Mapp Wayne: Holidays Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Holidays Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:16038] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I want to explain in more detail the issues around relevant daily pay because they are absolutely crucial. The member across on the Government side of the Chamber is interjecting but she has not understood that the concept of relevant daily pay includes things that are beyond ordinary pay. That is the real issue—they are beyond ordinary pay. They include productivity and incentive claims. Even if the person does not actually earn them the person gets them. They include commissions payments for overtime and cash values for board and lodging. We do not have a problem with the latter point but productivity and payments for overtime are where the problem lies. It is worth noting and in fact it must be stressed—and the member who is interjecting obviously has no understanding or appreciation of this—that the bill introduced by the Labour Government in 2003 by the well-known socialist Margaret Wilson had that concept contained in three clauses about ordinary pay. Clause 7 was about the meaning of ordinary pay clause 8 stated that ordinary pay included the cash value of board and lodgings and clause 9 stated that ordinary pay did not include certain payments—specifically overtime and bonuses. Those things were excluded by the bill introduced by the Labour Government and it is worth remembering that. 
But the unionists got control of the legislation and I guess the truth of the matter is that people like Helen Duncan got the new concept of relevant daily pay which includes incentives bonuses and overtime. [ 
Interruption 
] The member interjects and says that it does not but she should read the legislation which shows it clearly does. There is no question about that whatsoever. So that is why I have chosen not the 1981 Act but the Government’s very own proposition as the basis for my Supplementary Order Paper 278. The Government knows full well that that is where the problems lie; we only have to look at the submissions on the bill to see that. 
In the submission from Heinz-Wattie for instance it could not be clearer that relevant daily pay as legislated for in section 9(1) and (2) of the Holidays Act “is not workable” in a large enterprise. That company could not have put it more directly or simply than that. It gave the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee working examples such as one that if the ordinary rate is $23 an hour because of the way the calculations are done under the new regime people can be paid $82 per hour—not $23 but $82. That is absurd and that was the point that Heinz-Wattie brought to the attention of the select committee. 
But the Government just ignored Heinz-Wattie. Labour people asked what was wrong with that and said there was nothing wrong with it. They wanted to justify the absurdity that people who are sick are paid more than people who are working. I mean when we distil it down that is what it actually means. That is why business when given the opportunity to make submissions pleaded for a return to what was introduced by the Government in 2003. The member across the Chamber Ms Duncan said that that was boring. That shows the contemptuous attitude of Labour to business. When business and employers were given the opportunity to make their submissions I guess that the Government was hoping they would say that they supported this bill. They did not say that; they asked for the real problem to be fixed up. And that is the problem United Future has has it not? Its members say that an elephant has to be eaten one bite at a time and that therefore they will support this bill. How many bites would it take to eat an elephant? I guess we would be on the “Holidays Amendment Bill 3049” before the legislation was fixed.