Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Madam Speaker. One of the interesting things about being a member of this Parliament is the remarkable juxtapositions that occur on any given day and here is a day on which the Hon James Shaw has overseen the delivery of the Climate Commission's final report to Government and then suddenly here we are discussing something so trivial and minor and unnecessary as this bill the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill. I want to remind members because I think that the member whose name this bill is in now Terisa Ngobi probably took the bill out of the ballot—this was a bill that was originally in the name of the Hon Jan Tinetti before she was elevated to the dizzy heights of her Cabinet responsibilities. One would wonder why she was elevated to the dizzy heights given this bill but that's a whole different story for another day. This is a bill that actually was probably intended as a ballot-stuffer hopefully never to have been drawn from the ballot—hope against hope the sort of bill that an MP puts in after a few drinks one night thinking Oh that's kind of a good idea; let's put it in the ballot. Let's see if we can get it past the caucus"—must have been a really rough rumpty caucus day that day—"put it in the ballot cross our fingers and hope it never gets drawn out." Because this is a bill that is utterly totally unnecessary. This is a bill that is a problem that isn't a real problem at all. I want to remind members of the House and also people who may still be listening after Jamie Strange's speech that this is a bill that would allow for employees who have school-age children to be given paid leave—paid leave—to go and attend parent-teacher meetings and interviews. Now this is just remarkable. One wonders if there is anything that this socialist Labour Government doesn't think employers should have to pay for. Is there one possible thing that they think employers should not have to fork out for? No it seems that employers have to pay for an extra week's sick leave. They have to pay for an extra public holiday. They have to pay for domestic violence leave. They have to pay for soon to be the Orwellian fair pay agreements that are not fair where there won't be much agreement and will be very easily repealed by the way as soon as the change of Government occurs in 2023 so don't get too used to those old national awards coming back into favour.So here we go—Chris Bishop: National awards!Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: That's what they were. Christopher Bishop is probably too young to remember what national awards were but they were—Chris Bishop: I wasn't born.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: You weren't born! Well back in the last millennium in the days when the trade unions were rampant and the trade unions and the trades hall used to do these sorts of things this is what happened and this is what they want to take us back to. But coming back to this bill this is a bill that is very murky very unclear and I'm not sure—because I listened to the last 54 seconds of the sponsor's speech and I listened to the full nine minutes of her speech some weeks ago and not once not once—and I see the Attorney-General sitting in this House—not once did she mention the Attorney-General's report on this bill which says amongst other things that "I have concluded [this] Bill is inconsistent with the right [of] freedom from discrimination affirmed in s 19 of the Bill of Rights Act." Not once did the member refer to that—not once. So there was a fundamental flaw in this piece of legislation. Not only is there a fundamental flaw in it it's a bill that has no real need. Maybe we shouldn't help. Maybe we shouldn't help the Labour socialist Government in this way but the last time we had a really socialist Government was Helen Clark's time and one of the problems that Helen Clark had—it was actually her ultimate downfall—was that she started to get very prescriptive—very prescriptive—about proclamations being issued from the Beehive from the ninth floor. People will remember—Chris Bishop was probably still at school; kindergarten maybe—that in those days there were in the dying days of the Helen Clark socialist Labour Government proclamations issued from the Beehive that said "You must have low-energy lightbulbs—no ifs buts or maybes." Then there was another one that said "You must have low flow shower heads."—you must have low flow shower heads. And now we have under this Jacinda Ardern socialist Labour Government a proclamation that says "Employers must pay for their employees to go to parent-teacher interviews." It's a proclamation and it'll come from the Beehive and it'll be carved in stone and the only people who will be cheering for it will be those socialist members on the other side who have reached the pinnacle of their trade union delegate role come to this Parliament back through the back door of the Labour Party and here they are now in the House bringing the rhetoric of the trades hall back into this Parliament. I can tell you Madam Speaker—I'm not wishing to bring you into the debate—that this piece of legislation is completely farcical.What's actually not clear about this legislation is it gives an entitlement to four hours a year of paid leave per employee but what it doesn't make clear is whether that's four hours per year per child or whether that's just one lot of four hours per year.Nicola Grigg: Details—details schmetails!Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Now I guess the—yeah exactly; Nicola Grigg's so right to say that's just detail. Of course this socialist Labour Government they aren't remotely interested in detail. If there's anything that an employer might pay for then it's not sacrosanct from this Government. They seem to think that employers and business people have an unlimited infinite capacity to pay for their hare-brained ideas. Look what happens in the real world—and some of us have been in business; some of us have been employees and employers and we know that actually in the real world these sorts of matters are sorted out. They are sorted out on a sensible rational basis between good-faith employees and employers and these matters are settled. That's the way it has always operated. It's a question of give and take. It occurs up and down the country every day of the week.What will happen if this piece of legislation goes through is it's the forcing of a red-tape prescriptive "though shalt do" finger-waving approach from the socialist Labour Government and what that means is that employers will actually push back on it. The perverse outcome of this piece of legislation should it ever be passed—and the real acid test will be whether the Government actually votes for it and we don't know that yet. All we know is that the member has been given leave to introduce it and it'll be interesting to get to the final stages of this debate to find out whether the Government will actually vote—the Greens will probably vote for it but I'm sure that the Labour Party might have a dose of reality somewhere along the line.So look one of the things that I just want to say in conclusion—because I've spoken for longer than I thought; I thought it was a bill that probably didn't need much. But here is a piece of legislation. There's no groundswell there's no clamouring in the streets there's no public debate. This is an issue that is simply created made up; a bill that was put in the ballot a new member has picked it up from a Minister who's risen to the dizzy heights of Cabinet and now this poor new member has to actually try and guide it through the House. Well it's probably not a pathway for the dizzy heights of Cabinet for that member. So on this side of the House we firmly resolutely and strongly oppose this bill and so too hopefully will the Labour Party."