Prebble Richard: Holidays Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Prebble Richard: Holidays Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the ACT party to tell United Future members and Parliament that we are totally opposed to this part and I will set out the reasons. Firstly the Government has no business telling employers and employees about their arrangements with regard to whether one should have a medical certificate. That is a matter they can organise between themselves. 
Let me just give a simple example. My first job was as a law clerk. Before that I had been a student and when I did not feel too good for a variety of reasons I used to skip a lecture. When I was a law clerk I did not feel too good one morning so I rang up and called in sick. I was staggered when the senior partner of the firm—and it is a bit hard to explain this to everyone but he was a senior partner—rang me and expressed great concern about my health. He said to me: “I insist you go to the doctor.” I told him that I was not that bad. He said: “I know that you are a conscientious worker Richard. If you’re too ill to come to work you definitely need to see a doctor. It is the company’s policy. You must see a doctor because we want you to be in good health.” Well I got the message and I never took another sick day. 
As an employer I have always done that. Even previously when I was the leader of ACT if any of my people were sick I used to ring them at home express great concern about their health tell them I knew how conscientious they were and say they had to go and see a doctor. It is actually very good advice especially for young men because they frequently do not go to doctors when they ought to. But this bill makes that sort of arrangement impossible. Why is the Government interfering in that? 
I say something else to Government members opposite. They may not realise it but a lot of good employers do not give only the number of sick days the bill is talking about. In firms I have been a director of we have had unlimited sick leave. I know that trade unionists opposite might not think that that is so but I remember that in one particular firm when we had a woman who was ill for 6 months we paid her for every single day. Why did we do that? We were a conscientious firm and we ran as a family. People knew that we would back them but we expected them to work every day. We did not have people with “Mondayitis”. 
This bill treats us all like infants—and United Future is voting for it! Well United Future members have actually voted for it voted against it and abstained. That is what they have done so that they can tell anybody who asks them what they think about the holidays legislation. If it is the trade union they can say they voted for it. When they see an employer they can say they were against it and if they run into a journalist they can say they abstained. They did the lot. 
I personally have never been in favour of abstentions. In the great Parliaments of the world—the House of Commons the US Senate and the Congress—members cannot abstain because they know that that is where the buck stops. They either have to be for the legislation or against it. I like St Paul have the lowest opinion of people who are not for or against but who just abstain. As St Paul says one should spit them out. That is what I think people will do to United Future and that is what we should do to this bill. 
This is a trade union bill. It is actually worse than that. This is a bill where the Labour Party is buying off its trade union mates—buying support at the expense of New Zealand small business. It is a dreadful bill and we ought to vote against it. We ought to throw this bill out. It will not help labour relations; it will not create a healthy New Zealand; and it will not create a prosperous New Zealand. It is there purely for party political partisan reasons. It is actually a pay-off to the trade union movement for its support in the last two elections. 
A strong Parliament and a strong United Future party—which said it was going to keep people honest lift the standard of debate and bring some integrity into this Parliament—would vote against this bill. Yet its members get up here and say they will vote for it because politics is all about voter-based support. That is what Mr Adams said. He said it was all about appeasing his voter-based support. I ask the member: what happened to principles?