Belich Camilla; van Velden BrookeCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair. I have a specific point in relation to clause 2 the commencement provision. So the Minister when she was responding to a previous question on commencement stated that it was quite usual for the day after Royal assent to be the commencement date. So I happened to have a copy of the Employment Relations Act which is the primary Act that this Act amends in front of me and I thought it would be interesting to check the commencement date in the Employment Relations Act. I noted when I checked the commencement date in the primary Act that's being amended that it actually didn't have the date after Royal assent; it had a specific date 2 October 2000.I wondered whether the Minister had received any advice about having a specific commencement date. This is not a facetious question. It's actually because one of the key issues with trial periods is a lot of employers get them wrong and that's partly because of the high standard that the Employment Court has placed on making sure that trial periods are for example between new employees they can only be in writing and they have to be before employment commences. So often employers and specifically because this policy has been related to small employers tend to get that wrong. I think we've referred to previously in the debate the high majority of the number of trial period clauses that have been to the Employment Relations Authority and have been found to be invalid.So this relates to the commencement clause in that could she please receive some advice on whether she thinks it might be beneficial for New Zealanders to have a specific date rather than the day after the Royal assent in the legislation. That way if employers or employees were looking as to whether in fact trial periods could be used for all employers or in fact smaller employers they could look to that specific date in the commencement rather than the day after Royal assent. Because actually finding the day of Royal assent is quite difficult. I know that the Parliamentary Service is quite helpful. I've seen that they do tweets on the commencement date of some pieces of legislation. They confirm—Hon Rachel Brooking: What are tweets?CAMILLA BELICH: —Yeah they do. Yeah tweets; very useful if you have an interest in certain areas. But I don't think the general New Zealand public would be so engaged with the parliamentary process to either check the Gazette which may be where it's advertised—and that's actually another question for the member: how do members of the public find out the date of Royal assent? So I'm quite interested on that and I just think it would provide greater clarity for members of the public to see a particular date. I think it's not without precedent as it was in the Employment Relations Act—a specific date of commencement—and it would seek to address some of the issues that we know with trial periods in that there are still quite a lot of issues with validity and also a high standard in the authority and in the court to look to.If so if she was to enlighten us with in fact if she had taken advice on that what date would she be looking at? Because I think it would be unusual to have a date this late in the year and so perhaps when people were likely to come back to work; perhaps after the statutory holidays in January could be a time period which would be clearer for New Zealanders to know. Because it might be that she might want to have it from 1 January for example. It might be in fact that that's the day after Royal assent. I don't know if the Governor-General has plans over the summer or is still in fact signing bills or not but I would be interested to know yeah a few things. So advice on it what date she would determine could be included in that and in fact how do members of the public—because genuinely how do you find out exactly when the date of Royal assent occurs in order to know whether the bill that we're discussing around the commencement in clause 2 actually is in place or not? So if the Minister wouldn't mind looking at that commencement provision and just providing some reasoning around the decision to have it after Royal assent.Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I can assure the member that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment will update their own website to allow for members of the public to know when the official start date will be for this new law and I look forward to the member going online and finding that out. Also recognising that most people do not go to the specific law to find commencement; they go to the governing agencies where information is usually held.