SpeechMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair. An issue was discovered with the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill a member's bill recently transferred from the Hon Dr Deborah Russell to me. The advice as we just heard was to recommit the bill to the committee of the whole House to address that particular issue that was identified. Recommittal is conventionally used for particular and narrow purposes where repeating the whole committee of the whole House process would be inappropriate.The objective of the bill: to extend the time in which a person may make a personal grievance claim in respect of sexual harassment from 90 days to one year. The reasons for this have been well traversed. But I will repeat the opening remarks of the Hon Dr Deborah Russell at the first reading of this bill which were: This is a simple bill but it deals with a complex and difficult matter of sexual harassment." So while it was a simple bill to deal with a real problem in the workplace the lack of transitional provisions to ensure that there's no uncertainty with the changes that this bill makes were not picked up during the select committee process. It was noticed by officials before the bill was presented for its third reading.So that brings me to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 331. The issue that SOP 331 deals with is that the bill has no transitional provisions related to clauses 4 and 5. Clauses 4 and 5 of the bill amend provisions of the Employment Relations Act sections 54 and 65. Those are sections that set out what must be contained in the collective agreement and in an individual employment agreement.The bill requires the new 12-month time limit for personal grievances relating to sexual harassment to be mentioned in the agreement as well as the existing 90-day time limit for all other types of personal grievance. But without these transitional provisions the bill creates uncertainty whether every existing employment agreement must be updated to reflect the updated law or whether the new law only applies to new agreements concluded after the member's bill commences. That could have generated uncertainty about what employers needed to do to comply with the new law and that is particularly important because there are some hefty penalties that can be invoked when section 65 is applied. Such uncertainty may cause people to seek legal determinations for the validity or compliance of their employment agreements.In the bill's present state the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) as the regulator cannot definitively advise the employers and unions whether existing employment agreements will need to be amended without judicial interpretation and precedent being set. Guidance cannot be used to resolve uncertainty about interpretation; only judicial decisions can. MBIE cannot provide guidance that is relied on by employers but may potentially be a different decision that a court will be reaching.So while it's thought very likely that a court will apply the Legislation Act and conclude that only new agreements have to contain the new required content it could be argued like lawyers most usually could that it could be interpreted as requiring all existing agreements to be updated and until a court decides that particular question the uncertainty could cause concern for employers about what they need to do to actually comply fully with the Employment Relations Act. I say it particularly because failing to comply with section 65 can attract penalties and they are up to $10000 for individual employers or $20000 for corporations.The Supplementary Order Paper inserts a transitional provision into the bill. It makes it clear that employers are not required to amend existing employment agreements to include this new time period and that will give certainty for employees employers and practitioners.Now before I sit down I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Hon Dr Deborah Russell for entrusting me to take this bill through the House in its final stretch. Dr Deborah Russell had the good fortune before she became a Minister to have a very good bill drawn from the House and she did a lot of work shepherding it through the different stages of the House through the select committee and she made very wellregarded representations at each stage of that process. So I thank her for her efforts.I would also like to specifically mention the officials from MBIE and the Parliamentary Counsel Office for their assistance with this SOP and the recommittal process in general which has proven to be not so much of a straightforward process. So thank you."