Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Madam Chair. We've learnt quite a bit actually in this debate so it's useful and I thank the Minister for his indulgence in giving us an insight into his thinking on some of these subjects. But I want to come back to this question of prorating because it is an issue and it is an issue that exists currently but is only going to be exacerbated by these changes that are being proposed by this piece of legislation. Notwithstanding that the Minister has made the point that sick leave for a part-timer under this legislation is available only on the day that that part-timer would normally work the simple reality is that that 10 days is available and there will be cases and instances where it will be used. I know from my own personal experience as an employer and a business manager that there are some employees who manage every year to use every single day of their entitlements and there are some equally who manage simply not to use any of it. The balance probably is somewhere in the middle and that's the practical reality. But what this legislation does is it upsets that balance disproportionately against smaller businesses. I want to draw the committee's attention to a submission made by Retail New Zealand. At select committee their chief executive Greg Harford made I think a very good point that the vast majority of part-timers in their sector choose to work part-time for a whole lot of reasons. They don't want to be full time as it suits them to be part-timers. They think that up to 20 percent of people working in the retail sector are actually employed on a part-time basis. What this bill will do is actually encourage retail employers—instead of employing part-timers they will be encouraged by dint of this legislation to employ full-timers. The simple reason for that is that if a business employs three part-timers they face a potential sick leave liability per annum of 30 days but if they employ and were to convert those three part-time jobs to a full-time job then their sick leave liability risk is just 10 days. So that's the simple maths of the situation and notwithstanding the views of those that have come to this Parliament from the trades hall that's the practical situation that exists in business. Businesses will adapt adopt and modify their business in the face of Government-imposed costs and legislation and they will adapt adopt and reconfigure their businesses to be profitable and to be competitive. If this is just another cost on a business albeit with good intention then businesses will adjust the way they employ and the way they hire and the way they take on people and their businesses. So a helpful solution to this is actually my proposed Supplementary Order Paper 36 which the Minister may like to consider which would effectively provide an opportunity to achieve a prorating concept that would simply and easily be adopted. So I would like the Minister to give that some consideration and to give it some thought because prorating and the issues around prorating are deeply significant. As I say this is something that is already an issue only exacerbated and made far worse and far more front of mind particularly for small-business operators. Members on the Government side are very quick to cite large sometimes internationally owned corporates who actually can have the bandwidth—if I can put it that way—to accommodate these extra costs that are being foisted upon them. But it's the small-business operators who don't have that flexibility. They don't have the flexibility that the large businesses do. So I would commend my Supplementary Order Paper to the Minister and look forward to him and his party supporting it.