Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Chair. I have a problem here with my mask. Very tricky business; it won't come out. Oh there it goes. Right this is my first opportunity to speak on this bill and so I just wanted to say some broader comments on that. I think all New Zealanders have been struggling—particularly those living in Auckland and Waikato—for a very long period of lockdown in the city and that's put a lot of pressure on families put a lot of pressure on kids missing out on school for a long period of time and obviously for the relatively small group of society small-business owners in retail and hospitality it has been devastating for many of them. So my thoughts are with them. We share the frustration that we've had a Government that has spent the first half of this year telling us that the rest of the world needs vaccines more than us and there's no rush and we've got all the time in the world. After that long period of complacency we now come towards the last four months of the year in lockdown struggling and racing around chasing our tail.Then this legislation is just one of many that we've had before the House bringing in rules under extreme urgency to try and deal with elements of it. Now as it happens New Zealanders have responded very quickly to the call for vaccination once the—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Can I invite the member to come very quickly to Part 2?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yes thank you. But like I say this is my first speech on the topic and I'm just sort of warming into it.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I think the member would like to come immediately to Part 2.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yes. Well OK. The fundamental question that I have in relation to Part 2 is—and the Minister we just—David Seymour: Where's the aggressive intent?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yeah well that's right. The Minister has just said in response to the changed suggestions from our side of the House—in terms of Supplementary Order Papers in relation to the personal grievance issues and in relation to the timing of the amount of notice given to employers—that it's complex. It's not a simple matter. I'm quoting from him that We've got to get the balance right between the needs of employees and employers and we've got to operate in a reasonable nature and work out what is reasonable and what is good faith." All these things are quite complicated and that raises the obvious question: given that this is quite a difficult area of public policy why are we ramming it through in two hours on a Wednesday morning and expecting to get a good result?So why is it that a Government that's had more than a year to figure out and predict that we're going to have a Delta outbreak in this country—we're going to have to deal with these sorts of issues. Why is it that having had so long to prepare we find ourselves in a situation that we're trying to get through difficult complex pieces of legislation in relation to how to regulate the employment of our country deal with personal grievances find a balance between what is right between employers and employees—why is it that we're rushing it through under extreme urgency and not taking the time to actually have a select committee process and understand it? So that is my fundamental question to this group.If we step back and ask ourselves having got vaccinated—we're nearly 90 percent; over 90 percent of first doses. Our simple view is that we don't need any of this at all any more. We can move on to a stage where the vaccination rates are high we don't need traffic lights we need to just open up and accept that people have had the opportunity to get vaccinated—most of them have—and let's get back to a semblance of normality. So that's why we oppose the bill full stop.But we do appreciate that there are employers that are looking for some measure of certainty on the legalities of the employment relations which is what we're talking about here in Part 2. So what we're doing is we're dealing with this law in a very fast method through the House. We're going to get it wrong. We haven't had a chance to debate it properly. The Minister has said—only 10 minutes ago in the House—that "this is a difficult issue it needs to be balanced it's complex but we're not going to provide the time to deal with it properly in this Parliament." I want him to justify that and I secondly want to know what the purpose of this whole exercise is. If it is the purpose as he says to provide a measure of certainty to employers then why on earth would you leave such a massive area of uncertainty with everyone having to have the potential of a personal grievance?"