Mallard Trevor: Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:650;Page:19268] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Labour) 
: 
 I move  
That the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. I congratulate you Mr Assistant Speaker on your productivity. You have been coming in and out of the Chamber in various roles such as Assistant Speaker and Chairperson and we have made amazing progress while you have been away. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I thank the member. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Oh you are going again! I did not know I had that effect on you Mr Assistant Speaker. 
This is a simple wee bill. It fixes up a decision that the Supreme Court made—a decision that it had not been invited to make by any of the parties and a decision that really made a nonsense out of any practical application of the law. I am a supporter of the Supreme Court but in this particular case I think it is fair to say that it made a mess of things. 
This Parliament has unanimously agreed with the support of the Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand to remedy the mess the court has made. We have had a little bit of fun in the Committee stage because an invitation was made by the National Party to have a broader discussion about the transferability of public holidays and of course that raised the question of the sale of holidays generally. It has been made very clear that there are some issues around holidays and I am absolutely determined to have a more general piece of amending legislation in the next Parliament. It will be something that is wider and something that I hope will not be unanimous because I know that if I do something substantive the National Party will not agree with it. 
We had a bit of a discussion around whether workers should be forced to give up their fourth week’s holiday as the National Party has proposed. It is a debate that I am sure we will have quite a lot of over the next 6½ weeks. I am sure that every time it is brought up we will get a few more votes because no one out there who is reasonable would think that the public holiday provisions and the paid holiday provisions in New Zealand are too generous. It is at the lower end of the OECD scale and lower than most other countries apart from the US. Part of the reason we are relatively lowly paid compared with the United Kingdom Australia and some other like countries is that our holiday arrangements are not as generous as those of some other countries. 
As I say there was remarkable unanimity around passing this legislation quickly but what the bill did was to focus on some very big issues. I will be particularly interested in the response of my old friend and colleague Dr Sharples in this area because this is one of the defining issues. Frankly if one is looking for an ethnic group that gains the most out of having proper holiday pay arrangements one will find that it is Maori because they are most likely to be amongst the disadvantaged group. I would be interested in the Maori Party’s reaction to the National Party’s suggestion that the number of public holidays should be reduced. Thank you very much.