Prebble Richard: Holidays Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Prebble Richard: Holidays Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 I hope we will hear from Dr Mapp again because he presented the excellent Supplementary Order Paper 278 and I do recommend it to the Committee. I say to members that I think it is a very good move to take the original bill that the United Future party voted for and that the Greens also voted for— 
Paul Adams 
: No we didn’t. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: The member thinks this is better now than the original bill? Well that is very interesting. The member said that he did not vote for the original bill but now that the bill is a muck-up he will vote for it in order to help the Government. I think that is extraordinary. 
I just want to draw a simple fact to the attention of Government members. I do not think there are very many members of the Government who have ever employed a fellow New Zealander with their own money so they are probably not aware of the impact of holiday pay. [ 
Interruption 
] The member should just listen to this example. No doubt she is pleased with the fact that the Department of Labour’s latest statistics show that people’s wages went up by 1.8 percent which means that people were getting paid more money. Yet in that quarter the actual cost of labour fell. Is it not extraordinary that wages went up by 1.8 percent yet for employers the cost fell? The reason for that is that Anzac Day fell on a weekend. One day’s change was enough to make that much difference. For the particular business that I am in where Easter falls makes an amazing difference to the return from the business. 
This Government has put in an incentive for people to take extra sick days. Most New Zealanders do not take every sick day that is available to them. But when the Government states by law that an employee will be paid more money for not working than for working the number of people who take extra sick days will go up. Even if one is being conservative the number will go up by at least 1 day per worker per year. That may not seem to be very much to Government members. I have to say that the officials who worked on this bill were disgraceful. I normally get up to say that the officials were excellent. The Department of Labour has benefited enormously from this Government. The size of the department has gone up it has been able to run all sorts of rorts and it has paid people to study hip hop around the world. I thought the actual evidence we got from the department was disgraceful. The sort of evidence one would expect civil servants to give MPs is to say to us that we should realise we are making New Zealand a less competitive place and that we are putting huge costs on small business. We had an example from Wattie’s which said that in one particular factory that it runs it has had to employ an extra six people just in order to work out the sick pay and the holiday pay. That is six people who are not being productive. We have a trade union official Helen Duncan—who is now heckling—who voted for all that in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee but she is not prepared to get up and say how New Zealand is a more prosperous nation by having all that extra red tape and bureaucracy. 
We have seen the United Future party and its extraordinary explanations as to why it is a doormat for the Government. I think Helen Duncan if she is proud of this bill should take a call and explain to small business why all this extra complexity has been put in place. She should explain to people who work in freezing works the justice of the situation whereby if they turn up to work they are paid less than a person who takes the day off. That was the example—was it not Helen Duncan—that we were given in the select committee. In fact we were told that there are chains in our freezing works that have not been able to work because absenteeism is so bad. Export orders which are vital to this country have been lost because of this legislation. Is that not correct Helen Duncan? 
Helen Duncan 
: Rubbish! 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: Is she saying that the meatworks were lying or was she not listening?