Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Madam Speaker I too would like to join some of my other colleagues in this House in congratulating you on your ascendency to—I was going to say throne"—the Chair and wish you all the very best.It is at times like these that I always like to remind myself of that now infamous quote by the honourable Deborah Russell who said "We are seeing a number of small businesses really struggling after only a few weeks in a pretty bad situation which must speak to the strength of those businesses going into this lockdown." That was the honourable Deborah Russell—oh she's not "Hon"; hopes and prayers.David Seymour: Why isn't she?ERICA STANFORD: Who knows. The reason I like to think about that quote is that it so perfectly encapsulates and sums up the view of the Government of business—that they are a pit of money that can continually afford more and more and more costs placed upon them. It's really interesting actually because we're at a time when this Government on the one hand is doling out cash in terms of extending business loans and wage subsidies because they're acknowledging that businesses are doing it tough that they're needing to borrow money just to get by and in the very same breath they're standing up here today and on the other hand piling on more and more and more costs on these businesses that cannot afford it.We are seeing businesses who are laying off staff reducing hours not hiring when people leave and taking on these massive loans and not paying themselves especially the small to medium sized enterprises in this country. They are doing it really tough and the Government acknowledges that. It acknowledges that on the one hand by offering subsidies if they employ more people and by giving loans and extending loan schemes. And yet as I said in the very same breath they are on the other hand taking that away by imposing more and more cost. It doesn't make sense.And the Government has the audacity to lecture businesses today. They're up here lecturing businesses saying to them "Well it just makes sense. If you give more sick leave it magically leads to more productivity and some businesses understand that and they do it and the rest obviously are just stupid. They don't understand productivity. Clearly they don't know business. They perhaps even shouldn't even be in business if they don't understand productivity and how to increase productivity by simply giving some more sick leave."The fact is that even the regulatory impact statement (RIS) points out that there is limited evidence on this. There are some overseas studies. They talk about anecdotes and assumptions and the reason Marja Lubeck that they are not able to say that the billion dollars in costs is offset by a certain figure is because they can't. There's nothing in the RIS that says that the billion dollars in costs will be offset by X amount of increased productivity because they can't. And further to that there's a whole lot of unintended consequences that are brought up in the RIS which the Minister didn't talk about—things like what are these companies going to do in terms of making up that cost. Are they going to pass that cost on in their prices therefore increasing the cost of living to New Zealanders which is what's been happening for the last three years of this Government in all the taxes and increased costs it's been piling on people? Will they reduce hours? Will they not take on part-time employees? Will they not take on women? Actually they talk about that in the RIS—will there be certain groups of people that they won't take on because they have traditionally more childcare responsibilities and usually take more leave? Those are things that are brought up in the regulatory impact statement.A catchy election slogan does not make good policy and we're seeing that in the RIS. "Oh double sick leave; it'll all be fine." and then we get to the RIS which points out that actually there are a lot of considerations a lot of issues that this legislation brings up that are actually just being shunted down the line to the very hard-working Education and Workforce Committee which I sit on which will be looking at it. There are all kinds of consequences around entitlements for people who are working part time and whether or not you should bring this leave in straight away. There's a whole pile of work we have to now do because the work wasn't put into this piece of legislation. They didn't consult with business. They've talked about that in the RIS. They went out and had a catchy election slogan because they knew it would win votes but they didn't spend any time talking to business or actually developing good policy.The problem is there—yes there is a problem—but they automatically go to piling costs on businesses rather than looking at other mechanisms of delivering the policy outcome. They already have the COVID-19 support leave scheme but they didn't consider whether or not they could extend that or tweak that—they went straight to rich businesses apparently who can just afford it."