly a disgrace. It is legislation that is absolutely shoddy and that nobody believes in. About the best United Future can tell members is that it is botched-up legislation but somehow that makes it slightly less bad than absolutely terrible—and that is a reason to vote for something. 
We in the National Party did not come into this House to pass legislation for employers and employees of New Zealand that is frankly a botch-up. That is not the future for New Zealand and if the future for United Future is to be holding up legislation that is simply bad for business in New Zealand then I think that its members have to go back to fundamentals and ask themselves why they are here—or maybe that is the issue. They should not be voting for this legislation; they should be making the Government go back and listen to the select committee and to those employers who came here and said that it would be bad news. 
I want to focus on one important element of Part 2 in this speech and to make a few comments about the issue relating to the need to get a medical certificate and the question of who should pay for that medical certificate. This botched-up legislation says that an employer has to pay for it. That is the way Paul Swain sold it to the other 47 members of his left-leaning Government. He said: “This is the way we can do it: we’ll get the employers to pay for it.” Can some member tell me why the burden of proof has to fall on the employer? It is not the employer who is asking for the day off or claiming that he or she is sick. Why does the burden of proof—that proof the employee is unwell—have to fall on the employer? If United Future members can answer that then maybe they can say why they are either voting for or against or abstaining on this bill—I am not quite sure what position they currently have. It is probably moving around the stratosphere as we speak. 
Simon Power 
: Give it another 5 minutes. 
JOHN KEY 
: Give it another 5 minutes. This is not good legislation. This is legislation that was welcomed when the review was to take place—welcomed because it was an opportunity to fix up what had been quite a troublesome area for the people of New Zealand. What did the Government actually do? Its members passed a nebulous term called I think relevant daily pay which even they could not understand. Even they could not work out what that meant. All they knew was that there had been years of negotiations when employees had finally come to agreement with employers—in harmony working together—on what ordinary pay meant and when a decent day was a day off. Now all those negotiations have to be ripped up. 
I also make the point that employers who do not pay their salaried staff time and a half or give them a day in lieu when they come into work on a public holiday are breaking the law. If a small employer does that and an employee leaves his or her employment and goes and makes that point to somebody else someone will come after them. So I just want to know whether that is what is happening to Telecom and whether Theresa Gattung will be paid $15000.