McClay ToddHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Thank you Mr Speaker. SPEAKER: Taumarunui rugby club.Hon TODD McCLAY: That's right exactly. Thank you Mr Speaker. I too rise to speak on this bill and the National Party will be supporting it. It is an important time for New Zealanders to see that the House can work together where we can pass legislation or make changes that will help everyday New Zealanders and in this instance a lot of businesses who are facing great uncertainty. But I am going to preface that by saying I don't think the bill goes far enough or at least there are many other things that we need to focus on and that need to be done with great urgency because we have a great number of New Zealanders and their businesses. When I talk about businesses I'm talking about individual New Zealanders—the people that live in our communities that go to work every day and work hard and that business is more than just a business for them. For many of them it's not only their livelihood and the way they pay for their children's education and other things; it's actually their life. They are facing great uncertainty and a huge amount of challenge and I want to address that in a moment.Indeed some of the parts of the bill make a lot of sense: the extension of the rent arrears. I can see why the Government would see that's important at the moment but it is talking about arrears and death; it's not talking about or finding ways to helping those that are in arrears or those they owe money to—the landlords—and I'll come to that in a moment.The business debt hibernation also buys time for businesses. I suppose it gives us some certainty but it doesn't take away the weight that's on the shoulders of small business where they wonder how they can even come close to dealing with the debt that has been built up over the last five or six weeks—for some seven and longer. The reduction around the impact of regulations is very important but actually there are many more areas where regulatory reform is needed at all times but particularly today to get burden off business. As we look at how some of these business people are going to try and rebuild their lives—how they are going to go out there and try and get their business back on an equal footing—there are many areas of burden from regulation that will impose cost upon them and if the Government doesn't look to focus and do something about that very quickly there will be far more businesses that fail that should and could otherwise survive.The safe harbour around directors is very important. It's technical but it is very important because we're not in as far as business rules are concerned normal times. Therefore the normal rules and the responsibilities that directors have can't have the same impact upon them.In everything I'm about to say this is about the jobs of New Zealanders. Now this comes to the deficiencies in the bill and what more needs to be done and how it could be added to and what is needed. It's around saving jobs and making sure that New Zealanders can see that the taxpayer through the Government is going to work with them to protect them to help them to keep them in jobs to keep their businesses going. I would say this House did a very important thing. It's almost seven weeks ago maybe eight when we came in recess and met and we passed legislation and we gave the Government the ability to spend up to $52 billion without a lot of direction or a lot of direction from the Government at least as to what that was to be spent on. One of the first things they did was the wage subsidy and that has meant that New Zealanders as they sit at home during lockdown have less uncertainty more certainly I suppose.But the wage subsidy for 12 weeks runs out in four weeks' time and this bill should be dealing with that. It should be extending that or talking about how in many sectors it will become available or extended. The reason for that is that a company that has taken 12 weeks of the funding for wage support is giving that to their workers. It doesn't actually do anything for the business other than mean they didn't have to lay them off at the time it was given. They didn't have to make those workers redundant or to sack them. But it hasn't been productive for them because during the lockdown—that's the reason we have this bill here: to deal with the implications and the flow-on of that lockdown—their employees were sitting at home. They weren't generating anything for them so the taxpayer subsidy that kept people at least on the books in as far as work was concerned didn't help the business at all other than their employees are still there.Kelvin Davis when I asked in question time earlier said Well there's still money left available." Grant Robertson was the same. There is four more weeks. But if you are a small business or a large business in New Zealand and you still are not able to open because this bill doesn't allow you to open and you have four weeks' worth of the subsidy left and you don't know what it is you will be able to do with it—whether you'll be able to trade or not or the conditions of that or what level 2 looks like—you have so much uncertainty that you are this week faced with the decision of whether or not to lay those workers off to make them redundant. The reason for that is generally the redundancy period would be four weeks.So the problem we have is that actually if there is not the certainty from the Government that this bill should be providing that the subsidy will continue or they'll be able to open and trade again they can't wait because in four weeks' time the full subsidy will have been used up and they won't have income to the level they need or they won't have reserves to then—I'm coming back to that Mr Speaker—be able to lay those workers off. So this week New Zealanders face uncertainty of whether they will return to their jobs because businesses up and down the country are facing uncertainty. They don't know whether they can open they don't know what the rules will be yet because the Government hasn't provided that to them clearly and they don't know whether or not that subsidy will continue.In this bill there's a lot of work around rent and landlords. I want to be cautious because there have been times when it seems that on purpose or not the Government has tried to demonise landlords. We certainly saw that during the Epidemic Response Committee hearing when we discussed this. I asked Grant Robertson seven weeks ago I think it was now whether or not he would look to do more with landlords and businesses that couldn't pay their rent. He said at the time it was a few days maybe a week away. Well we're still waiting.So in this legislation there are provisions to help businesses with debt and around what landlords can do and so on. But that's not good enough because we have many situations where businesses have had no turnover for seven weeks. They've had no grant from the Government at all. There is a small interest-free loan for a year that for the average business may be $20000 or $30000 but that doesn't come anywhere close to the debt that's been built up and still landlords are sitting there not sure what will happen even though they've been working hard and reducing their rents and giving rental holidays and so on and the economic burden—the weight of this debt upon businesses in New Zealand—continues to grow.So what is it that actually is needed? This bill should be actually talking about the wage subsidy and extending it. It should be looking at cash-flow grants for businesses in New Zealand—SPEAKER: Order! I've been very generous with the member but I think he better come back to what's in the bill. Just the last two minutes.Hon TODD McCLAY: Good. All right thank you Mr Speaker. And therein lies a problem because whilst there are some good things in there actually there is not that much to fill up 10 minutes.SPEAKER: There's no obligation to fill the time. If the member feels he can't stay in order I'm happy to terminate his call.Hon TODD McCLAY: Thank you. I'll do my very best. Why don't I finish with this Mr Speaker: a heartfelt plea on behalf of the business community in New Zealand—the tourism sector the small businesses the people that are still locked away and can't open their shops—for the Government this week to address the challenges that they face. The weight of the debt and the uncertainty that's upon them is going to have implications not for days or weeks or months but for years to come. This bill is a start which is why we are supporting it. But actually they can't wait until the Budget next week. They can't wait until some politics plays out. They need certainty today around what's going to happen so they can plan and if that doesn't happen quickly enough there will be businesses that close that shouldn't close because those people have done—SPEAKER: Second warning.Hon TODD McCLAY: —what they were meant to. Then finally there will be people that will lose their jobs this week that wouldn't have to otherwise. Thank you Mr Speaker."