Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you. And may I have 5 minutes? Thank you.The reason why there are so many tabled amendments that are being proposed by my colleagues to clause 4 is that we find ourselves in a situation where the Act that is being amended—the Employment Relations Act 2000—retains those grounds of prohibited discrimination which someone may bring a personal grievance for but this amendment Act that the Minister is proposing proposes to limit that in certain circumstances. So Madam Chair if you'll allow me to just explain the situation that we find ourselves in: because those grounds within the Employment Relations Act the original Act are preserved you then have a situation where if someone is fired within—dismissed within—their 90 days they have a question of whether they can bring the personal grievance on the grounds of prohibited discrimination say for example because they are a woman. But then whether they should mention that they were also dismissed within the 90 days is at issue because on the face of it they have been dismissed for reasons that were legal but then they have this further sort of issue for an employment court to work through.So that's why there are so many tabled amendments—21 in fact—in my name and I hope to speak to them all and I will be economical with my time. The first I'll speak to No. 1 is to amend clause 4 after section 67A(1) to insert a new (2) Employers can only use a trial provision to dismiss an employee if they can prove that the employment of the employee has caused a material financial or reputational harm to the employer or the employer's organisation." This is a clause where I'm trying to find a way through for the Chamber. This is not something that fits well with Labour Party values but this is a way that we can acknowledge that though there are a divergence of views around the Chamber about what is appropriate here to allow say market flexibility to allow employers the kind of flexibility that they need to operate in this is something which says if there is a problem here if you're a reasonable employer you're just doing your best whether you're a small employer or a large one you've taken a chance on somebody you've given a young guy a go and he's not the fit you need to say "Well the employment here is causing me financial hardship it's causing me a financial problem." And you know you don't need to go and tell a regulator that. That is not extra regulation you just have to keep proper records of it. It's an email between you and your chief financial officer it's an email between the line manager and their boss. It's simply recording somewhere that it is reasonable because of the financial reasons of the business that it is appropriate to let this person go.And just dealing with this point this finds us a middle ground because the Motu research that I referred to in one of my earlier contributions found in their inquiry into whether 90-day trial periods were a good thing for the economy as a whole—they concluded that "the main benefit of this policy was a decrease in dismissal cost for firms while many employees faced increased uncertainty about their job security for three months after being hired." That independent research found that the balance was perhaps not right.So my question to the Minister is: is there a way that this sort of amendment that finds that middle ground where employers who all maintain a practice of keeping reasonable records about their employment decisions anyway—should they be held to a standard where look if it's impacting on your business we say "All right go for it dismiss that employee because you've given them a go and good on you."? So that is the first amendment that I hope the Minister will consider.The second amendment that I wish to speak to is to replace section 67A with a new title. I'm not splitting hairs here but we've worded it in a really weird way in the amendment bill that the Minister has proposed. She's saying "90 days or less". I would like it to say "90 or fewer days". That's the way I would say it and we should make that amendment now just so that our law reads correctly and is in plain language. I know the Minister is an advocate of plain language straightforward language less regulation clearer language and so I would hope that she would consider that amendment.The second tabled amendment that I wish to speak to is to clause 4 to replace section 67A(1) with a clarification about using the trial provisions only if the employee has not previously been employed by the employer. The current way that reads I don't think is clear enough and you know in the spirit of making sure that this law is plain language that it reads well for employers like me and many of the members around the Chamber who have been employers in a situation where we've had to make quick decisions—we need the primary legislation to make sense."