Wood MichaelHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you Madam Chair—very happy to take a call and address a few comments. I do understand some of them have been touched on by Minister Hipkins previously but happy to address some related further questions. I do say I did enjoy some of the performance of the previous commentary and I do also enjoy the study in contrasts that we sometimes see in this House because what we've had over the course of this debate are accusations that the piece of legislation before the committee reaches too far into removing rights that New Zealanders might enjoy that it might not be consistent with New Zealand Bill of Rights Act obligations. But the main critique that I've heard from speakers in the debate on Part 2 so far has actually been that those members wish us to oust existing employment rights that New Zealanders already enjoy. That is a fundamental line that we are not prepared to go down.Now in respect of the risk of legal risk for employers using the vaccination tool this is exactly why the tool has been developed. We've had very clear feedback from employers—we worked with Business New Zealand the Employers and Manufacturers Association industry groups—that they wanted a clearer and simpler assessment tool that they can use. This particularly goes to the needs of smaller businesses who might not have the legal or HR resources that larger organisations have to conduct broader more complex health and safety risk assessments. So the tool which we have clearly indicated and will be enabled through this piece of legislation will be a very simple tool for them to use.In terms of the legal risk questions there is a high degree of legal certainty that employers can have for using this tool. I do just draw members' attention—it does go back to the previous part but to new section 33AB inserted by clause 13 which does state that employers have an absolute discretion" to use this tool. So there is a strong degree of legal protection for employers who choose to utilise the tool—that is absolute discretion which can't be challenged.But the point that members opposite are trying to make is that then that tool should be able to be used and there should be absolutely no protections or legal comeback for an employee if the tool is used in a way that is unreasonable that breaches duties of consultation or good faith. That is what those members are arguing with their position that there should be an absolute ouster of any rights to personal grievance. That is a position that we do not hold to that is not reasonable that goes a step too far and that is completely contradictory to the other assertions that they have made in this debate in terms of their position that the bill overreaches in its position around rights. So we do believe that we have struck a balance here.I just make the point that with all of these questions when this kind of legislation comes forward in a situation like the one that we are dealing with we do deal with a complex intersection of rights. Generally speaking the answers to those questions are not simple. We need to work through what is reasonable. We need to work through what helps us to advance important public policy objectives that keep people safe. In this respect we do believe that the appropriate balance to strike is to provide a simple tool to protect employers from challenge from using that tool but to have an ongoing reasonable requirement that it is utilised in a reasonable way in accordance with the principles of good faith and other practice that frankly nearly all employers do adhere to actually. But we don't think it's reasonable to strip legal rights away from employees about reasonable treatment as a tool is being put into place that could ultimately result in the end of their employment which is a very serious matter indeed.In respect of the four weeks' notice period issue that was I think raised by the Hon Scott Simpson look I just point out here that the objective of what we are trying to achieve here is not to make it as simple as possible for people to be terminated from their employment. The objective here is to try and make sure that we provide tools that clarify this situation and that enable as many New Zealand workers as possible to be vaccinated. So the best way that I would think about the four-week notice period that is referred to in the schedules of this piece of legislation is that it effectively sets the clock ticking after the employer has made the decision which they can make using either the tool—and I'll be clear about this for the benefit of Mr Woodhouse—or using existing health and safety risk assessments and there is absolutely nothing in the bill which requires the tool to be used. To be very clear—and I put it on the record again—employers can use the tool if they wish to they can use existing health and safety risk assessments if they wish to and they can use neither if they wish to. They don't have to have to engage in any of these processes.But if the employer has gone down that track and they've made a determination that certain work should be vaccinated and they have then considered whether there are other options such as redeployment and come to the decision that that is not the case there is effectively then a clock that ticks down over a period of four weeks. Given the serious consequences of the loss of employment we do think that the right thing to do is to say to that employee "Here's a last chance before you lose your job and your existing livelihood."—that if you get vaccinated in this period and it's reasonable for your employment to be maintained then that is actually an outcome that we would want to see. Actually for most employers that will be the right outcome as well because as we all know particularly in a tight labour market the challenges and the costs of then having to go through a recruitment process get someone back in and trained up are probably going to be more burdensome than retaining that person in the first instance.So that's the outcome that we're trying to achieve. It's a nudge to get people vaccinated. If they do why wouldn't we want them to keep that job? I think that's actually a good outcome and that's what we have built into the legislation."