McKelvie Ian; Rurawhe AdrianIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well as with my colleague Tim van de Molen in the chair next door it is somewhat of a surprise to be taking a call on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. I've got to say I'm a little staggered at some of the comments coming from the Government benches mainly because I've been an employer for much longer than any of them have—quite obviously—and not only have I been one for longer than them but I've had quite a lot of experience of this sort of thing.I think one of the things that concerns me about the result of this bill and where it gets to—there's a couple of things that concern me and I'll get on to them. One of the things that concerns me is the more we regulate the labour industry the more we stick to the regulations. I think that's a real challenge for this whole sector in New Zealand because if we impose regulation and legislation on industry employers and employees then those regulations are going to become more and more stuck to and more and more rigid and there'll be no tolerance left in the business—and I think the point's been made a couple of times tonight already. A lot of the business of employing people and working with employees relates to tolerance and the ability to let people get on with their own lives and make sure they make the best of it. As I said a minute ago the more we regulate and legislate the more likely we are to stick to those legislative parameters and cause some problems.The other thing that concerns me about this bill and a number of other bills that are in the pipeline and certainly the result of this bill as it comes to the House for its third reading is that it's all very well to go to 10 days' sick leave and to extend the holiday that people are able to take but the problem is all of that cost goes on to the employer. If there was another way of doing that it may well be acceptable but the problem with New Zealand is we have such a lot of small businesses. We've heard a bit tonight about the productivity levels of New Zealand and this is just going to add some further stress to the productivity level. Employment opportunities I think are going to get much tougher and I think tomorrow between 2 o'clock and 3 o'clock we'll see why that's going to be because there is a lack of confidence in our business community in New Zealand at the moment and they are nervous about what might happen. I think tomorrow will prove probably the reason for that nervousness. So if you lose the confidence of the employer sector in New Zealand you'll find that the number of jobs in New Zealand drops quite quickly and quite dramatically and that would be a tragedy for New Zealand for a couple of reasons actually. One is we'd probably lose a large number of our employees to Australia—and I think that's quite likely to happen—and the second is our unemployment levels may well rise. Now I'm not saying they will but the more pressure you put on employers the more likely that is to happen. I'm all for supporting employees and making sure they have the best possible chance to have a decent life. I listened to one or two of the speeches from the other side of the House tonight and frankly I think the description they gave is very unfortunate and hopefully it is isolated to a very few businesses around New Zealand. So the purpose of this bill is to increase the availability of employer-funded sick leave for employees. The reason for it—and I guess you could think about COVID and blame COVID for it or say that COVID was responsible for it. We're going to blame it for everything for the next 20 years in New Zealand I imagine but I guess it's an example of that. It'll be very interesting to know the number of people that actually take more than five days or need more than five days' sick leave a year and whether this bill changes what's historically happened very much at all. Only history will tell us that but it will be very interesting to see where that takes us to and the result of that as we move forward.So I think that as I said earlier the more we get involved in regulation and legislation around employment relations the more intolerant those relationships become and it worries me that we'd be moving down that path. In fact I think we're going back to a time in history when and again I'm one of the few in this House that will remember every summer holidays when you wanted to go to the South Island the ferries were on strike and the world stopped—I didn't actually go on the ferry on holiday because I never had holidays in those days. But it is a challenge for us and I think it's something we need to seriously consider. The issue that we've really got is that there aren't many people in New Zealand who remember those days when we had labour relationships in New Zealand that were far from satisfactory and I just hope that this sort of bill doesn't take us back there. So thank you Mr Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Helen White—five minutes.